Point/Counterpoint: Backscatter x-ray machines at airports are safe

Great discussion on the relative risks associated with airport backscatter x-ray scanners. Without an adequate radiobiology risk assessment model to supersede the linear non-threshold model, it seems there is perhaps not a cut-and-dry interpretation of the data.

newyorker:

Radium and Lab Cats: Cancer’s History

In “The T-Cell Army,” [sub. req.] Jerome Groopman writes about new approaches to curing cancer that involve activating the body’s own immune responses to fight tumors. Recently, researchers have found that the body’s white blood cells can be stimulated to shrink tumors, leading to startling remissions in some patients. For over a hundred years, doctors have relied on chemotherapy and radiation as the only effective ways of treating the disease.

- Click through for the story behind the above images, and for more images of the methods and people from the last century of fighting cancer: http://nyr.kr/ITWoK6



AAPM Public & Media - AAPM Position Statement on Radiation Risks from Medical Imaging Procedures

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) acknowledges that medical imaging procedures should be appropriate and conducted at the lowest radiation dose consistent with acquisition of the desired information. Discussion of risks related to radiation dose from medical imaging procedures should be accompanied by acknowledgement of the benefits of the procedures. Risks of medical imaging at patient doses below 50 mSv for single procedures or 100 mSv for multiple procedures over short time periods are too low to be detectable and may be nonexistent. Predictions of hypothetical cancer incidence and deaths in patient populations exposed to such low doses are highly speculative and should be discouraged. These predictions are harmful because they lead to sensationalistic articles in the public media that cause some patients and parents to refuse medical imaging procedures, placing them at substantial risk by not receiving the clinical benefits of the prescribed procedures.

AAPM members continually strive to improve medical imaging by lowering radiation levels and maximizing benefits of imaging procedures involving ionizing radiation.