> especially with radiation, will cause harm statistically.
Ultrasound is not radiation (as in photons). To the best of our understanding (from a physics/engg perspective) ultrasound imaging capped by appropriate energy/etc limits is expected to be perfectly safe. Likewise with MRI. If we want more pointed study to be sure of this, that's fair, but let's be clear & specific about it and commit to figuring it out one way or another so we don't repeat the same discussion a couple of decades down the line. (We have to think of moving the state of the art forward, instead of festering in unresolved disagreements)
Further, if you're concerned about under-studied possible side-effects of radiation from occasional diagnostic testing, what do you plan to do about being blanketed by mm waves once 5G gets deployed more ubiquitously?
> There are also countless examples of people undergoing unnecessary operation and suffering complications
This sounds far more serious (and fixable) compared to the physics/biology interaction of diagnostic testing. Why do we continue to bury our heads in the sand collectively, instead of trying to fix this with better decision-making tools?
MRI isn't radiation, but is sometimes used with contrast dye. People can be allergic to the dye. For one person this is a small risk. Across a population we'd be causing harm. We'd balance the risks of harm against the benefits, and so far no-one can find a benefit to routine whole body MRI scans. And if the benefit was there the MRI machine companies probably would have found it by now because it'd massively increase the numbers of machines they could sell.
MRI uses electromagnetic radiation. MRI uses a magnetic field with a radio-frequency pulse and then the protons emit a radio-frequency response - that response location is used to synthetically generate the image. MRI does not use ionising radiation. Nice overview here: https://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/m...
You've misread their reply. MRI's sometimes use contrast dye. I've personally had these sorts of dyes, both on brain and spinal cord scans (I have MS and get these regularly) and for the first scan of my pancreas (non-symptomatic cyst they are watching to be cautious).
Ultrasound is not radiation (as in photons). To the best of our understanding (from a physics/engg perspective) ultrasound imaging capped by appropriate energy/etc limits is expected to be perfectly safe. Likewise with MRI. If we want more pointed study to be sure of this, that's fair, but let's be clear & specific about it and commit to figuring it out one way or another so we don't repeat the same discussion a couple of decades down the line. (We have to think of moving the state of the art forward, instead of festering in unresolved disagreements)
Further, if you're concerned about under-studied possible side-effects of radiation from occasional diagnostic testing, what do you plan to do about being blanketed by mm waves once 5G gets deployed more ubiquitously?
> There are also countless examples of people undergoing unnecessary operation and suffering complications
This sounds far more serious (and fixable) compared to the physics/biology interaction of diagnostic testing. Why do we continue to bury our heads in the sand collectively, instead of trying to fix this with better decision-making tools?