Me, from Top to Bottom

摘要

Inevitably, medicine in america has come to this: newspaper ads offering discounted body scans. Clip the coupon and bring it on down, for a digital gaze at your own guts. Act now for early detection of cancer, heart disease, tumors, and other time bombs. So I did act, offering my 41-year-old body for a session of neck-to-pelvis computerized tomography (CT) at a clinic in Boca Raton, Florida, that pitches the scan as "a great gift idea." And I am not alone in being seduced by the prospect of pay-per-view medicine. Imaging centers catering to the self-referred (and generally asymptomatic) crowd are, notes Mitch Goldburgh of research firm IMV, opening up by the dozens. Neither the government nor the medical community measures the trend, but thousands of people are bypassing their doctors and lining up for scans, which run from $800 to $1, 300.