HOW TO LIE WITH MEDICINE
MARIANGELA PEDRO
to G.J.
PART ONE - being misleading about how the radiation "therapy" (therapy is really funny here) affects your body.
In a site (see below) quite impressive for its tone of science and willingness to inform, the text below says radiation "affects cancer cells only in the treated area" (also in red in the text).
An average person is bound to interpret that the treatment is only confined to that area, and no other part of his-her body will be affected.
Did you also understand the sentence like that?
Sorry for being about to disappoint you.
Indeed, my experience confirms that, besides reading very poorly, almost everyone only reads the beginning of any given piece of reading. My priest was also pretty sure his flock would listen to just the first minutes of his sermon - at best. Thereafter, he would shoot whatever he pleased (also aware that I was the only one to listen to him...)
In the text about radiation therapy here considered, the following paragraphs say that the patient being treated with radiation can only have visitors for a short time (internal radiation). And that the patient only leaves hospital once the level of radiation had lowered to a safe one. So, if radiation were confined to the part of the patient's body - and to only the 'sick' (cancer) cells -, how would it be dangerous to other healthy people?
But this is not everything. There's more that you also overlooked. That very sentence in the beginning of the text says radiation "affects cancer cells only in the treated area". Ambiguous, it may mean, in addition, that, if you have cancer elsewhere, only the cancer cells in one specific area (the one "being treated" according to the doctors) will be the target of radiation, thus implying you may need several "treatments" if you cancer is spread. Of course, this is a lie. Radiation is not "isolated", channelled to whatever group of cells.
A student of chemistry that I just met, as he was using the computer next to me, was inquired by me (what luck is mine he studies chemistry!) about the text and explained that certain organs may absorb radiation differently. But said that such sentence (the one I commented preaviously) is "strange" and agreed to my point.
The external radiation (the patient goes to the hospital for the sessions but leaves at the end of each one, and the source of radiation is not inside his body, but outside) allows, says the text, the patient to remain in contact with the world during and after the sessions (so the radiation is much weaker.) But the text does not make it plain that, since the internal radiation (source of radiation is inside the body, close to the sick organ) is really not "local" treatment ("local" sounds pretty 'innocent'), much less so is that external radiation, where the source of radiation is outside the body.
Here is the text from:
http://www.medicinenet.com/radiation_therapy/article.htm
In radiation therapy (also called radiotherapy), high-energy rays are used to damage cancer cells and stop them from growing and dividing. A specialist in radiation therapy is called a radiation oncologist.
What are the types of radiation therapy?
Like surgery, radiation therapy is a local treatment; it affects cancer cells only in the treated area. Radiation can come from a machine (external radiation). It can also come from an implant (a small container of radioactive material) placed directly into or near the tumor (internal radiation). Some patients receive both kinds of radiation therapy.
Like surgery, radiation therapy is a local treatment; it affects cancer cells only in the treated area. Radiation can come from a machine (external radiation). It can also come from an implant (a small container of radioactive material) placed directly into or near the tumor (internal radiation). Some patients receive both kinds of radiation therapy.
External radiation therapy is usually given on an outpatient basis in a hospital or clinic 5 days a week for a number of weeks. Patients are not radioactive during or after the treatment.
For internal radiation therapy, the patient stays in the hospital for a few days. The implant may be temporary or permanent. Because the level of radiation is highest during the hospital stay, patients may not be able to have visitors or may have visitors only for a short time. Once an implant is removed, there is no radioactivity in the body. The amount of radiation in a permanent implant goes down to a safe level before the patient leaves the hospital.
