viz.

Nate, I think the idea of "practically meaningless" photos is the place to begin with these images. These images, which as you note need a trained professional for interpretation, unravel Sontag's assertion that we need to know what a picture is of before we can evaluate it. Scientific images, which are finding their way into numerous channels of public circulation (see particularly procedural crime dramas), have a particular kind of authorization in their very display. Whether or not you can tell what is different about your knee isn't really what the images are meant to accomplish. In their very reception, they me be the confirmation of scientific authority over the body. Even if we can't tell what is different or what is being shown, we can see it is science, and that we are, as viewers, encouraged to particpate in the positivist discovery of science.

Well, the doc's explanation of why they hand out this images was even more underwhelming than I would have imagined. He claims it's just so that patients have a record of the procedure. But this seems bogus because: 1) the photos hardly serve as a complete or reliable record; and, 2) only orthopaedic surgeons seem to do this regularly. After the dozens of x-rays, CT scans, MRIs, endoscopes and other medical imaging procedures I have undergone, only the orthopaedic surgeons have sent me home with my own copy of the pictures, which still leaves me thinking that there's more to this.

I personally don't see this as the positivism of science perpetuating science-is-all sorts of myths much as I see it as perhaps smart marketing on the part of surgeons. There's a tactile-ness to a photo that I think people crave, even, or especially, in cases like these, where most patients really don't know what's going on and are already at the mercy of their physician's knowledge (which becomes tantamount to authority).