Scanning at a different level

J Health Behav Med Hist 2026-1.

Scanning at a Different Level

Robert C. van de Graaf, MD, director
MEDTCC Institute for Health, Behaviour, Medicine and its History, The Netherlands

The debate about total body scans is often framed in terms of fear and medicalisation.
About people who are supposedly afraid of illness.
About commercial parties capitalising on that fear.

But perhaps we are asking the wrong question.

Not: what does such a scan do?
But: who is the person who chooses to be scanned?

Their position

By now, I have met many of them. What stands out is not anxiety or vulnerability, but position. They are entrepreneurs. Executives. Also within healthcare. Fellow medical specialists. People who make decisions every day that extend far beyond themselves. Decisions about organisations. About care. About systems that must not fail. About lives.

Their lives are not extreme. Their lifestyle is strikingly ordinary. Average Dutch. Some excess weight. Too little exercise. Living under pressure. On average, they smoke less than others. But they often drink a little more. Not out of ignorance, but out of context. Out of dinners where decisions are prepared. Out of evenings where work and private life blur into one.

Are these fearful people? Easy targets for exploitation?
These are people accustomed to working with uncertainty. Who know that complete information does not exist. Who make daily choices with consequences – financial, organisational, human. And who understand that not looking is also a choice. Often the easiest one. Rarely the wisest.

For them, a scan is not a hunt for disease. Not a step towards treatment or a patient role. It is a moment of orientation. A pause in action. A way of looking beyond the daily mirror. Because even those who lead others sense, somewhere, that they themselves are not invisible.

Anatomical knowledge

Just as they read figures, weigh scenarios and explore risks, they also want to understand how the body functions that carries all of this. A total body scan provides anatomical information. Images of structures. Sometimes an abnormality. Sometimes nothing. Produced by medical technology, assessed by radiologists.

In that sense, it is medical. But anatomical knowledge is not automatically healthcare. It is not treatment. Not the exclusive domain of doctors. Just as the mirror in the bathroom is not medicine.

There, too, we see ourselves. A little older. A little heavier. A little more tired. The mirror makes nothing ill. It cures nothing. It shows what is already there. A scan does the same – but beneath the skin.

A tool

The difference lies not in the knowledge, but in what we expect from it. Those who expect a scan to rescue, solve or reassure turn information into a promise. That is where medicalisation begins. But those who see information as a tool to carry responsibility more consciously use it differently.

Not: am I healthy?
But: where do I stand – given what I do and what I carry?

That is not a medical question.
That is a question at a different level.

Perhaps we should therefore speak differently about this group. Not as anxious consumers exploited by dubious scanners, but as people willing to face themselves at the level at which they operate. Not to control everything. But to continue leading with open eyes.

That is not medicalisation.
That is mature responsibility.

Translation from: scannen op een ander niveau (Arts en Auto)