FDA ignored evidence that CT scans are killing 14,000 Americans a year from cancer

by David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) FDA administrators sought to brush aside evidence that CT scans may be killing thousands of patients a year, say agency scientists.

"I was first ignored, then pressured to change my scientific opinion, and when I refused to do that, I was intimidated and ultimately terminated," said gastroenterologist and former FDA consultant Julian Nicholas.

The controversy stems from a still-pending application by General Electric (GE) for the approval of CT (computed tomography) scans as tests for colon cancer. GE made the request because although the practice of screening healthy patients with CT scans has become increasingly common, many insurers remains reluctant to pay for it.

When the FDA moved to approve the request with minimum fuss, agency scientists objected that the increased cancer risk from the radiation involved in CT scans would outweigh any potential benefit.

Approval would "expose a number of Americans to a risk of radiation that is unwarranted and may lead to instances of solid organ abdominal cancer," Nicholas wrote in an email to the agency.

"The increased radiation exposure to the population could be substantial and would raise a serious public health/public policy issue," agreed FDA medical officer Robert Smith of Yale and Cornell Universities.

Yet these and other scientists say their concerns were dismissed by their supervisors. For example, minutes of one meeting record agency manager Joshua Nipper responding, "We don't need to be reinventing a big bugaboo about radiation."

The average U.S. resident is exposed to seven times more non-therapeutic radiation than in 1980. This has been driven in large part by the exploding popularity of CT scans, which expose patients to as much radiation as 400 chest X-rays.

The number of CT scans performed in the United States has increased from three million per year in 1980 to 70 million today. Scientists estimate that this extra radiation exposure kills 14,000 people a year.

Sources for this story include: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/29/h....

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NatMedTalk and Beyond

Dr Rosenfeld on FOX sunday morning was saying, unless really needed, stay away from cat scans. They supply a huge amount of radiation (like 200 chest x-rays worth)

Its more like 400 chest x-rays.

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Let Food Be Your Medicine And Medicine Be Your Food.(Hippocrates)

FDA and many physicians have been aware of this for many years. Children pay the highest price for CT scans, especially of the brain. Only recently have they started keeping serious track of how many kids get, and some chronically ill kids get quite a few.

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We had to stop the doctors from giving our daughter more CT's in ICU. She was in there due to a five hour cancer surgery and knew she did not need them. It made the doctors mad but after two weeks - the second surgeon came in on a Sunday saying he read the first CT and found why she was coughing up blood. Cut artery and cut in esophagus.

So are you saying that maybe if they read the first one correctly they wouldn't have had to do more?

I do feel for you grandma, and thanks for sharing. Why did she have a cut artery or cut in esophagus?

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- Jim
Life is just one damned thing after another - Elbert Hubbard

They went in to take out her thyroid and the surgeon afterwards came out to say he had to take her thyroid, parathyroid, limp nods and that he tried to get all he could see but it was like rebar attached to cement. He said he had to move things around to get the cancer including her esophagus and voice box. She is learning to talk again.

It really boiled down to allowing the immune system to repair and regenerate and that took them caring for her without giving her their stuff. (Can't seem to put it any other way)

They called in a second surgeon on a Sunday and he was the one that told us he saw it on the first CT. This was two weeks later. It was as though each separate doctor had to order their own. And I know the staff said the lung doctor was so wonderful but he would not talk to us until we withdrew any permission for him to do more invasive tests. She was on the vent. I went all the way to the top of administration to get things changed.

I know they thought she would not make it - one thing that kept coming up was her password when she registered before surgery. Everyone who called had to give a password and hers was Psalms 118:17 "I shall live and not die and declare the works of the Lord"

very interesting Kind2creatures, is it any wonder there are so many kids with cancer these days apart from all the other toxins that are injected into their small bodies.
ozzie