When I write about any and all nuclear fuckery, without fail there are comments saying “that’s why we should never use anything radioactive.”
Really? Nothing? Not even the ‘fuck up Aunt Diane’s tumor’ type of radiation?
Out of, give or take, millions of patients who have successfully undergone radiation therapy, it would be weird if there hadn’t been some problems. There are risks with every kind of medication. Until better treatment comes along, that’s a good enough reason to make a viable treatment safer, not to take it away.
Which is exactly what Dr. Shakardokht Jafari set out to do.
Today’s Moment of Science… internal dosimetry, probably.
The ‘whoopsiedaisies’ of radiation therapy have been harrowing, perhaps telling of some hubris in dealing with nuclear bullshit. Therac-25 was a radiotherapy unit in the 1980s with software about as well planned as New Coke. There were six serious incidents of radiation poisoning in which patients were dosed with, in some cases, hundreds of times the radiation they were prescribed. In one incident the patient ran from the room screaming, a radiation burn appearing days later. The faulty software resulted in three fatalities. This was, unfortunately, not the only time a combination of software, equipment, or operator error caused some bullshit in the oncology unit.
Could an accident still happen? Sure. Is the likelihood as high as it was back in the day when you still got your music from Columbia House? No, not even slightly. A study from the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) reports that accidents from exposures in radiotherapy have a variety of causes, and a lot of them come down to “someone didn’t follow the fucking rules, Craig.”
The understanding of these issues and tighter regulations have contributed to a much safer environment to muck about with tumors and high energy neutrons.
Howthefuckever.
There are still ways that radiation therapy can be improved. You’re blasting a tumor with super cranky particles and relying upon finely tuned calculations to deliver the exact dose of that poison to the tumor and only to the tumor. Living humans tend to wiggle though. Avoiding damage to healthy tissue can be challenging, and knowing for sure that invisible particles or energy rays are landing on the douchey cells and only the douchey cells is quite the ask.
So, Dr. Shakardokht Jafari.
At her father’s premature passing from cancer, she promised him that she would work to make a difference in the lives of cancer patients. As a PhD student, she made a dosimeter using tiny glass beads in the detector, which made the device a few orders of magnitude less expensive than many traditional dosimeters. As an inert material, the glass bead array can be used internally for an incredibly clear picture of how much nuclear medicine is being delivered to exact points in the body. Beyond catching internal issues quickly with medicine, the bead array dosimeter is an option for mapping and measuring radiation after a disaster.
Dr. Jafari is now the cofounder and CTO of her company, TRUEinvivo. She has three patents for the bead dosimeter, the DOSEmapper. It’s been eight years since her first publications on technology, and orders started being filled for use in nuclear decommissioning last year.
There is, of course, more to this story.
Dr. Jafari is from Afghanistan. She was the first woman from her country to receive a PhD in medical physics. War broke out with the Soviets when she was just an infant, and the family fled when she was six. As a fourteen year old she argued with her parents to get out of an arranged marriage and won that argument, allowing her to continue her education. They returned in 2003 to a country where she was able to take classes. She taught at and received a masters degree from Kabul Medical University, and went to the University of Surrey for her PhD.
She continues to live and research in England, with a husband she chose to marry and three children.
I’m not going to pretend to have anything new or insightful to say about the disaster that our continued use of Truman era Cold War policies has caused in Afghanistan. I’m just deeply sad for all the girls and women there who we’re going to lose for a generation. Again.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, hoping someone will explain Columbia House to my Zoomer readers.
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