People today receive far more medical radiation than ever before. The average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation has increased sevenfold since 1980, and more than half of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy.
Often, patients know little about the harm that can result when safety rules are violated and ever more powerful and technologically complex machines go awry. The complexity of medical radiation technology has created new avenues for error—through software flaws, faulty programming, poor safety procedures or inadequate staffing and training.
When those errors occur, they can be deadly.
Regulators and researchers can only guess how often radiotherapy accidents occur. Accidents are chronically underreported, and some states do not require that they be reported at all.
Last year a Philadelphia hospital gave the wrong radiation dose to more than 90 patients with prostate cancer—and then kept quiet about it. In 2005, a Florida hospital disclosed that 77 brain cancer patients had received 50 percent more radiation than prescribed because a powerful linear accelerator had been programmed incorrectly for nearly a year.
When the treatment is worse than the disease, it’s time to find another treatment.
If you haven’t read the entire NY Times article, I would encourage you to do so as they provide graphic details of the complications that have occurred during these types of x-ray “accidents.”
As the article makes clear, anyone receiving x-rays for treatment of cancer is particularly prone to these fatal mistakes, since the doses involved are massive.
If you or someone you know is receiving this type of therapy, you need to print the NY Times article out and bring it to your doctor and DEMAND that they explain in CAREFUL detail how they are going to prevent this from happening to you.
Is Non-Accidental X-Ray Treatment Safe?
Setting aside the problem of medical errors for a moment, even x-rays that are used “as directed” can expose you to significant risk.
A host of epidemiological studies have strongly suggested that x-rays and other ionizing radiation are a cause of most types of human cancer. X-rays may even be responsible for most of the deaths from cancer and ischemic heart disease, according to John Gofman, MD, PhD, a professor at U. C. Berkeley and one of the leading experts in the world. Gofman is a nuclear physicist and a medical doctor who wrote a book on the subject.
Ionizing radiation is a uniquely potent mutagen due to its ability to wreak havoc upon your cells and their genetic code. Your cells are unable to repair the very complex genetic damage done by x-rays. Some of the mutated cells die, but others do not, and the cells that go on living have a proliferative advantage—giving rise to the most aggressive cancers.
Unlike some other mutagens, x-rays have access to the genetic molecules of every one of your internal organs, if the organ is within range of the x-ray beam. Even a single high-speed, high-energy electron, set into motion by an x-ray photon, can bounce around and cause you irreparable damage.
| THAT IS WHY THERE IS NO SAFE DOSE OF X-RAYS |
X-rays are 2 to 4 times more mutagenic than high-energy beta and gamma rays, per rad (R) of exposure. Fluoroscopy is particularly damaging because the x-ray beam stays “on” during the procedure.
| DBM COMMENTRead as much as you can on radiation treatments BEFORE deciding what you think is best for you. We hope this information will offer some additional, alternative insight. READ ON – THEN DECIDE… |
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