THE EFFECTS OF RADIATION ON THE INDIVIDUAL

Journal/Book: Reprinted from The Practitioner Symposium on RADIATION HAZARDS November 1958 Vol. 181 pages 553-558. 1958;

Abstract: By J. F. LOUTIT C.B.E. D.M. F.R.C.P. Director Medical Research Council Radiobiological Research Unit Atomic Energy Research Establishment Harwell Berkshire IONIZNG radiations such as X and rays release some of their physical energy in their passage through cells and thereby exert biological effects which so far as we know are always fundamentally harmful. This is not to say in the present incomplete state of our knowledge that they should not be used. The damage that they do may be less than the harm which may accrue from not using them. As therapy these rays are used in attempts often successful to procure complete elimination of malignant cells: and their use here is completely justified. They are also applied to tissues with simple hyperplasia but in such cases much more thought has to be given in weighing the relative risks. Administration of radioactive iodine may be the treatment of election for the elderly thyrotoxic woman since the late effects of the treatment may well be postponed until well beyond the expected life span of the patient. For the young thyrotoxic subject with a sounder myocardium and better able to withstand the immediate effects of operation surgery may be the preferred treatment because with a long expectation of life there is ample time for the late effects of the radiation to be expressed. In diagnosis the use of x-rays has undoubtedly been revolutionary. Have the benefits from improved diagnosis and therefore treatment been overbalanced by damage due to the X rays? There is no way of suspending the scale in order to measure the relative weights but informed opinion is overwhelmingly an the side of the benefits conferred. A few special radiological examinations may provide exceptions to the general rule. These are associated with relatively large doses of radiation to a particularly radiosensitive part. Perhaps the best examples were identified by the Medical Research Council (1956) in their report ´Hazards to Man from Nuclear and Allied Radiations'; they involved chiefly irradiation of the pelvis and the gonads with consequent genetic hazard with which we are not here concerned. Tissues other than the gonads however are also in the direct beam and the effects an the individual have to be assessed. ... ___MH

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