From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 17 2002 - 21:06:48 MST
Michael,
You should worry seriously about radiation dosage. Many of these
devices are really not meant for diagnosing asymptomatic people. You
might be putting yourself in for unhealthy doses of radition just to
satisfy your curiosity. Is the benefit worth the risk? Has anyone done
studies? (The Life Extension Institute published an article on this
recently, which might be worth reading.)
I also wonder about the skill of the people operating some of the
increasingly popular whole body scans. I'm not sure if the technician
operating one has the same level of skill and exercizes the same level
of caution as, say, someone working in a large hospital in the context
of working on people who are symptomatic and have known medical issues.
(Granted, if these were low risk and low cost, I would not mind having
them done. I wonder about ultrasound in this area. You might not be
able to spot the same things as other types of scan, but it seems less
risky. If the risk is only 1% of other scans and the benefit is only
10% as much as ditto, that would still be 10 times more benefit over
risk.)
Relurking!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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