Image is Everything

Do you want to know yourself? Are you willing to take a deep look inside? Ever have the desire to delve beneath the surface and really examine the whole you? A lot of the reason I regularly have fifty open browser tabs is take my mind off of me, so the idea of knowing more about myself really gets under my skin. But a lot of people are taking advantage of new, full-body MRIs that give you the skinny on everything about yourself, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health. Do you feel a magnetic attraction to knowing more? Does the thought of potentially catching ailments earlier have any resonance with you? Is more knowledge always better? Or as Dhruv Khullar puts it in The New Yorker: Will a Full-Body MRI Scan Help You or Hurt You? While still expensive and not covered by insurance, the scans by companies like Prenuvo are all the rage these days. Why are many doctors less enthusiastic? “No professional medical society in America endorses whole-body MRIs as a proactive screening tool. The American College of Preventive Medicine argues that they ‘waste money and healthcare resources,’ while the American College of Radiology, which theoretically stands to benefit from more imaging, said in a statement that ‘there is no documented evidence that total body screening is cost-efficient or effective in prolonging life.’ Doctors tend to think that if it ain’t broke, don’t MRI it.” (Oddly, that last line sort of makes me want to get the scan.)