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Radiation:

    The wide use of X-rays soon resulted in the first deaths from radiation burns. Still is remained commonly used for a range of purposes. Some show shops even installed X-rays machines as a gimmick, so that parents could check if shoes fitted their children. Nowadays, X-rays are largely restricted to medical use, wither diagnostic or therapeutic.

Diagnostic and therapeutic radiation:
    Diagnostic radiation uses very low doses - but even these doses are associated with a number of dangers, the two key ones being: the potential for causing cancer; and the possibility that genetic damage, that may not reveal itself for generations, may be caused.
    Therapeutic radiation uses far higher doses. It has been argued that these doses are too high to cause the type of cellular damage that can lead to cancer - but medical history contains at least one well-known case which contradicts this assumption. Subsequently, it was discovered that the initial thyroid condition itself did not and had never existed - it was figment of the medical imagination.

Radiation therapy:
    Indeed, radiation may not just be useless - it may dangerous. Some studies have shown that the rate of matastasis may be greater in cases receiving radiation when compared with cases who did not. Any analysis of the benefits of radiation must distinguish between those patients whose tumour is treated by radiation and those who receive radiation aimed at an area in the body where there might be cancerous cells, but where there is no observable tumour.

Specific problems with radiotherapy:

1) MAKING TUMOURS MORE AGGRESSIVE

    Many cancers, treated by radiotherapy with apparent success, return; when they do so, they are unstoppable aggressive. No further treatment was able to slow the progress of the disease. Radiation also makes the tumour impervious to new treatment. Experiments with animals have confirmed this. Mice that have been irradiated so not respond to substances that have a beneficial effect on the cancers of non-irradiated mice. Most cancer patients go through variations of orthodox treatments before considering alternative treatment. In this context, some Mexican alternative therapy clinics are reluctant to treat anyone who has already had radiation or chemotherapy, on the grounds that it is unlikely that any further treatment will succeed by will, instead, negatively affect their own statistics.

2) NON-RESPONSE TO RADIATION
    Not all cancers respond well to radiation, and many are resistant to it. Also, any cancer that has already metastasised cannot successfully be treated with radiation - because radiation focuses a beam of ionising radiation at a single spot or area in the body. It is most successful when used to slow down or reduce the size of aggressive tumour - when its success may be, as we have seen, short term.One of the reasons why radiation is more effective with some tumours than others, and with some cancers than others, has to do with the level of oxygen in the tumour. Oxygen is vital for the success of radiation. Unfortunately, low oxygenation levels are typical of cancer tumours. Then again, cells can resists the effects of radiation. In all cells - both normal and tumour - there are enzymes that recognise in the DNA chain the parts that have undergone chemical damage. Some of these enzymes cut out the damaged portions, while others sew up the two fragments end to end, maintaining the proper order. The repair is inevitably often imperfect, and the cell will hand on these imperfections when it divides. This is how radiation damage can have effects long after the original cause. The repair
is often excellent and the cell behaves as if nothing had happened.What is most surprising, though, is that there are no generally agreed levels for radiation treatment or what constitutes the best regime. This variation has resulted in higher radiation injury rates in the north and south west of England.

3) RADIATION INJURIES
    Each time a tumour is irradiated, thirty-seven per cent of the tumour cells are not affected at all. The next time, thirty-sever per cent of this thirty-seven per cent is not affected - and so it goes on. Unless surrounding tissue is also attacked, it is impossible to eliminate all the malignant cells by radiation alone. Form this, we cab see that radiotherapy can never succeed on its own if it is aimed only at the tumour. If radiation is used to affect the surrounding tissue, then the likelihood of success increases dramatically. Radiation can cause loss of function of the irradiated tissues. The different organs vary in their vulnerability to this sort of complication. The liver, kidneys and lungs are particularly fragile; the muscle are also susceptible. This damage may be very mild, or permanently incapacitating or even life-threatening. The fairly recent use of radiation and chemotherapy together has resulted in higher numbers of patients suffering from radiation-induced problems. Some doctors have established a grading for radiation damage:

    Grade 1: minor symptoms which require no treatment.
    Grade 2: symptoms which so not affect performance and can be managed by simple outpatient methods.
    Grade 3: more severe symptoms, altering performance; may have to be admitted for diagnostic procedures or minor surgery.
    Grade 4: prolonged hospitalisation and major surgical intervention.
    Grade 5: fatal complications.