Sarah Blackburn was one of many who jumped in on the hype to get a full-body MRI. The test as a preventative screening tool has been gaining popularity in recent years. Many already healthy individuals take the scan hoping to be reassured that nothing is out of the ordinary. But Blackburn had quite the opposite experience.
“I had a full-body MRI just for fun. No symptoms whatsoever,” Blackburn says in a viral TikTok video about her experience earlier this year. “Now I am scheduled to have an organ removed in two weeks.”
Blackburn decided to take Prenuvo’s $2,500 full-body MRI in Houston—the fast-growing company has been expanding across the U.S. after launching in Vancouver in 2018. While the scan is not a replacement for recommended routine screenings like mammograms and pap smears at your doctor’s office, the company claims its 60-minute test is an early detection and preventive health tool, scanning for hundreds of conditions and “silent killers like aneurysms,” according to the site. But for many, it’s just more data to store away because often, there is nothing to act on, which was the case with me when, as part of a story, I underwent a Prenuvo full-body MRI last year.
“I was so excited to get my results. I don’t know what I thought we were going to find. Now, looking back, I was just so certain that this was going to give me peace of mind and that they were not going to find anything serious,” Blackburn says.
After the scan, people receive a report that outlines each organ of the body and any informational or important findings. “I was treating it like a spa day. I was so excited, and taking pictures in my little scrubs,” Blackburn shares on TikTok. “It did kind of feel like a spa day, until it didn’t.”
Four days after her scan around 8:30 p.m., Blackburn was alerted that her results were ready. She posted screenshots of the results in her video.
“I went into a full blown panic attack,” she says. Marked in red letters under the circulatory system category, the words “important finding” sat. She had a splenic artery aneurysm, according to the report.
The finding’s description noted that while “the majority of splenic artery aneurysms are incidental findings … if a splenic artery aneurysm ruptures, there is a one in three mortality rate.”
“It was a really dark and hard two months, where I was spiraling and freaking out and seeing a lot of doctors and pretty much treating my body like glass because I had no idea about this,” Blackburn shares. “I literally felt like a ticking time bomb was found inside my body.”
After months of deliberation, Blackburn decided to get her spleen removed, and tells People that she had, in fact, had a lesion on a 2020 ultrasound that she had never learned about. “Read your radiology reports,” Blackburn told People. “I did not read it. I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to get told everything that needs attention.’ But, that was not the case.” A follow-up CT scan after the Prenuvo results found two anyeurums in her splenic artery.
While in some cases the full-body scans can uncover an important finding, it can also cause undue anxiety about things that are still in the range of normal, Dr. Matthew Davenport, the William Martel Collegiate professor of radiology and service chief and vice chair in the Department of Radiology at Michigan Medicine, previously told Fortune.
“Knowing is not always to your advantage if what you learn doesn’t have a clear pathway. Sometimes when you learn a piece of information, you can be misdirected as to the importance of it,” he told Fortune. “You can learn something about yourself, but it can actually increase your uncertainty.”
Often, people may go down unnecessary rabbit holes and additional testing, he adds.
But for Blackburn, the scan caused her to act—and was, in fact, incredibly useful for her health. “I will be starting the journey of life without a spleen, which I think is going to be okay. It’s going to be better than having to live in fear of having a ruptured aneurism,” she says in the video.
Still, she says she has mixed feelings about recommending the scans to others, especially those who have severe health anxiety.
“I feel grateful,” Blackburn says. “I am happy that I know about this and had the chance to decide what I wanted to do moving forward, but … for the people who already have existing health anxiety I truly don’t know if I can recommend it.”
Companies are already facing major pressure to scrap or change their DEI programs. Now further guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) is encouraging employees to join in on the fight by investigating DEI policies at their own companies.
“These technical assistance documents will help employees know their rights and help employers take action to avoid unlawful DEI-related discrimination,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas wrote in a statement about the new guidance. The move follows similar recent anti-DEI efforts from Lucas. On Monday, she sent letters to 20 law firms requesting information about their diversity, equity, and inclusion-related employment practices.
What do the new DOJ and EEOC employee guidelines mean for workplaces around the U.S.? They add to the heightened culture of fear for employers who are already nervous about trying to preserve their DEI policies in a tough political climate, says David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at New York University
“Employers are already very nervous, and feeling threatened with civil compliance investigations,” he says. “This latest guidance is pouring fuel on an already raging anti-DEI fire.”
But while these documents seem daunting at first glance, he notes that they don’tchange any current laws. And he says that the bar for claiming DEI-related discrimination is very high.
“I think guidance like this could make people unnecessarily worried about, ‘Oh no, what if our DEI trainings are creating a hostile work environment?’ When 99.9% of trainings don’t actually do that,” he says.
In short, companies should make sure that their programs are bulletproof, but avoid scrapping them altogether, says Nonnie L. Shivers, attorney and office managing shareholder at legal firm Ogletree Deakins. She says many court cases have supported an employer’s right to train their employees, and create an equal opportunity workplace.
“Employers should continue to conduct privileged assessments of their DEI programs and evaluate risk, leaning into existing civil rights law for what is legal as the law has not changed,” she says.
Good morning. CFOs and chief information officers (CIOs) steer technology to meet business needs. That also means justifying large AI investments. But when it comes to measuring the benefits of AI investments, the two C-suite leaders are not on the same page.
A new report by KPMG reveals that more than a third (39%) of CFOs and 49% of CIOs consider the definition of technology ROI to be a contentious area. The findings are based on a survey of 102 CFOs and CIOs and their direct reports.
Not only do they disagree on ROI, but also about who holds primary responsibility for AI and technology investments. Fifty-nine percent of CFOs claim this responsibility, while 61% of CIOs see it as their prerogative—a recipe for a potential power struggle.
The leaders also have different perspectives on whether collaboration works. About 57% of CFOs think collaboration can significantly improve operational efficiency, compared to 37% of CIOs. And just over half of CFOs believe collaboration can enhance risk management, while only 29% of CIOs agree.
“CFOs and CIOs need to collaborate to execute strategy and achieve goals,” Marcus Murph, KPMG U.S. head of technology consulting, said in a statement.
There are some CIOs who do see the value of collaboration. For example, my colleague John Kell recently talked with Kim Anstett, the CIO at Trellix, who said she met with every department at the cybersecurity provider to discuss possible uses for AI agents.
They came up with a massive list—over 100. But Anstett played a role in paring down the list and has begun a few pilots of the technology. “From a strategy perspective, initially we will limit the number of add-ons we purchase,” Anstett told Kell. “We’re looking at it from a cost perspective.”
However, CEOs and boards are placing CFOs at the center of strategic AI investments, especially if it’s big and costly. Also, many companies are seeking tech-savvy finance talent. Of the 1,000 job listings for CFOs in January 2025, 27% included AI in the job description, research by software company Datarails finds.
The ongoing debate over the ownership of business transformation continues, according to Sanjay Sehgal, KPMG U.S. advisory head of markets. “CIOs are focused on building and securing technology, and CFOs on leveraging the infrastructure to refine processes,” Sehgal said in a statement. “Yet, both see themselves as responsible for driving business transformation.”
Open communication, developing a unified strategy, and establishing a common framework and clear definitions of how to measure ROI, are among KPMG’s suggestions for CFOs and CIOs to see eye to eye.
What’s your perspective on the CFO-CIO dynamic? Send me an email and let me know.
Germany’s move to unlock hundreds of billions of euros in debt-financed defense and infrastructure spending passed its final legislative hurdle on Friday when lawmakers in the upper house of parliament in Berlin approved the measures.
An alliance of Chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz’s conservatives, the Social Democrats and the Greens rammed the unprecedented investment package through the lower house on Tuesday and together controlled enough votes in the Bundesrat, where Germany’s 16 federal states are represented, to ensure its backing there too.
The bill passed with 53 votes in favor, more than the required two-thirds majority of 46 and paving the way for President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to sign it and submit it for publication in the Federal Law Gazette.
Investors have been closely watching the passage of the measures, which end decades of German austerity and usher in a new period of deficit spending designed to boost Europe’s biggest economy and modernize creaking infrastructure.
The armed forces is also a focus, with Merz and the Social Democrats — his prospective partners in the next government — committed to a massive military buildup after years of neglect, as well as continued backing for Ukraine.
Merz said this week that wherever possible defense contracts should go to European manufacturers. Contractors ranging from Thyssenkrupp AG to BAE Systems Plc and smaller drone makers stand to gain the most, Bloomberg reported Monday.
Merz and the SPD have been forced to act after President Donald Trump pulled back from US commitments to European security, laying bare the increased threat to the region from President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Meanwhile, Germany’s economy has stagnated for two years and Merz has pledged to tackle structural problems including high energy costs and tangled bureaucracy.
Markets have generally reacted positively to the fiscal shift, which Bloomberg economists say should help bolster growth across the euro region.
“If you look at Germany from the outside, what we’re hearing in Europe and from countries beyond Europe is an overwhelmingly positive assessment of what we have agreed,” Merz said earlier Friday at a FAZ newspaper forum in Berlin.
Germany’s Spending Package:
Defense spending in excess of 1% of gross domestic product will be released from constitutional borrowing restrictions
Special, off-budget infrastructure fund will be empowered to borrow as much as €500 billion ($542 billion) over 12 years
Of that amount €100 billion will be transferred to the Climate and Transition Fund and states will receive €100 billion for regional projects
Germany’s 16 states will have leeway to borrow as much as 0.35% of GDP, or the equivalent of around €16 billion, instead of having to run balanced budgets
After the passage of the spending bill, attention turns to the coalition talks. Merz’s conservatives and the Social Democrats aim to have an agreement in place by Easter at the latest, though there have been rumblings in recent days that the negotiations could drag on longer.
A coalition deal would pave the way for Merz to secure Bundestag approval to take over as chancellor from Scholz, who has been running the government in a caretaker capacity since the CDU/CSU’s February election victory.
“The next German government must put the economy back on a growth path — and this also requires unpopular decisions,” Tanja Gönner, head of the BDI industry lobby, said Thursday.
“There can and must be no way around bold structural reforms, efficient use of budget funds and clear priorities for investments,” she added.
Entertainment8 years ago