Lethal Danger of CT Scans

By William Faloon

We tried everything… from pleading with arrogant physicians to providing irrefutable documentation to support our position. The response was always the same: we were “out of our minds” for suggesting that medical X-rays increase future cancer risks.

Our opposition could never substantiate that exposing healthy cells to ionizing radiation was safe. They did at one point rely on the Atomic Energy Commission, who claimed there were no dangers to low-level radiation exposure.

The Atomic Energy Commission was created to “manage the development, use, and control of atomic (nuclear) energy for military and civilian applications.” Like so many federal agencies, the priority was not to protect the public’s health. Instead this tax-funded bureaucracy (like the FDA) functioned to guarantee the economic success of the industries it regulated.1

By ridiculing those who warned about the carcinogenic effects of X-rays, the federal government and medical establishment enabled companies making CT scanners (and other radiation devices) to earn tens of billions of dollars in profit, with Medicare and private health insurance picking up most of the costs.
Radiation Overload

Compared to regular medical X-rays, CT scans yield much higher-resolution images. Unfortunately, CT scans also expose the patient to hundreds and sometimes thousands of times more radiation.2-4

The routine use of CT scans and other dangerous X-ray imaging procedures has skyrocketed over the past three decades. In 1980, there were 3 million CT scans done. By the year 2007, the number increased to about 70 million.5,6

We at Life Extension® long ago warned members to avoid CT scans and any kind of X-ray unless absolutely necessary. Up against us was an armada of for-profit companies who promoted CT scans to healthy people to measure coronary artery calcification, virtual colonoscopy in place of the more effective standard colonoscopy (flexible tube procedures), and even whole-body CT scans to identify abnormalities anywhere in one’s anatomy.

The irony is that health-conscious people, who often paid for whole-body CT scans out of their own pockets, unwittingly exposed their whole body to huge levels of DNA gene-mutating radiation!

Read More here:

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2010/aug2010_Lethal-Danger-of-CT-Scans_01.htm