Wednesday, March 04, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) A new report released by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement reveals that Americans' exposure to radiation has increased more than 600 percent over the last three decades. Most of that increase has come from patients' exposure to radiation through medical imaging scans such as CT scans and mammograms.
Most patients have no awareness of the dangers of ionizing radiation due to medical imaging scans. Virtually no patients -- and few doctors -- realize that one CT scan exposes the body to the equivalent of several hundred X-rays (http://www.naturalnews.com/023582.html), for example. Most women undergoing mammograms have no idea that the radiation emitted by mammography machines actually causes cancer by exposing heart and breast tissue to dangerous ionizing radiation that directly causes DNA damage.
Even low doses of radiation can add up to significant increases in lifelong cancer risk. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2007) found that survivors of the 1945 atomic bombs unleashed on Japan during World War II still faced significant increases in lifetime cancer risk. And the levels of radiation to which these particular study subjects were exposed is equivalent to receiving only two or three CT scans, explains an ABC News story (http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=6996192&page=1).
Yes, it's true: A couple of CT scans can expose your body to as much radiation as standing a few miles from an atomic bomb explosion. This is a simple scientific fact.
Is modern medicine priming the population for a wave of future cancers?
Exposure to CT scans and mammograms today can lead to cancer much later in life. As ABC News reports, Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, says, "Radiation exposure from these scans is not inconsequential and can lead to later cancers."
Thanks to the widespread use of medical imaging scans, hospitals are also becoming a major source of nuclear waste material. See the NaturalNews report on that topic here: http://www.naturalnews.com/025711.html
This material can be seized by terrorists and used to make dirty bombs. Thus, hospitals are now a major source for potential tools for terrorists.
The bottom-line question in all this is simple: Are medical imaging devices causing more harm than good? And do mammograms actually create future cancer patients by causing cancer in the breast? In my view, the answers to both these questions are a resounding YES. Medical imaging does more than just detect cancer, it also causes cancer! And that's in the financial interests of the drug companies and cancer clinics that profit from treating cancer.
Here's what other doctors, authors and health experts have to say on the subject of CT scans, mammograms and radiation:
Authors' Quotes on Radiation and CT Scans
Below, you'll find selected quotes from noted authors on the subject of Radiation and Ct Scans. Feel free to quote these in your own work provided you give proper credit to both the original author quoted here and this NaturalNews page.
After four years of work, it became disturbingly clear to the research team that the main cause of the rising rates of leukemia was medical radiation, in the form of diagnostic medical x-rays. The use of radiation in cancer treatment employs high-intensity x-rays. Much higher doses are involved in cancer treatment than in diagnostic x-rays, because the purpose is to kill cells, or at least cripple their ability to reproduce. While a typical diagnostic X-ray might deliver one or two rads (radiation absorbed doses) of radiation, a six-week course of radiotherapy delivers about 5,000 rads.
- Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the True Source of Healing by John Robbins
- Available on Amazon.com
Do you know, however, that one whole body scan may be equivalent to the radiation received during 500 chest x-rays? Any amount of radiation exposure damages cellular DNA, thereby increasing the risk of cancer and premature aging. Companies promoting these ct scans don't mention the radiation, but members of the Life Extension Foundation were told to avoid these body scans because of the health risks posed by this excess amount of radiation.
- Disease Prevention and Treatment by The Life Extension Editorial Staff
- Available on Amazon.com
It is foolish to believe every person entering the cancer era of their lives, from age 50 on, should continually be subjected to screening radiation (X-rays, mammograms, CT scans) and invasive needle biopsies, in a futile attempt to detect cancer at its earliest stage. Paradoxically, all these screening methods only serve to increase the risk for cancer. Among women with detected breast cancer, 88% have not spread and 12% are invasive tumors.
- You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi
- Available on Amazon.com
After searching for possible causes, he came to the conclusion that work-related radiation had done the damage. We both have had patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma who received radiation in the chest and then developed coronary disease. In cardiology, we call that radiation atherosclerosis. We believe x-rays damage endothelial cells. A prime example was a patient with multiple risk factors for CVD, including diabetes and high blood pressure. In 1995, prior to beginning New Cardiology therapy, he was treated with radiation for a neck tumor.
- Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late by Stephen Sinatra, M.D. and James C., M.D. Roberts
- Available on Amazon.com
X-ray radiation from medical imaging and ct scans are also believed to increase the risk for cancer. A report issued by the Food & Drug Administration now suggests the risk for cancer from medical x-rays may be as much as 1 in 1,000. There are over 3 billion x-ray images taken annually in the world.
- You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi
- Available on Amazon.com
The minimum radiation from a routine chest X-ray is 2 mrem. X-ray radiation accumulates in the body and it is well-known that ionizing radiation used in X-ray procedures causes gene mutation. We can only obtain guesstimates as to its impact on health from this high level of radiation. Experts manage to obscure the real effects in statistical jargon such as, "The risk for lifetime fatal cancer due to radiation exposure is estimated to be 4 in one million per 1,000 mrem."
- Death by Medicine by Gary Null PhD, Carolyn Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD, Dorothy Smith PhD.
- Available on Amazon.com
Should these patients be exposed to repeated radiation mammography? [Clinical Oncology Royal College Radiology 18: 257-67, 2006] Even exposure to chest x-rays, particularly before the age of 20, heightens the risk for breast cancer with BRCA mutations. [Journal Clinical Oncology 24:3361-6, 2006]
Quietly, the radiation emitted during mammography was reduced as digital films were introduced. How many women have now developed breast cancer from these early screenings is unknown. Virtually every woman exposed to high-dose radiation mammography should have been placed on antioxidant therapy.
- You Don't Have to be Afraid of Cancer Anymore by Bill Sardi
- Available on Amazon.com
We are all exposed to radiation in the form of medical x-rays. Cardiologists, for instance, are exposed to a considerable amount of radiation because of the nature of this work. We do fluoroscopy all the time, putting in pacemakers and cardiac catheterizations. Fluoroscopy uses x-rays to view parts of the body on a screen, similar to the screening your luggage undergoes when you pass through airport security.
- Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late by Stephen Sinatra, M.D. and James C., M.D. Roberts
- Available on Amazon.com
British physician Alice Stewart has spent much of her life investigating the connection between low-level radiation and higher cancer risks. Most doctors have stopped using fetal x-rays since Stewart's work showed that a significant increase in leukemia was found in the children of mothers who had prenatal x-rays taken. She has said she believes that the effects of background radiation coupled with exposure to x-rays may cause most childhood cancers.
- Empty Harvest by Dr Bernard Jenson and Mark Anderson
- Available on Amazon.com
Another treatment, radiation, can trigger neurological symptoms, limiting the amount that can be used to treat cancer. The response of normal brain tissue to radiation often does not appear for weeks or months. So when someone with cancer receives radiation, it can be difficult to tell whether the appearance of neurological symptoms some months later stems from the cancer or from the radiation.
- Keep Your Brain Young: The Complete Guide to Physical and Emotional Health and Longevity by Guy McKhann, and Marilyn Albert
- Available on Amazon.com
And a Wise Woman anti-cancer lifestyle offers many ways to stay cancer-free and prevent recurrence should you decide against adjuvant radiation. If you do choose radiation, it will most likely be a six-week course of therapy, and it can only be done once. (It is considered unsafe to use radiation therapy on the same breast twice). Radiation therapy can cause DNA damage, skin injuries (burns, discoloration, and permanent texture changes), nausea, appetite loss, hair loss, exhaustion, chest pain, pneumonia, and permanent damage to the lungs, heart, and ribs (known as late-stage injuries).
- Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way by Susun S. Weed
- Available on Amazon.com
X-rays are another type of radiation. This is the most common type of human poisoning. Most individuals are poisoned as a result of medical x-rays, which, when performed repeatedly, result in significant tissue damage. X-ray technicians, radiologists, orthopedists, chiropractors, chiropractic assistants, cardiologists, dentists, and dental assistants are highly vulnerable to developing radiation poisoning. High tension power lines are another type of poisoning. In this case the individual is being poisoned by electromagnetic radiation. Radiation may also emanate from broadcasting centers.
- Dr. Cass Ingram's Lifesaving Cures by Dr. Cass Ingram
- Available on Amazon.com
History has many examples of how radiation use is strongly linked to an increase in cancer rates. Atomic bomb survivors in Japan have increased rates of leukemia and cancers of the breast, thyroid, lung, stomach and other organs, illustrating another example of how radiation causes cancer. In general, the breast, thyroid and bone marrow are most sensitive to the effects of ionizing radiation. Avoiding unnecessary medical x-rays is one of the best ways to reduce exposure to ionizing radiation.
- Probiotic Rescue: How You can use Probiotics to Fight Cholesterol, Cancer, Superbugs, Digestive Complaints and More by Allison Tannis
- Available on Amazon.com
Bross's work in a special article titled "Low-Level Radiation: Just How Bad Is It?" The report concluded that it was difficult to accurately assess the hazards posed by the radiation used in x-rays and cancer therapy because of the political nature of the radiation issue. It was hard to get clarity about the dangers, Science noted, because the matter fell within "the domain of the atomic energy establishment." It is perhaps only from within the nuclear establishment itself that the true dangers of medical radiation can ever be told.
- Reclaiming Our Health: Exploding the Medical Myth and Embracing the True Source of Healing by John Robbins
- Available on Amazon.com
Damage from radiation exposure accumulates over your lifetime:
• Atomic bomb survivor (35 rads at epicenter): increase up to + 35
• Mammogram (0.5-1 rad): increase + 1 per exposure of each breast. One mammogram can double a 35-year-old woman's breast cancer risk.
• Diagnostic x-rays for scoliosis (1.5-3 rads): increase +3 per exposure
• Fluoroscopy (7.5 rads each): increase +5 for each
• Radiation treatment (8,000 rads): increase +10 each
The younger you are when your breasts are exposed to radiation, the greater your risk.
- Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way by Susun S. Weed
- Available on Amazon.com
Exposure to electromagnetic energy from electric and electronic equipment has become a factor in modern life. Radiation protection is offered by amino acids cysteine and glutathione; Vitamins A, C, and E; minerals Selenium and Zinc. Russian clinical study reveals some benefit from Ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus (ES)). RADIATION SICKNESS. Caused by overexposure to radiation such as x-rays, television screens and to an atmosphere polluted by such disasters as Chernobyl.
- Bartram's Encyclopedia of Herbal Medicine: The Definitive Guide by Thomas Bartram
- Available on Amazon.com
It is claimed that the irradiated foods do not themselves become radioactive and thus are not introducing radiation to the consumer. The concern with food irradiation is that it may produce by-products that are carcinogenic and increase the incidence of leukemia and other types of cancer or disease of the liver and kidneys. These health problems may not become evident for 20 to 30 years. Most of us are very skeptical about radiation in general, whether it be x-rays or even microwaves, let alone gamma radiation of our food.
- Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional Medicine by Elson M. Haas, M.D.
- Available on Amazon.com
If this process was safe and effective for someone who was in remission, then why didn't they give radiation to everyone, just to make sure cancer never attacked them? Why didn't the doctors, their wives, and their children take radiation as a preventive measure? I pictured a radiation drive-thru like a fast-food window. They literally fried my mother's chest with what I would later discover was an enormous amount of radiation therapy. When I saw the radiation burns on my mother's chest, I wondered if no treatment at all would have been a better bet.
- The Cure: Heal Your Body, Save Your Life by Timothy Brantley
- Available on Amazon.com
This "background" radiation is a small amount. Medical x-rays used at the dentist to see teeth root health, x-rays used by physicians to investigate bone health and mammograms of the breast subject the body to radiation. Uranium miners and those living in areas close to nuclear weapons tests are exposed to higher levels of radiation. Ironically, some cancer treatments include radiation therapy to help kill cancer cells. Yet the radiation itself increases the risk of cancer. Historically, radiation was used to monitor patients with tuberculosis.
- Probiotic Rescue: How You can use Probiotics to Fight Cholesterol, Cancer, Superbugs, Digestive Complaints and More by Allison Tannis
- Available on Amazon.com
Low-radiation mammograms are safer mammograms, but less radiation means a fuzzier picture. Standard x-rays -- rarely used any more for breasts-create an easy-to-interpret high-radiation image. Xerograms use half that radiation, but are twice as hard to read. Film-screen mammography, the latest very-low-radiation exam, gives an image that's even more difficult to interpret. More than 10 percent of all screening mammograms done at one large center in 1992 couldn't be read and had to be redone.
A 1994 study showed wide variation in the accuracy with which mammograms are interpreted.
- Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way by Susun S. Weed
- Available on Amazon.com
The higher frequency radiations, from x-rays to nuclear radiation, are clearly dangerous. Electromagnetic radiation can be divided into two categories. The first is ionizing radiation and includes x-rays, gamma rays, and nuclear radiation. Exposing our body to these highly reactive ions at certain levels can dramatically affect our atomic structure. Ionizing radiation can actually rip electrons from atoms and molecules and directly affect cell division and cell structure.
- Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional Medicine by Elson M. Haas, M.D.
- Available on Amazon.com
Screening mammograms are unsafe other ways, too: they expose sensitive breast tissues to radiation, and they increase your chances of having a biopsy and being overtreated for carcinoma in situ. Scientists agree that there is no safe dose of radiation. Cellular DNA in the breast is more easily damaged by very small doses of radiation than thyroid tissue or bone marrow; in fact, breast cells are second only to fetal tissues in sensitivity to radiation. And the younger the breast cells, the more easily their DNA is damaged by radiation.
- Breast Cancer? Breast Health! The Wise Woman Way by Susun S. Weed
- Available on Amazon.com
Radiation causes many undesirable internal reactions, especially in the most prolific tissues, such as the gastrointestinal tract and skin. Radiation therapy may affect the appetite, tastes, and the ability to eat. Radiation is cumulative, and many things may add to it, from color TV and microwaves to x-rays and fallout exposure. We need a good protective program! When living in areas with high background radiation, it is wise to take higher amounts of antioxidants regularly.
- Staying Healthy with Nutrition: The Complete Guide to Diet and Nutritional Medicine by Elson M. Haas, M.D.
- Available on Amazon.com
In the radiation oncology departments, cancer patients routinely undergo therapy with high intensity x-rays, particle beams, and other types of radiation. Although radiation therapy has been successful in treating certain types of cancers, there are many cancers that are not cured either by radiation or by a combination of radiation and other orthodox medical and surgical modalities. Doctors may have once had the key to curing cancer with energy. But something happened to that priceless knowledge.
- Vibrational Medicine: The #1 Handbook of Subtle-Energy Therapies by Richard Gerber, M.D.
- Available on Amazon.com
Radiation sickness can take many forms, including the exacerbation of existing disease states, and also differs in intensity depending on the degree of exposure to low or high levels of radiation. It is important to recognize that it is not just atomic explosions that create radiation hazards. Diagnostic x-rays, TV screens, and other apparently noninvasive sources need to be considered. It is beyond the scope of this book to explore the complexity of radiation sickness or the range of treatments available to treat the condition.
- Health from the Seas: Freedom from Disease by John Croft
- Available on Amazon.com
It is now known that radiation causes mutation of the important p53 suppressor gene. For this reason, I do not recommend postlumpectomy radiation. Even though it may decrease the risk of a local recurrence of cancer, it does not help to inhibit metastatic cancer. Recent findings show that women receiving mammograms should be cautious of overexposure to radiation emitted by equipment that is not professionally and regularly monitored. Such equipment can deliver doses of radiation far above what are assumed today to be safe levels.
- Herbal Medicine, Healing and Cancer: A Comprehensive Program for Prevention and Treatment by Donald R. Yance, j r.,C.N., M.H., A.H.G., with Arlene Valentine - Available on Amazon.com
Sources for this story include:
• Americans' Radiation Exposure Rises 6-Fold in 29 Years
- ABC News
• Overexposed: Imaging tests boost U.S. radiation dose
- Reuters
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a mission to teach personal and planetary health to the public He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a manufacturer of mercury-free, energy-efficient LED lighting products that save electricity and help prevent global warming. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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