Going nuclear

Medical centers are rushing to turn nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research, into the latest weapons against cancer, a story in today's New York Times reports. (At left, a patient receives proton therapy for prostate cancer at Loma Linda Medical Center in Calif.).

Some experts say the push reflects the best and worst of the nation’s market-based health care system, which tends to pursue the latest, most expensive treatments — without much evidence of improved health — even as soaring costs add to the nation’s economic burden, according to the article.

“I’m fascinated and horrified by the way it’s developing,” Dr. Anthony L. Zietman, a radiation oncologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, told the Times. Mass. General operates a proton center. “This is the dark side of American medicine.”