• Question: why do you like medicene that could potentialy kill you

    Asked by Donald trump is my bae to Christopher, Dan, Jen, Mohan, Sarah on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Daniel Fovargue

      Daniel Fovargue answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Do you mean, why do we work in an area of medicine that has certain dangers and risks?

      I use an MR scanner for experiments sometimes. If I were to accidentally bring a metal object near the scanner, this would be really dangerous. But the MR scanner is able to give us a lot of important information by taking pictures of the insides of people. So there is always a risk to using a dangerous machine, but the reward is thought to be worth the risk.

      So, we do a lot of safety training to make us as safe as possible!

    • Photo: Jen Dennis

      Jen Dennis answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      Any medicine of any description could potentially kill you. If you accidentally take too much of something that we see as really common and simple like paracetamol, it can certainly kill you. Even too much vitamin C can kill you (although you have to seriously overdose to cause a problem and you should still make sure you get enough to keep you healthy ;-))!!

      The point is that too much of anything is likely to be bad for you. The risks from what we do are well researched and we have a huge number of laws, guidelines and procedures in place to make sure that we keep things as safe as we possibly can.

      Most of medicine is about balancing benefit with risk. In Nuclear Medicine, the benefit the patients get from their test far outweighs the risk from the radiation exposure. And remember, going for a ride on your bike is great fun (I do it to get to work every day) but it could potentially kill you as well!

    • Photo: Sarah De Vos

      Sarah De Vos answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      As Jen said, any medicine could kill you if you take too much. Even water can kill you if you overdo it! I work in the field of radiotherapy because radiation, if used correctly, is a proven way of killing tumours. We have tons of rules and regulations to ensure that we use radiation safely.

    • Photo: Mohan K

      Mohan K answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      Risk vs benefit. Lots of things have the potential to kill you but luckily healthcare is stacked full of people who know how to carefully assess the risk/benefit balance!

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