The claim concerns a message circulated online under the name of Huang Da-fu, president of Koo Foundation Sun Yat-Sen Cancer Center. It warns against promoting CT examinations and attributes to Huang claims that a chest CT can leave someone sick for a year, cause repeated colds and lead to kidney disease. The review says it checked the message with Huang and consulted nuclear-medicine and radiation-oncology specialists. It also compared the message with two earlier news reports about Huang’s remarks on high-tech cancer screening. Huang denied making the message’s claims about prolonged illness and colds, and said that the wording and medical idea were not his. The review reports that he distinguished this from his actual caution: healthy people without high risk generally do not need CT scans, which can involve harm without benefit in that setting. A consulted physician said colds are infectious diseases and unrelated to radiation exposure; the review also says medical-examination radiation is not at levels that cause the asserted kidney effects. The attribution is mixed rather than wholly fabricated. The review says Huang did warn against indiscriminate use of advanced screening, and confirmed that a portion of the message’s advice against using PET scans to screen people without symptoms or disease was his. But the viral text turns a warning about inappropriate screening into claims of direct, prolonged illness and other effects that Huang denied. The review’s conclusion is that some of the message reflects his views, while its claims about CT scans causing weakness, colds and reproductive-organ injury were not his and conflicted with medical expertise.

RMIT ABC Fact CheckJul 25, 2018Health & medicine

"We are spending record amounts on hospitals, we are spending record amounts on health."

Publisher’s rating: Fair call

Turnbull made the statement during a discussion about whether voters might prefer more hospital and education funding to tax cuts. The review assessed federal spending, interpreting “we are spending” as referring to the Turnbull Government’s term in office. It concluded that the claim was justified: health spending in 2016–17 exceeded every year in the available series dating back to 1985–86, and the latest estimate showed a further increase in 2017–18. Public-hospital spending was also higher in both years than its previous record, with 2017–18 figures including a substantial retrospective adjustment for earlier underspending. The conclusion had qualifications. The final 2017–18 outcome was not yet available, and the 2018–19 estimate forecast a slight decline in both health spending and public-hospital spending from the previous year. The review therefore found that federal spending was expected to reach a new high around the time of the statement, not that spending would rise continuously or that every increase represented a lasting change. The retrospective hospital adjustment was nearly $1 billion, chiefly relating to 2015–16. To assess the claim, the review used Australian Institute of Health and Welfare historical data for health spending through 2015–16, and federal budget estimates for later years. It adjusted figures for inflation, calculated spending per person using population estimates and forecasts, and assessed hospital spending using public-hospital funding because the budget papers did not directly identify private-hospital spending. The review also cautioned that data sources differed somewhat and later figures were estimates subject to change. It noted that health spending usually rises, so describing a total as a record can sound more significant than the underlying trend warrants.