In a Tumblr note to her fans, singer Taylor Swift revealed that her mother, Andrea Finlay, has been diagnosed with cancer.

The report from the New York Daily News said that Taylor sent a message to her fans on Thursday saying, "I'm saddened to tell you that my mom has been diagnosed with cancer. I'd like to keep the details of her condition and treatment plans private, but she wanted you to know."

She went on to explain, "She wanted you to know because your parents may be too busy juggling everything they've got going on to go to the doctor, and maybe you reminding them to go get checked for cancer could possibly lead to an early diagnosis and an easier battle..."

While Swift's and her family's intentions may be for a good cause, it may not be for the best.

A study published in BMJ (formerly called British Medical Journal) has shown that fans follow the advice of their favorite celebrities when it comes to health. Katie Couric, Angelina Jolie, and Kylie Minogue, for instance, all adviced their fans to get screened at some point. While their advice usually work, studies have shown that it's not always for the best as their good intentions usually get lost in what professional health care givers describe as "overdiagnosis."

According to VOX, a researcher from Dartmouth's school of medicine, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, began looking into the effects of mass screening programs around the globe. While this is considered a precautionary procedure, his paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that it often subjects people into taking tests to find out whether they have possibly malignant lumps and bumps. Often, these people are healthy and in many cases, mass screening hasn't actually helped nor saved lives. In fact, mass screenings can also result to diagnoses of cancers that are not even fatal or harmful, and it takes perfectly healthy people into cancer patients unnecessarily, leading them to treatments, hospitalizations, and even support groups that they really wouldn't have needed in the first place.

While mass screening is not bad in its sense (colorectal cancer, for instance, can be treated with early detection from screening, as with cervical cancer with the Pap Test) but there is also greater evidence of over-diagnosis in breast and kidney cancers, as well as skin cancer (melanoma), Vox added.

Dr. Welch said in the paper, "An epidemic of real disease would be expected to produce a dramatic rise in the number of deaths from disease. Instead we see an epidemic of diagnosis, a dramatic rise in diagnosis and no change in death."

So what of Taylor's advice to her fans? In 2014, Dr. Welch explained that "there is a real difference between not ignoring something obvious and telling the population to try really hard to find something wrong."

For that, he said that in order to avoid being a victim of overdiagnosis, it is better that people talk to their doctors about their individual risks before they go ahead with Mass Screening. An excellent resource to read on is the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force as it examines evidence and makes recommendations about mass cancer screening programs.

While our sympathies go to Taylor and her Family, it is also good to be well-informed before taking unnecessary risks.