Radiation and Thyroid Cancer

I blogged once before about the link between radiation and thyroid cancer, but deleted the posting for some reason.

Maybe I thought it was too much of a downer and too personal.

The story is, basically, that like a lot of other children of the baby boom generation, well meaning doctors gave heavy doses of X-rays to my tonsils as a cure for chronic tonsilitis.

And, like tens of thousands of other people who had the same treatment, I eventually developed thyroid cancer and had to have my thyroid gland removed.

Now, if you're going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is probably one of the "best" ones. It has an extremely high cure rate. The thyroid gland encapsulates tumors and takes forever to metastasize, by which time the sufferer has become extremely symptomatic and is usually accurately diagnosed quickly.

You do, however, have to start taking synthetic thyroid hormone, which has skyrocketed in cost since I had my operation back in the 1960's. Drug companies justify this kind of gouging in all kinds of ways.

Interestingly enough, part of the reason for the X-ray approach was that it was pushed by General Electric --which made the equipment.

GE used to always say, "Progress is our most important product," a message conveyed to the public by a smiling Ronald Reagan.

When Chernobyl happened, I knew exactly what the outcome would be. Scores of thousands of people in the then Soviet Union and Eastern Europe eventually developed thyroid cancer.

Scientific "progress" often, it seems, has hidden and potentially dangerous costs.