Dear AuntMinnie Member,
Attendees at this week's U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hearings on medical radiation dose must be baffled by the coverage of the meeting in the mainstream media. To those in attendance, the hearings represented positive, substantive progress toward resolving the dose dilemma, as regulators, vendors, and healthcare providers came together to discuss ways to move forward.
But if you followed the hearings in the lay press, you mostly read about a single speaker who claimed that the FDA ignored his warnings over radiation dose. The speaker, a former FDA device reviewer, testified that the agency declined to renew his contract after he refused to approve a regulatory application for a virtual colonoscopy product, which he said ought to carry a warning label due to its radiation dose.
Far be it from me to point out that the speaker in question is a gastroenterologist -- one wonders if he also advocates putting labels on colonoscopes warning of the risk of bowel perforation. Nor should I engage in too much media bashing -- it's simply too easy a target (for example, one media outlet mistakenly stated that MRI scanners emit ionizing radiation).
But it's disappointing to see such an important issue trivialized into "gotcha" journalism. The media can play a valuable role in raising awareness of important social issues such as radiation dose and, indeed, may have helped drive the FDA to hold the hearings in the first place.
But focusing on a single disgruntled device reviewer while ignoring the good intentions of the rest of the radiology community -- and of the current FDA administration -- only serves to fan the flames of radiation hysteria in the U.S. Even though radiology may have taken a step forward this week in addressing radiation dose, one hopes it hasn't also taken two steps back in the eyes of the public.
Read more about the hearings by clicking here, and be sure to check back on AuntMinnie.com for additional updates to this developing story.
