J Health Behav Med Hist 2026-2
Seeing inside ourselves: reflections on consumer total body scans
Robert C. van de Graaf, MD, director
MEDTCC Institute for Health, Behaviour, Medicine and its History, The Netherlands.
Introduction
Consumer total body scans have become increasingly available, and many people choose to use them. This paper does not question that availability, nor the demand for it. It also does not approach total body scans primarily as a medical intervention to be defended or rejected.
Instead, it reflects on scan-consuming behaviour as a phenomenon that emerges at the intersection of medical technology, human curiosity, uncertainty, and meaning-making. Medical considerations are undeniably part of this picture, but they do not fully explain why people seek scans, how scans are experienced, or what role they come to play in people’s lives.
The central question explored here is therefore not whether consumer scans are “good” or “bad,” but what it means that people want to look inside their own bodies – and what they expect that visibility to provide. This reflection builds on earlier explorations of healthcare consumption, scanning practices, and the cultural dynamics of uncertainty [1-3].
A long-standing human fascination
Human fascination with the inside of the body is ancient. Long before modern imaging existed, people sought to understand how the body was structured and how life was organized beneath the surface. For centuries, however, this curiosity was shaped and constrained by cultural and religious meanings. The body was regarded as sacred and meaningful – a creation of God – not to be opened lightly. Looking inside the body was therefore primarily a moral and cultural question, rather than a technical or medical one.
Over time, this position gradually shifted. Anatomical dissection, the development of anaesthesia and surgery, and later imaging technologies – X-rays, electrocardiography, laboratory diagnostics, CT, and MRI – made it possible to access the interior of the body, increasingly without violating its physical integrity. Each step altered how people related to their bodies, adding new layers of understanding without fully replacing older meanings.
Consumer total body scans can be seen as part of this long historical trajectory. They are not a rupture with the past, but a contemporary expression of an enduring human desire: to make the invisible visible. What is new is not the curiosity itself, but the immediacy, accessibility, and personalization of bodily images. What was once rare, exceptional, and mediated has become individual and commercially available.
What a scan provides – and what it does not
A total body scan produces anatomical data. Different scanning technologies visualize different structures, each with specific strengths and limitations. What becomes visible depends on the technology used and the way the body is examined.
From a medical perspective, scans may sometimes reveal abnormalities or structural changes that are relevant to a specific clinical question. At the same time, they may also reveal variations that are common, benign, or of uncertain significance. Both outcomes are inherent to scanning. The potential benefits and limitations of such findings are well documented and cannot be ignored.
Yet beyond their medical implications, scans have a more fundamental characteristic: they do not provide conclusions by themselves. Images do not speak. They require interpretation, context, and knowledge to become meaningful. Without that, they remain images – often impressive and detailed, but intrinsically open-ended.
In this sense, a scan does not so much deliver answers as it generates material for reflection.
Expertise and personal meaning
When scans are interpreted in a clinical context, radiological and medical expertise is essential. Professionals bring structure, experience, and judgment that are necessary when questions concern disease or treatment.
At the same time, scan images are also encountered by non-professionals. Like mirrors or photographs, they evoke personal responses – fascination, reassurance, unease, recognition, reflection – that do not belong exclusively to the medical domain, yet strongly shape how the scan is integrated into one’s life.
This creates a familiar tension. A scan may carry limited clinical relevance while holding considerable emotional or symbolic meaning. Interpreting the image medically does not automatically address the broader meaning it has acquired. In that sense, consumer scans occupy an intermediate space: they may require medical expertise to explain, while simultaneously functioning as personal images that speak to identity, vulnerability, and responsibility. Earlier work has described scanning in this context not primarily as fear-driven behaviour, but as a form of orientation, particularly among individuals accustomed to uncertainty and responsibility [3].
Curiosity, uncertainty, and availability
People seek consumer scans for many reasons. Curiosity about bodily structure, uncertainty about health, and a desire for reassurance often coexist. None of these motivations are new; they are deeply human.
What has changed is availability. When the interior of the body becomes visible on demand, the act of looking itself can acquire significance. Visibility begins to feel meaningful in its own right – as if seeing might offer grip in a complex and uncertain world.
This resonates with broader cultural patterns in which care and medical engagement increasingly function as a language for dealing with discomfort, disruption, or uncertainty – even when no clear illness is present. Such patterns have been described as a societal tendency toward pathophilia, in which medical frameworks become a dominant way of interpreting and managing life’s uncertainties [1]. In this context, scanning can become not only a diagnostic act, but also a culturally sanctioned way of seeking orientation.
Yet visibility does not guarantee understanding, nor does understanding necessarily lead to reassurance or direction. In some cases, seeing more introduces new questions rather than resolving existing ones.
Two needs that increasingly overlap
From a behavioural and cultural perspective, it is useful to distinguish between two different layers of expectation that often converge in scan use.
One concerns understanding one’s own body: a general desire for knowledge, insight, and structural explanation. The other concerns understanding oneself through the body: a more personal search for meaning, safety, orientation, or control.
Total body scans are well suited to the first. They show structure. They are far less suited to the second. They cannot explain how someone will feel, function, or live over time. Tension arises when scans are implicitly expected to bridge both layers at once.
The scan as a reflective object
Seen in this light, consumer total body scans are neither purely medical tools nor merely consumer products. They can be understood as reflective objects: visual representations that invite interpretation rather than dictate action.
A scan does not inherently initiate behavioural change, prescribe direction, or resolve uncertainty. What follows depends on how the image is taken up – whether as a moment of orientation, a source of reassurance, a prompt for further investigation, or simply a snapshot without lasting impact.
The significance of the scan lies less in the technology itself than in the expectations, narratives, and frameworks people bring to it.
Scale, context, and unintended effects
When scans are used without a clearly articulated personal or clinical question, they often generate information without direction. While scans can be meaningful in specific contexts, widespread or routine use does not automatically translate into better understanding or better outcomes.
Moreover, large-scale scan consumption may produce unintended effects – not only medically, but culturally – such as increased worry, additional testing, or a growing tendency to approach life’s uncertainties primarily through a medical lens. Seen more broadly, this raises the question of whether healthcare itself – and the technologies associated with it – has become a default response to a wide range of uncertainties, rather than a targeted answer to clearly defined problems [2].
Meaning emerges only when there is coherence between what a scan is intended to address, what it can realistically inform, and what lies beyond its scope.
Closing reflection
Consumer total body scans bring together ancient curiosity and modern technology in a way that is unprecedented in accessibility. They can inform, reassure, unsettle, or simply intrigue. Their medical possibilities and limitations matter, but they do not fully explain why people seek them or how they are experienced.
Ultimately, a scan does not tell someone who they are, how they should live, or what the future holds. It shows one version of the body at one moment in time.
Perhaps the more revealing question, then, is not what did the scan show, but rather:
What do we hope visibility will give us – and what will always remain beyond the reach of images?
References
1. Van de Graaf RC, Mirza A. The Pathophile Society. J Health Behav Med Hist 2025-7.
2. Van de Graaf RC. Is healthcare itself the biggest tap? J Health Behav Med Hist 2025-13.
3. Van de Graaf RC. Scanning at a different level. J Health Behav Med Hist 2026-1.