This experience is what many full-body MRI<\/a> proponents tout as a success story. If you book one of these scans, you could save yourself a world of hurt later. Andrew Huberman<\/a>, a neuroscientist, professor and influential podcaster said as much on Aug. 1.<\/p>\n “The whole body MRI thing is controversial for obvious reasons,” Huberman wrote on X<\/a> earlier this month. “It’s costly & there are a lot of false positives. But I have neurosurgeon friends who tell me they do life-saving surgeries every month b\/c people got full body MRI merely b\/c they curious & found operable issues.”<\/p>\n Huberman didn’t immediately respond to request for comment. He is a scientific advisor for Function Health \u2013 a company that offers full-body MRIs, among other health care services \u2013 from which he “receives financial compensation” and “other sponsored content,” according to a disclaimer<\/a> on his website.<\/p>\n Physicians piled on Huberman’s post with a mountain of additional context, with some throwing cold water on his claims. “Neurosurgeon here,” Dr. Sanjay S Dhall<\/a>, of UCLA, wrote on X. “This is hogwash.” “I have never once operated on any incidental ‘life saving’ lesion found on a whole body MRI,” added Dr. Anthony DiGiorgio<\/a>, associate professor of neurological surgery at UCSF.<\/p>\n Internal medicine physician Dr. Brandon Luu<\/a> offered a nuanced take: “The fact of the matter is that I have also watched many people die of cancer who may have been saved had it been caught sooner. There’s no easy answer here.”<\/p>\n “As a neurosurgeon, there are very few things we operate on if they are truly asymptomatic,” DiGiorgio told USA TODAY in an interview. “Unruptured intracranial aneurysms are probably the only one.\u00a0Even then, the data on number needed to treat for treatment to be effective is extremely difficult to determine.”<\/p>\n Research<\/a>\u00a0shows these tests often find something, but much less often find actual disease. One\u00a0study in 2020<\/a>\u00a0found that 95% of asymptomatic patients had some type of “abnormal” finding, but just 1.8% of these findings were indeed cancer.\u00a0Research<\/a>\u00a0has varied on just how many\u00a0incidental findings<\/a>\u00a0occur from these\u00a0tests<\/a>.<\/p>\n Andrew Huberman attends healf.HX26 Served by smoov on June 20, 2026 in London.<\/p>\n In case you missed: How often do full-body MRIs actually find cancer?<\/a><\/p>\n In general, “whole body MRI is in its clinical infancy,” Dr. Manjiri Dighe<\/a>, professor of radiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, previously told USA TODAY. “While it is noninvasive and highly sensitive, it lacks the large-scale longitudinal data needed to prove that it saves more lives than it complicates through overdiagnosis.” With low availability and high cost, for the average person, it remains a luxury item not an “evidence-based medical necessity,” Dighe says. The tests range from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on which sections of the body are scanned, and are not covered by insurance.<\/p>\n In clinical practice, “I don’t personally see a lot of incidental lesions that are found on whole body MRI that I end up intervening on,” DiGiorgio adds. “But I probably have colleagues that do, and so I don’t want to say it doesn’t happen ever, but I think it’s incredibly rare.”<\/p>\n Overall, DiGiorgio is skeptical that full-body MRIs<\/a> will meaningfully improve public health but says people can certainly pursue it if they’re willing to pay for it.<\/p>\n![\"Andrew](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/usa_today_life_698\/8fd72561b2c8e2677a171d7a1c6231df.jpeg\"\/)
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