What Lies Within

An absence of proof in this context means benefit hasn't been shown in a controlled trial. That distinction is important to policymakers, but what about to a frontline oncologist like Dr. Martin Stockler, a Sydney specialist in renal cancer? Early detection of the disease is crucial: by the time symptoms emerge, it's often too advanced to treat successfully. But Stockler opposes whole-body scanning for asymptomatic people. He doesn't doubt it's helped some people, but for a great many more it's caused needless anguish. A cancer scare isn't a trifle, he says: the fear patients feel while a lump is checked can haunt them for years.

Freilich fumes at any suggestion that early detection of cancer makes little difference to patients' prospects. "Are we talking about medicine in the 1700s or medicine in the 21st century? We have imaging equipment so we can detect disease that we can treat. Not every patient that comes through a radiological facility is coming for palliative care." He gives a quick cancer lesson . . . Tumors start small and grow. The bigger they get the greater the likelihood that breakaway cells will travel to other parts of the body. This process of metastasis is what kills patients 90% of the time.

Freilich says he's not asking for favors from government or the medical profession, just an end to the "misinformation" that's poisoned attitudes to whole-body scanning. Both sides predict that the future of scanning is magnetic resonance imaging, which delivers no radiation but for now has technical limitations. "Scanning will survive," says Freilich. "People are going to take their health into their own hands." Oncologist Stockler says there's no doubt people like Freilich "believe absolutely in what they're doing. But that doesn't mean they're right." No, it doesn't. But try telling people like dentist Don or his loved ones that precautionary scans are more trouble than they're worth.