CT Scans: Could Be Causing Increase in Cancer

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/06/ct-scans-increase-childrens-cancer-risk-study-finds/?ref=health

If I wasn't going into acting, I would probably contemplate the idea of becoming a doctor instead. Medicine has fascinated me and has made me wonder how it works in the body as well as it does. Or doesn't. Some things our bodies can handle, such as sun radiation every once in while (with sunscreen of course.) But according to a new study conducted by the scientists of The Lancet, a British practice, reported that CT scans can increase a child's risk of being diagnosed with leukemia and cancer later in life. "180,000 children who had scans from 1985 to 2002 in Britain. There were 74 cases of leukemia and 135 cases of brain cancer in the group." There may be some confounding factors in this study but the results are alarming enough that people may have to ask whether its genetics or some form of gamma radiation that caused this. "Children under 15 who had two or three scans of the head had triple the risk of brain cancer compared with the general population, the researchers found, and 5 to 10 scans tripled the risk of leukemia. But the baseline risk is extremely low — 4.5 cases of leukemia per 100,000 people under 20, and 3.5 cases of cancer of the brain or central nervous system." says Denise Grady, the author of this article. She's right, in which the chance is small. But several doctors have been trying to figure out the causes of cancer and leukemia and have linked it back to these types of machines which give off these harmful rays. Scientists are trying to make advancements towards protecting young children and their vulnerable skin from any type of cancer or leukemia. They are trying to lower the power of the rays by finding chemicals that will be less damaging, than so those chemicals that have been linked to types of cancers.
Personally, I know I would like to see them make this advancement because it is important that we find a way to not make cancer as prevalent in society. Even though heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in America, cancer is right up there with it. Potentially, there are effects of cancer that we do not have control over such as our genes. But we do have control over the amount of rays that are being produced by a CT scan machine. These children deserve to be able to live a life where they don't have to worry about dying before their parents do. This article emphasizes the importance of keeping a child healthy and cancer free under controllable circumstances. "A major study warning of CT risks to children, based on the Japanese exposure, was published in 2001; it predicted that of the 600,000 children under 15 who were having head and abdominal scans in the United States each year, 500 might ultimately die of cancer caused by the CT radiation." writes Grady. We've come a long way since 2001, and Grady does a good job of acknowledging that fact. We still must protect the future generations from any harm. Any way we can stop cancer is a means of moving in the right direction.