A full body MRI earns you a year of smoking
The article compares the health risk of a full-body MRI to that of smoking for one year, listing alternative activities with equivalent risk such as a high-risk pregnancy, climbing the Matterhorn, riding 10,000 km on a motorcycle, two BASE jumps, or a day on the frontline in Ukraine.
Background
- The article is making a comparative risk argument: getting a full-body MRI (which exposes you to radiation and can lead to unnecessary follow-up procedures) carries roughly the same health risk as smoking for one year, climbing the Matterhorn, doing two BASE jumps, or spending a day on the frontlines in Ukraine.
- "Full-body MRI" refers to elective, whole-body magnetic resonance imaging scans marketed directly to healthy consumers as a "preventive" health screening — controversial because they often find harmless abnormalities that lead to invasive, risky follow-up tests.
- The author is likely engaging with the "preventive health" trend (popularized by companies like Prenuvo, Ezra, and SimonMed) where wealthy, health-conscious people pay out of pocket for scans, unaware that the cumulative risks may outweigh the benefits for symptom-free individuals.
- The comparison to smoking is intentionally provocative: one year of smoking is a commonly cited reference point in public health for a moderate but real increase in mortality risk.