Benefits Of Radiation Therapy

I. Radiation therapy hasn't always been something everyone found to be safe,usable, or effective.It has been cosidered dangerous and sometimes fatal, some also believe radiation therapy will cause the patient to not to get better but to make get worse and very ill. Some people with open minds ponder the question does radiation therapy really cause you to get worse?Radiation therapy can do you good because it kills of cancer cells which could save your life depending on the severity of it. Radiation therapy doesn’t cause harm.

II. Body Paragraph 1

How is radiation therapy being improved some might ask,"Doctors and other scientists are conducting research studies called clinical trials to learn how to use radiation therapy to treat cancer

more safely and effectively."("Radiation Therapy for Cancer").What will they change in order to make it safer, will they change how it is given, how much is given? At this time we do not know but they are definitely working to make a safer way to help these patients.What could be wrong with the patient to need or possibly want to receive radiation therapy.If the patient considering radiation therapy has cancer this could greatly help them because the goal is to have shrunk the cancer cell enough it can be removed by surgery.With this comes a risk of another cancer possibly coming down the road after the radiation therapy is completed, it doesn’t seem worth it to get rid of a cancer just to have another come after.

III. Body Paragraph 2

When it comes to radiation therapy there are many types of radiation therapy you can receive but it all depends on the type of cancer you have and the size of the cancer cell at the time or the location of it in your body.Does radiation therapy cause side effects if you receive or need a large amount?Yes,there are side effects of receiving radiation therapy such as skin irritation or damage at regions exposed to radiation, damage to salivary glands or hair loss.Radiation doesn’t only kill or shrink cancer cells it also affects regular cells.What it does is destroy DNA in order to get to the cancer cells but in this process normal cells are also afflicted.Radiation therapy can do as much good as it can harm.Patients do not become radioactive from external beam radiation.They are put in a special room in the hospital to shield them from radiation, or if they had a radioactive substance placed in them as soon as it is removed they will no longer be radioactive.

IV. Body Paragraph 3
Radiation has done good and it has also done bad such as what happened in Chernobyl Russia.

About 31 or more people had died from the tragic event in 1986 in Chernobyl, Russia from the accident itself or from thyroid cancer that developed after the incident later on down the road chernobyl was a horrific event and lead to more deaths even after the fact.Another nuclear related accident was when the TMI power planted almost melted down,it showed us that a lot can happen from one small problem such as a faulty pressure valve can over heat the reactor and this could cause a plant to meltdown.A problem we face everyday still is nuclear waste, we wonder where we can put it that allows the population to still be safe.The U.S. is doing a latter approach for nuclear waste and the location chosen for this is Yucca Mountain in Nevada. They feel waste is to dangerous to just leave it.A good thing about power plants is that they are safer than other methods in the working field.Nuclear power is useful but with the radiation given off or if the power plant exploded or something along those lines the radiation is stronger and more powerful and can spread across a location and kill many. Nuclear power is also safer having less deaths on the job compared to other generating sources known as oil refiners or other fossil fuel jobs.

V. Conclusion

In the end we can conclude that radiation therapy has it’s benefits and it’s drawbacks. We can see the drawbacks of radiation therapy don’t outweigh

the possible benefits.If it can cure your cancer and make you be able to live your life close to how you did before it is a good thing.Radiation is a harmful but a life saving thing we must take with consideration.