Radiation Therapy
X rays and other forms of radiation have been used in medicine for purposes other than taking diagnostic pictures. In the early days of radioactive science it was widely believed that radium had immense curative properties, in large part because its rays affected tissue growth. Injection of radioactive materials into some tumors and growths can reduce and destroy them; radiation can also be used to destroy cancerous cells in the body, and arrest the spread of the disease. Great care must be taken to ensure that all the cancerous growth is destroyed and that none of the surrounding tissue is harmed. The size, type, and location of the cancer dictates exactly the form of therapy used.72
But the use of radiation as a medical treatment has often been misunderstood and abused. Large amounts of radium, used as a source of gamma rays, have been used to treat lupus, eczema, psoriasis, and other skin diseases, and for removing benign skin tumors and moles. Such radiation treatments were administered from the 1920s through the 1950s, and were also deemed acceptable for treating enlarged thymus and thyroid glands, enlargement and inflammation of tonsils and adenoids, deafness due to hypertrophy of lymphoid tissues around eustachian tubes,
ringworm of the scalp, cervical and other types of inflammation, tuberculosis of cervical nodes, asthma, whooping cough, and even breast problems after birth.73 Throughout the 1950s American children and adults were even allowed to have their feet X-rayed in shoe stores to determine their proper size. The practice may well have damaged millions of people’s feet, and scatter radiation from the relatively cheap machines may have done other damage as well.74
Some of the more primitive applications of radiation persist. In 1981 we discovered pamphlets from two operating Montana "health spas" advertising the benefits of radon gas in curing "arthritis, sinusitis, migraine, eczema, asthma, hay fever, psoriasis, allergies, diabetes and other ailments." The pamphlets claimed that by sitting in abandoned mine shafts and breathing radioactive gases, people’s pain will disappear, joints will loosen, and skin lesions will heal. Unfortunately, the pamphlets do not mention that it has been well established for at least a decade that radioactive gas in uranium mines is a cause of a fivefold increase in lung cancer among miners.75
The toll from misdirected medical uses of radiation through the decades is impossible to fully document. But there have been tragic victims. One, a man named Joe Victor, told his story at the 1980 Citizens’ Hearings for Radiation Victims in Washington. "I was burned by x rays on my face," he told a packed hearing room. "I have had more than twenty operations to remove the irradiated and malignant skin that the radiation caused . . . I will be disfigured for the rest of my life."
At the end of World War II, as a handsome young Marine, Victor underwent radiation therapy for a facial rash called "barber’s itch." When the rash recurred in 1947, he again underwent therapy. Five years later an X-ray technologist told him he thought Victor had been overexposed. And when he visited a radiologist at a Veterans Administration hospital in Boston, Victor was bewildered when "doctors congregated around me. The one in charge asked the others a lot of questions about how they would diagnose my problem, and then he turned to them—I’ll never forget it, he was very dramatic about it—and said, ‘This is what happens when you guys are careless with x rays.’"
Later Victor called the radiologist who had treated him and was told not to worry. But within ten years of his "treatment," Joe Victor developed skin cancer on his nose, chin, neck, and eventually on his chest. Huge pieces of flesh had to be removed from his face. Though skillfully done, the reconstruction was patchy, discolored, scarred, and incomplete. His nose was reshaped, his upper lip partly cut away, and he was left unable to close his mouth.
Scars left on his neck resembled those of a burn victim, and his chest was permanently disfigured. "I considered getting married," Victor testified. "But aside from the problems my condition created in relationships with women, I was also worried that all this radiation would affect any kids I had. I would be afraid they would be deformed. "What’s happened, to put it bluntly, is that my life’s been ruined," Victor added. "They tell me in the hospital now how I’m so well adjusted. But you never really adjust."76
At the time Joe Victor was irradiated for a skin rash, faith in radiation as a diagnostic aid and medical cure was nearly boundless. X-ray therapy for a wide range of noncancerous illnesses of the head, neck, and upper chest during childhood has, according to some studies, resulted in a significant excess of both malignant and benign thyroid tumors.77 X rays used to treat illnesses related to the thyroid directly have also resulted in that sensitive gland’s being exposed. Because much of the treatment was done in private doctors’ or radiologists’ offices, there are no firm
records on how many people received such treatment and who they were. But the National Cancer Institute estimated the number to be as high as four million.78
Meanwhile the use of radioactive substances to treat a wide range of diseases—and particularly cancer—is becoming increasingly sophisticated. There continues to be widespread debate over the advisability of such therapy, and the possibilities of natural, alternative cures. There has also been some tragic fallout. In the late 1970s James L. Kline of Hagerstown, Maryland, suffered an overdose of radiation which was given him as a precaution after the surgical removal of his prostate gland. The radiation burned away his buttocks and destroyed his right hip, leaving him, in the words of his lawyer, "hopelessly and totally disabled." Bedridden since May 1978, Kline recently won a two-million-dollar malpractice settlement.79
Despite Kline’s case and a growing controversy over the uses and abuses of radiation, portions of the medical profession remain enthusiastic. "Recent advances in radiation therapy allow the maximum potential cure with the minimum of side-effects, such as nausea, vomiting, skin reactions and scarring," says Dr. Luther W. Brady, Jr., of Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital. "With a growing number of early cancer patients, radiation therapy techniques are emerging that are as viable now as radical therapy."80
But the question remains whether this early enthusiasm for yet another use of radiation may someday result in a long list of tragic, unexpected side effects, as has the use of medical X rays.
72. Brecher and Brecher, The Rays, pp. 137-160.
73. E. L. Saenger, et al., "Neoplasia Following Therapeutic Irradiation for Benign Conditions in Childhood," Radiology 74 (June 1960): 880-884; L. H. Hemplemann, et al., "Neoplasms in Persons Treated with X-rays in Infancy: Fourth Survey in 20 Years," Journal of the National Cancer Institute 50, No. 3 (September 1975) 519-530; NAS, A Review of the Use of Ionizing Radiation in the Treatment of Benign Diseases (Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, September 1977).
74. Karl Z. Morgan and J. E. Turner, Principles of Radiation Protection (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967), p. 49.
75. Merry Widow Health Mine (P.O. Box 3444, Basin, MT 59631), pamphlet; and Sunshine Health Mine (Box E, Boulder, MT 59632), pamphlet.
76. Citizens’ Hearings, p. 80
77. B. J. Duffy and P. J. Fitzgerald, "Cancer of the Thyroid in Children: A Report of 28 Cases," Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 10 (October 1950): 1296-1308; T. Winship, "Symposium of Thyroid Tumors: Carcinoma of the Thyroid in Children," Transactions of the American Goiter Association, 1951, p. 364; T. Winship and W. W. Chase, "Thyroid Carcinoma in Childhood, a Report of 275 Cases," Surgical, Gynecology and Obstetrics 101 (August 1955): 217-224; E. M. Uhlmann, "Cancer of the Thyroid and Irradiation," Journal of the American Medical Association 161 (1956): 504-507.
78. Margaret H. Sloan, "Thyroid Irradiation Followup Studies," presented at the Ninth Annual Conference on Radiation Control, Seattle, Washington, June 19-23, 1977, p. 369.
79. Chip Brown, "Maryland Cancer Patient Gets $3 Million in Malpractice Claim," Washington Post, February 26, 1981. The award was eventually lowered to $2 million. Loretta Tofani, "Malpractice Award Is Cut to $2 Million," Washington Post, February 27, 1981.
80. Lawrence Galton, "New Victories for Radiation Therapy," Parade Magazine, March 1, 1981.