Published just yesterday- another great scientific article that comes to (my opinion) a really obvious conclusion: Radiation – even very low doses – promotes cancer.
Connection Between Radiation and Cell Mutation
The article is published in Cell Stem Cell and titled “Outcompeting p53-Mutant Cells in the Normal Esophagus by Redox Manipulation. The lead author is David Fernandez-Artoran..
In one picture they show that 50 mGy (5 cGy) increases significantly the risk that cells mutate to a cancer cell.
The argument against proton therapy is that 10 Gy – 1000 cGy, 10,000 mGy (it’s the metric system, just like meters) doesn’t make a difference. Here is data that says that 0.5% of that dose matters and can directly cause cancer.
Again, to me, we know this – radiation is a known carcinogenic according to the US government. The fact that we have to win this argument against a mountain of science to a medical community doesn’t make sense to me, but we do. We have to argue basics daily.
Basics are – Radiation to normal healthy tissues is not good. Proton Therapy delivers less dose to normal tissues than x-ray radiation. Therefore, it is very often a better treatment.
Here’s the best quote from an article on the paper.
Dr. David Fernandez-Antoran, first author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: “Our bodies are the set of ‘Game of Clones’ – a continuous battle for space between normal and mutant cells. We show that even low doses of radiation, similar to three CT scans’ worth, can weigh the odds in favour of cancer-capable mutant cells. We’ve uncovered an additional potential cancer risk as a result of radiation that needs to be recognised.”
Link to news article on the release.