Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer.
Almost 230,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed this year in the United States, and about 40,000 women will die of the disease, roughly one out of every 3,875 women.
The new Institute of Medicine report probably doesnt sit well with the industry, hospitals and clinics that make so many millions of dollars selling and over-using CT machines. The authors suggest that women avoid unnecessary or inappropriate medical radiation, a thinly veiled criticism of the industry that will give you a CT scan for a tooth ache if you dont object to it.
In reliable published reports in 1980, there were "three million" CT scans performed in this country. The number rose to "62 million" in 2006, "70 million" by 2007 and to "72 million" this year. Its a growth industry that doesnt care if it promotes tumor growth.
The IOM committee made several suggestions for preventive actions that women can take, and the very first one is to avoid inappropriate medical radiation exposure. In the Question & Answer section of the IOM analysis online, the authors recommend Avoiding medical radiation and hormone therapy, unless they are medically necessary, is a good idea.
This suggestion has a vexing corollary since so-called mammography is just a lower dose of X-radiation given directly to breast tissue. Yet the new IOM studys authors say in a footnote, While recognizing the risks of ionizing radiation exposure, particularly for certain higher-dose methods (such as CT scans), it is not the committees intent to dissuade women from routine mammography screening. Yet the advisability of mammography has been under attack ever since the British medical journal The Lancet in October 2006 reported on a study by Dr. Peter Gotzsche that found the produced no health benefits. The late Dr. John Gofman argued for his entire career that X-rays caused more breast cancer then they detect, a position defended at length by Dr. Samuel Epstein in his book The Politics of Cancer.
CT Scans may cause 29,000 cancers and 15,000 cancer deaths every year
NBC News said in 2009 that each whole-body CT scan can deliver as much radiation in 10 minutes as 440 chest X-rays.
The IOMs authoritative warning against CT scans has to be considered in view of a 2009 study led by the National Cancer Institute which showed that CT scans administered in the year 2007 alone may have contributed to 29,000 new cancer cases and nearly 15,000 cancer deaths in the United States. NBC News noted the report in its Dec. 14, 2009 broadcast under the headline, 15,000 will die from CT scans done in 1 year.
Dr. Rita Redberg, MD, MSc, professor of medicine of the University of California-San Francisco, told NBC, Were getting a lot of radiation from CT scans, theres a lot of variability in the radiation that were getting from different types of CT scans, and there are a lot of excess cancers.
In view of the license to kill that CT scanners seem to have been given, patients considering medical radiation have to ask themselves Dirty Harrys famous question, Do I feel lucky?
Commentary by John LaForge, a member of Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, and edits its Quarterly newsletter.
Comments