Ask Lemmy

While not exactly misinformation, your comment is presented in the same way as most fearmongering headlines.

Ionizing radiation causes cancer, It Is Known; it's why there's a limit on how many xray scans you can get in a year, and why they don't give out a lot of types of scans without there being a clear benefit over the risk, which is what all of medicine is doing, because there's always risk.

The way the comment is written is something that will stick in someone's head as "CT scans are dangerous, I shouldn't get one" which is where you cross into the territory of people downvoting.

this is a dangerous and misinformation comment,

You skipped this part:

Echoing a statement from the American College of Radiology after the study's release, she stressed that the study's projection of cancer diagnoses from CT scans was based on statistical modeling, not actual patient outcomes.

There are no published studies directly linking CT scans to cancer, the statement says. "Americans should not forgo necessary, life-saving medical imaging and continue to discuss the benefits and risks of these exams with their healthcare providers," it continues.

You can tell whatever story you want from statistics, it could be that people that get CT scans have a higher chance of getting a cancer diagnosis because they are getting medical care and others just go undiagnosed.

The point isn't that CT scans cause cancer, that was always a risk with any ionizing radiation. The point is that radiation exposure from CT scans varies wildly based on the operator and you should do what you can to reduce your exposure, but don't skip a CT because of a scary headline.

Echoing a statement from the American College of Radiology after the study's release, she stressed that the study's projection of cancer diagnoses from CT scans was based on statistical modeling, not actual patient outcomes.

There are no published studies directly linking CT scans to cancer, the statement says. [emphasis mine]

Without hard data to back it up, this study is fairly meaningless.

Time for some pretty easy math; if 93,000,000 scans cause 103,000 cancer diagnoses, what percentage of scans cause cancer?

Its 0.11%. Each scan has a 0.11% chance of causing cancer. Thats slighty more than a 1 in 1000 chance for each scan.

Now, 93000000 and 103000 look like large scary numbers but when you're comparing populations every number is likely to be large and scary. The absolute magnitude is meaningless; the important information lies in their proportion.

what a dumb comment