Radiologists criticize noted neuroscientist podcaster’s claims supporting whole-body MRI

Radiologists and other physicians are criticizing a noted neuroscientist podcaster’s recent public endorsement of whole-body MRI screening among healthy patients. 

Andrew D. Huberman, PhD, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford Medicine, voiced support for these scans in a recent social media post to his 1.8 million followers on X.com. He questioned controversies surrounding the exams—provided by startups such as Prenuvo and Function at $2,500 a pop for the former—while sharing his own previous experiences with their effectiveness. 

Currently, no medical society recommends MR imaging of healthy patients, citing a lack of clinical evidence and dangers around unnecessary follow-up testing. 

“The whole-body MRI thing is controversial for obvious reasons,” Huberman, who hosts the twice-weekly Huberman Lab audio show, wrote Aug. 1. “It’s costly and there are a lot of false positives. But I have neurosurgeon friends who tell me they do lifesaving surgeries *every month* [because] people got full body MRI merely [because] they [were] curious and found operable issues.”

Huberman may have other motives for making these claims, USA Today notes in a report published Aug. 5. He currently serves as a scientific advisor to Function, a celebrity backed longevity firm that entered the whole-body MRI business last year through the acquisition of Ezra. Huberman’s work includes receiving financial compensation and taking part in sponsored content, according to a disclaimer on his website. He did not respond to USA Today’s requests for comment. 

Radiologists and other physicians took to social media to criticize Huberman’s claims that neurosurgeons take on monthly cases stemming from WBMRIs. 

“Neuroradiologist here. This is fantasy,” wrote Francis Deng, MD, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore. 

“Popularizing direct-to-consumer whole body MRI without medical indications will only siphon away critical medical resources in this country,” Deng wrote in a follow-up post, which included a link to the USA Today story. “We have a radiologist shortage. We have an MRI technologist shortage. Waiting lines for MRI are getting longer.”

“A lie. Actually, there are no neurosurgeons who ever told him such a thing,” responded Kurt Harris, MD, a neuroradiologist based in Santa Barbara, California. 

“Imagine sitting on a board for a company that promotes whole body MRI then making tall claims like this without disclosing that [conflict of interest] or how he gets paid for promotional posts. Why do most of these ‘Longevity Gurus’ turn into Grifters?” wrote Shariq Shamim, MD, an interventional cardiologist based in Virginia.  

“Not a single neurosurgeon I know has ever done a surgery based on this. I guess it's possible ... But it's highly unlikely,” added Pradheep J. Shanker, MD, a radiologist based in Ohio. 

"As a neurosurgeon, there are very few things we operate on if they are truly asymptomatic," Anthony DiGiorgio, DO, MHA, a physician and professor with the University of California, San Francisco, told USA Today in an interview. "Unruptured intracranial aneurysms are probably the only one. Even then, the data on number needed to treat for treatment to be effective is extremely difficult to determine."

The debate is the latest in a long line of conversations over the burgeoning popularity of these scans. One recent analysis published in Clinical Imaging found that patients are increasingly discussing whole-body MRIs on social media, presenting an opportunity for radiologists to engage in the conversation. Two radiologists in May shared an editorial in JAMA, urging consumers to avoid paying for WBMRIs, noting the risk of nonspecific findings that can cause emotional harm, among other concerns. 

Physicians also debated the perils of screening asymptomatic individuals in dueling editorials published by JACR in 2024. 

“In conversations with numerous colleagues, I have tried to understand the vigor of reactions which the whole-body MRI debate engenders. In the absence of clear data on benefits, practicing clinicians clearly feel a strong moral obligation to protect patients from as of yet unquantified harm,” wrote Daniel K. Sodickson, MD, PhD, former chief of innovation in the department of radiology at NYU Langone Health, who now works for Function. “This is a principled stance to take as an individual. If we take this approach too uniformly as a field, however, we risk being merely protective rather than proactive. There is a fundamental tension between innovation and regulation and settling too simply for one or the other risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”