The plan:

Lower x-ray doses per x-ray procedure ("Doses Down Now").

The result:

Fewer cases of x-ray-induced cancer and coronary heart disease.

The means:

Persuasion of your local x-ray practitioners via the Patients' Right-to-Know Policy Statement, signed by patients in the practitioners' own locality. The Policy Statement can be signed at this site, or downloaded to mail by regular mail.

Education of x-ray practitioners via their patients. This site provides links to many very short documents, suitable for giving to your x-ray practitioners and referring physicians.

You can link from here to:

• Comments upon the “Draft Recommendations
  of the International Commission on Radiological Protection.”
  Submitted to the ICRP by John Gofman and Egan O'Connor,
  December 26, 2004
  
  
• FDA Proposes New X-Ray Regulations: Immense Health Benefits Possible
  --- Unless Naysayers Prevail.
  X-Ray-Induced Diseases, Hormesis, and Medical Ethics.
  Testimony submitted to the FDA, by John Gofman and Egan O'Connor, March 31, 2003
  
  
• What Are the Main Critiques of the 1999 Study by Gofman,
  after Three Years of Peer-Review?
  Six Critiques of Radiation from Medical Procedures
  in the Causation of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD), November 2002
  
  
• Who is the X-rays and Health Project?, July 2000
  
  
• Making Personal Decisions about X-ray Screening Tests,
  Such as Mammography and CT of the Lung,
  Colon, Heart, or the Entire Body, May 2002
  
  
• Eight Key Points about this effort, and links to supporting evidence, Dec. 2000
  
  
• The Patients' Right-to-Know Policy Statement and Its Privacy Policy
  
  
• A Patient's Guide, When X-Rays Are Proposed, Sept. 2000, Doc.#106
  
  
• Computed Tomography (CT) X-Ray Exams: Estimated Doses to Patients,
  Sept. 2001, Doc.#112
  
  
• San Francisco Medicine, March 2001: Medical X-Rays As an Environmental Toxin: Proposal for Professional Action, by John W. Gofman, MD, PhD
  
  
• Who Says that Usual X-Ray Doses Can Be Much Lower?, Oct. 2001, Doc.#111
  
  
• Breast Cancer: Why Do We Permit So Many Preventable Cases?,
  June 2001, Doc.#110
  
  
• Links to Professional Societies, October 12, 2001
  
  
• How the Cold War Caused Millions of American Deaths Through Medical Practice:
  A Story of Intended and Unintended Consequences, April 2001, Doc.#109
  
  
• X-Radiation and Gamma Radiation:
  Comments on Their Nomination as Known Human Carcinogens
  for the Eleventh Report on Carcinogens (RoC), September 11, 2001

  ---

  • Part 1: How Many Citizens Are Exposed to X-Radiation?
    
  • Part 2: How Big Are X-Ray Doses in Medical Imaging? Tables 1 & 2.
    
  • Part 3: A Major New Addition to Evidence that X-Rays Are a Known Human Carcinogen.
    
  • Part 4: The Absence of Any Risk-Free (Safe) Dose-Level of Low LET Radiation.
    
  • Part 5: Complex Mutations and Genomic Instability in X- and Gamma-Irradiated Cells.
    
  • References
    
  • Peer-Review
    
  • Author's CV
  
  
  
• Do X-Ray Practitioners Give Enough Attention to Minimizing the Patients' X-Ray Dosage? Some Opinions, Some Facts, Sept. 2000, Doc.#102
  
  
• How X-Ray Doses Vary From One X-Ray Practitioner to Another: Nationwide Surveys, Sept. 2000, Doc.#103
  
  
• Fear, and the Patients' Right-to-Know: The Viewpoint of an Influential Radiologist, Deserving a Public Response, Sept. 2000, Doc.#105
  
  
• A Proposal for Radiologists: How a Specific Consultation Can Become a Major Asset for the Practice and the Community, Oct. 2000, Doc.#107
  
  
• Mammography and the X-Rays and Health Project: Is There Any Conflict? Four Brief Comments, Oct. 2000, Doc.#108
  
  
• X-Ray Dose-Measuring Service for Physicians and Dentists, January 2001
  
  
• X-Rays: The Fallacy of the "Day in the Sun" Comparison
  
  
• Are X-Ray Procedures Equivalent, in Extra Radiation Dose, To Taking an Airplane Trip?
  
  
  
• USA Today, Nov. 20, 2000: CT Scans: `A Very High-Dose' Diagnosis,
  by Steve Sternberg.
  
  
• USA Today, Nov. 20, 2000: Angioplasty Downside: Radiation Exposure,
  by Steve Sternberg.
  
  
• News Release, Univ. of California, Berkeley, Nov. 16, 1999: Radiation Expert Warns of Danger from Overuse of Medical X-rays, Claiming They Are Responsible for Many Cancer and Heart Disease Deaths.
  
  
• Press Release, Nat'l Cancer Inst., August 15, 2000: Scientists Find Link Between Pre-1970s Diagnostic X-rays for Scoliosis and Breast Cancer Mortality.
  
  
  
• Radiation from Medical Procedures in the Pathogenesis of Cancer and Ischemic Heart Disease: Executive Summary and Chapter 2 of the 1999 medical monograph by John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D. (Full monograph, 699 pages).

  ---

  • Executive Summary of This Book
  • Chapter 1

    Part 1. Orientation: What Is Old, and What Is New.
    Part 2. Some Key Facts about X-Rays and Ionizing Radiation in General.
    Part 3. No Doubt about Benefits from Medical Radiation.
    Part 4. Role of Medical Radiation in Causing Cancer and IHD, Past and Present.
    Part 5. Our Method for Calculating Fractional Causation.
    Part 6. Eight Features Which Confer High Credibility on the Findings.
    Part 7. Our Unified Model of Atherogenesis, and NonXray Co-Actors in IHD.
    Part 8. A Personal Word: The X-Ray Deserves Its Honored Place in Health.
    Part 9. Every Benefit of Medical Radiation: Same Procedures, Lower Dose-Levels.
    Part 10. An Immense Opportunity: All Benefit, No Risk.

  • Chapter 2: Pre-1960 and Post-1960 Uses of Medical Radiation, and Its Carcinogenic Action

    Part 2. 1896-1960: Rapid and Widespread Embrace of X-Rays in Medicine.
    Part 3. 1960 to Present: Some Changes in Usage of Medical Radiation.
    Part 4. Ionizing Radiation: A Proven Carcinogen with Some Unique Properties.
    Part 5. Is the Carcinogenic Power, per Rad of Radiation, the Same at All Dose-Levels?
    Part 6. Absence of Any Threshold Dose: "Risk" vs. Rate.
    Part 7. X-rays: More Carcinogenic than Gamma Rays at Equal Doses.
    Part 8. Variable Latency-Periods for Radiation-Induced Cancer.

  
  
  
• The Safe-Dose Fallacy: Summary of Three Remarkably Similar Reports
  (Chapter 45 in Dr. Gofman's 1996 monograph, Preventing Breast Cancer, with references).
  
  
• The Free-Radical Fallacy about Ionizing Radiation:
  Demonstration That a Popular Claim Is Senseless
  (Appendix C in Dr. Gofman's 1999 monograph, with references).
  
  
• Confirmation that Ionizing Radiation Can Induce Genomic Instability:
  What is Genomic Instability, and Why Is It So Important?
  (Appendix D in Dr. Gofman's 1999 monograph, with references).
  
  
• Chronological List of Additions to The X-rays and Health Project

back to top of page