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We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

nytimes.com

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Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#31

Post by cloverich »

pessimism wrote: post #22

Any people here who go to the dentist? Specifically, the American Dental Association's guidelines for heathy persons suggest that * children receive 1 x-ray every 1-2 years, * teens every 1.5-3 years, * and adults every 2-3 years. ~ http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/243952.php I was personally very surprised and alarmed by this.

Typical dental x-ray's expose you to drastically less radiation than a CT. Wikipedia:

> The dosage of X-ray radiation received by a dental patient is typically small (around 0.150 mSv for a full mouth series, according to the American Dental Association website), equivalent to a few days' worth of background environmental radiation exposure, or similar to the dose received during a cross-country airplane flight (concentrated into one short burst aimed at a small area)

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#32

Post by ChuckMcM »

petersellers wrote: post #6

The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat: "Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States." This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that death…

Because it wants to scare you, not reassure you. If it had started, "We've been so successful in tracking down and treating the things that lead to heart disease, it may soon drop to second place leaving Cancer as the #1 cause of death." Then you would be all happy that you weren't going to die of a heart attack and realize that your risk of dying from cancer hadn't changed (actually its been going down as the cohort of major smokers leave the population). But who wants to feel good about this stuff really? :-)

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#33

Post by mscarborough »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #32
petersellers wrote: post #6

The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat: "Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States." This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that death…

Because it wants to scare you, not reassure you. If it had started, "We've been so successful in tracking down and treating the things that lead to heart disease, it may soon drop to second place leaving Cancer as the #1 cause of death." Then you would be all happy that you weren't going to die of a heart attack and realize that your risk of dying from cancer hadn't changed (actually its been going down as the cohort…

Let's not get ahead of ourselves, we haven't conquered heart disease. It's not scare tactics, it's fact.

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#34

Post by Someone »

cesarbs wrote: post #28

What about MRIs? Don't they offer the same benefits of CT scans but without all the radiation?

No. They have different strengste and weaknesses. Roughly, CT is for bones and rough details of soft tissues, MRI for detailed views on soft tissue in patients without metal implants. More nuanced views at http://www.ct-scan-info.com/mrivsctscan.html, http://www.diffen.com/difference/CT_Scan_vs_MRI or http://blog.radiology.ucsf.edu/neuroradiology/exploring-the-...

For the discussion at hand, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging#MRI_... has some discussion.

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#35

Post by yeukhon »

Let's simplify this. Industrial waste is everywhere. Old buildings are built with cancerous materials and we are expose to all kinds of radiations and air pollutions. We eat junk food, we don't exercise much. Kids are playing with toys painted with lethal chemical substances. Second-hand smoking is always present. We eat overfried food and we also sleep late.

So the story is clear and doesn't require some heavy scientific investigation. We are risking.

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#36

Post by dvanduzer »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #32
petersellers wrote: post #6

The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat: "Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States." This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that death…

Because it wants to scare you, not reassure you. If it had started, "We've been so successful in tracking down and treating the things that lead to heart disease, it may soon drop to second place leaving Cancer as the #1 cause of death." Then you would be all happy that you weren't going to die of a heart attack and realize that your risk of dying from cancer hadn't changed (actually its been going down as the cohort…

There's plenty of cognitive dissonance now that the stuff that kills us anymore is the stuff we understand the least. Actuarial tables aren't something we can reason about intuitively.

I was shocked to learn that an nMRI (where the nuclear "n" is usually silent) doesn't involve radioactivity. Such careful PR to avoid confusion about electromagnetic radiation, and it didn't even work?

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#37

Post by DenisM »

petersellers wrote: post #6

The article's first sentence annoys me right off the bat: "Despite great strides in prevention and treatment, cancer rates remain stubbornly high and may soon surpass heart disease as the leading cause of death in the United States." This seems to be implying that cancer death rates are growing and will soon "surpass" those of heart disease. While the article is technically correct, this is due to the fact that death…

The article is generally short on specifics, both numbers and citations. I wrote a letter to the editor about that and I encourage you to do likewise.

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#38

Post by judk »

yeukhon wrote: post #35

Let's simplify this. Industrial waste is everywhere. Old buildings are built with cancerous materials and we are expose to all kinds of radiations and air pollutions. We eat junk food, we don't exercise much. Kids are playing with toys painted with lethal chemical substances. Second-hand smoking is always present. We eat overfried food and we also sleep late. So the story is clear and doesn't require some heavy scien…

Sleeping late caused cancer now???

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#39

Post by [deleted] »

cloverich wrote: post #31
pessimism wrote: post #22

Any people here who go to the dentist? Specifically, the American Dental Association's guidelines for heathy persons suggest that * children receive 1 x-ray every 1-2 years, * teens every 1.5-3 years, * and adults every 2-3 years. ~ http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/243952.php I was personally very surprised and alarmed by this.

Typical dental x-ray's expose you to drastically less radiation than a CT. Wikipedia: > The dosage of X-ray radiation received by a dental patient is typically small (around 0.150 mSv for a full mouth series , according to the American Dental Association website), equivalent to a few days' worth of background environmental radiation exposure, or similar to the dose received during a cross-country airplane flight (con…

[deleted]

Re: We Are Giving Ourselves Cancer

#40

Post by johnjm »

redschell wrote: post #18
DenisM wrote: post #3

>A single CT scan exposes a patient to the amount of radiation that epidemiologic evidence shows can be cancer-causing That does not look right to me. A single CT scan is 2-7 millisieverts, and exposures under 13 can not be linked to health effects - look for UNSCEAR in http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert If you do the math by ICRP formulae, you end up with increase chance of cancer of 1 in 2600 over the next 20 y…

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine seems to have your back: http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2012/01/17/phsycists-... A full-body CT scan results in 12 mSv; a mammogram 0.13 mSv—a hundred times less. The risks from these procedures, according to AAPM, are too low to have been determined reliably, and may be "nonexistent." Looks like this debate has been going on for a while now.

Here[1] is a very recent study from Austrialia which concludes CT scans during childhood and adolescent increase the risk of cancer and should be avoided where possible.

[1] http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2360

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