X-ray & the Unborn

Ever since doctors and other workers with X-rays discovered that the rays sterilized them (now they protect themselves by aprons of rubber impregnated with lead), they have been chary of X-raying women who might be gravid. It is not always certain that a woman is pregnant. She may be bloated through hysteria or, more usually, have a benign tumor or a cancer. X-rays can help in the diagnosis. X-rays can also destroy the tumor, or the fetus. Radium is also therapeutically destructive. Just what effect radium, or X-rays in their various doses have on the growing fetus has been an uncertainty among doctors. Few have experimented in this regard on animals and none, so far as is known, on humans.

Last week Dr. Percy W. Toombs of Memphis, Tenn., reported the known data in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. In brief they are: 1) X-ray-ing for a few seconds to get a photograph does not harm the unborn child, unless photographs are taken too frequently; 2) X-ray or radium doses strong enough to cause sterility or to destroy tumors cause abortions during the early months of pregnancy, or during the end of term monstrosities (of eyes, brain or spinal cord); 3) the younger the embryo, the greater the damage done.