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Dear readers, the headline may seem alarmist, so let’s work though the claims and counter claims:Full body scanning involves radiation. The medical profession has been pretty remiss about pointing out the dangers of radiation, even though radiation can cause cancer. That’s probably because a quite a few diagnostic tests involve the use of radiation, and they are too often cavalier about it (has any doctor about to give you an X-ray bothered asking how many you’ve had over your lifetime?) Yes, we’ve had some exceptions, like doctors arguing against the recent fad of annual full body CT scans because the dose is equal to that of several years of background radiation, but that posture is comparatively rare (one of my pet beefs has long been the until recent recommendation to get annual mammograms starting at age 40. Mammograms are a terrible test, with a high level of false positives and false negatives; a manual exam by an experienced practitioner has a much higher success rate of catching the fast-growing, dangerous cancers, but doesn’t fit the modern idea of what a test should look like. Oh, and all those radiologists have an installed base of equipment they need to pay off. Think that might have an effect on their view of the situation?)...
