Article Source: msnbc.com
from:msnbc.comThe frustratingly inconclusive results from the world's biggest study so far into possible links between mobile phone use and cancer are symptomatic of problems that can dog scientific research like this.
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People have been looking at this since 1999. It reminds me of the studies done after color TV came out, and people said "radium" from the sets was causing cancer. It's all nonsense brought by people who "think" they are experts. Let it go. Mobile phones don't cause cancer. My guess is talking and texting while driving causes more death than cancer ever will.
Forget "radium", old style TVs produced of X-Rays, which is unavoidable when you have 20 keV electron beam hitting a metal target (i.e. the mask that is necessary for color tv to function).
Another $30 million dollars wasted on useless "hypothesis" research.
Now all the phone companies will do is have part of their "terms of use" agreement state their phones don't "exclusively" cause brain cancer.
Randythemoderate,
With all due respect to you, you should have said, "well shielded mobile phones" do not cause cancer.
A "well shielded mobile phone" is an oxymoron. A phone uses EMR to communicate with the network. If it's "well shielded", you don't have a signal. There is no such thing.
cancer cluster research for years has pointed to EMR (Electro-Magnetic Radiation) has shown to cause Cancer, whether from Power lines or Broadcast Towers or from Outer-space...
The study I want to see is the one showing the impact of our RF and Microwave Radiation Communications on the Global Temperatures
Why couldn't the researchers simply gather each participant's past cell phone bills to get a accurate measure of past cell phone usage?
"cancer cluster research" is so flawed that it should be completely ignored at this point.
I am not convinced one way or the other. They have done so many of these studies and it's always inconclusive however it's always suspect when cell phone providers are funding part of the study. Brain cancer is on the increase and nobody seems to know why. I think cell phones are suspect, along with artificial sweeteners and just the fact that cancer alone is on the upswing.. and most cancers will eventually spread to brain. They seem to follow that pattern, liver, lungs, bone then brain . I have a friend that dev. a benign tumor behind his left ear . He was constantly on his cell due to the nature of his job and just the fact that he was a chatty Cathy.. coincidence? Possibly but I don't think so.
ledgeroo
Primary brain tumors are on the rise but the incidence is still very low. Fewer than 8 out of 100,000 people develop brain tumors as compared to prostate cancer which develops in 145 people per 100,000. More than likely the reason is due to increased diagnosis because of improved technologies in Cat Scans, MRI's and PET scans.
Your example of brain cancer from other organs is called metastatic cancer which is much different than primary brain cancer.
dumbasses... why not just obtain permission to view their cell usage records? If people who had tumors believe that their mobile phones are responsible they will inflate this amount. Pretty simple psychology.
Remove subjective human factors from the analysis, whenever possible.
I agree wholeheartedly!
It is absolutely ridiculous to even suggest that they were doing an impartial study when using the described methods. Cell phone records should have been a mandatory component. It is laughable to think that anyone would rely on a persons memory over a record that is calculated down to the second.
I was listening to NPR recently, and I heard that when you go through all of the studies, it comes out about half and half. But when you throw out any study funded by a phone/mobile company, the results show 75% of studies concluded that there was some physiological risk to using cell phones. Can anyone confirm or refute that?
Maybe in the end it is like those full body scanners at the airports now. They are estimated to cause an additional 10 cases of cancer a year, which is not enough for them to be considered dangerous to the population. I guess it's all about your comfort level.
it is about your comfort level. I've never had a cell and don't want one they are obviously a negative to me but most people are oblivious. most people used to smoke cigarrettes too. people like to think they have evolved and are somehow better than past generations but this is one case where I believe they are dead wrong (cell use/dependence)
Well, we now have billions of guinea pigs all over the world talking on cellphones every day. Keep your eyes on the statistics for brain cancer in the coming decades; we'll get our answer - too late, I'm afraid. I, for one, am going to abstain from the experiment as much as possible.
If there were anything to this, people who work around high power radio transmitters all day would show increased cancer incidence. But they don't. A study sponsored by the IBEW of broadcast technicians who worked around high power radio and TV transmitters since 1950 showed no increase in cancer incidence. A study of radio amateurs (who operate radio transmitters in their homes up to 1000 times as powerful as a cell phone) showed no increase in incidence of cancer. Physicists, who know the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, know of no possible mechanism for radio waves to cause cancer. Etc.
The only people who continue to call for linkage are those who make their living "studying" , "protesting", or "litigating" such faux health "concerns". These people have an obvious motive to continue to stir up needless and baseless fears.
maybe,
I assure you unshielded cell radiation will cook human tissue whether it causes cancer or not. That qualifies as ionizing.
Actually, no it won't. The EMR produced by a cell phone isn't powerful enough to cook things. The tiny heating effect that EMR could produce is lost to the environment through convection and conduction before it can possibly cook anything.
The microwave oven, invented as a Radar-Range by Raytheon, was thought of because walking through a magnetron's radiation melted an engineer's pocketed chocolate bar. I assure you, that Maggy was in the kilowatt power range. Still, too much anything is not good.
The litany of things that are more likely to kill you but you ignore every day is very long.
I Suppose if you are one of those "connected" people with a cellphone against your ear five, six hours a day, you may be exercising risky behavior. Most times I use it via blue-tooth and I use a cell for maybe one hour per week. A contemporary cellphone has only milliwatts of power, unlike the old 3 watt bag phone I first used.
I spent years with my face inches from a Tektronix Oscilloscope. Maybe it caused my cataracts, maybe not.
Too much exposure to anything is not good!
well that was was a waste of time...all that work only to be invalidated.
Wow, lots of people falling prey to the illusory correlation bias. They're seeing an increase in brain tumors and an increase in cell phone usage, so assume the cell phone usage causes the brain tumors. Let's take that assumption to another situation. In Chicago, they found one year that as ice cream consumption increased, murders increased. If you use the same logic, ice cream must be causing murders. Of course that isn't true, it turns out a third variable was causing the increase in both: Summer time. Most likely there is a third variable here as well. It could be any number of things, but the one I tend to believe in the most is job stress. Stress has been shown to increase all sorts of health problems, and job stress right now is at an all time high. Many of the most stressful jobs also involve being stuck on the cell phone constantly. Anyways, just a hypothesis.
The big problem here is it's literally impossible to do experimental research on the area. To do so you would need to control which people used the cell phone and which didn't for 30 years. You just can't do that. The best you can do is quasiexperimental or correlation research, both of which are subject to a multitude of biases. The fact of the matter still stands as well, even if it does cause brain tumors you're still far more likely to die from a car accident than a cell phone. So does that mean you should avoid all cars or sue the car makers because of it?
That's an excellent analysis. Too many people confuse correlation with causation. It is much easier to jump to a conclusion that suits one's own biases than to accept that sometimes the world is a complex place with a number of interacting factors.
The whole argument is stupid and unnecessary. Use a bluetooth earpiece and shield the cellphone in a full wrap battery pack holster, the battery shields the wearer from the very low EMR. It provides hands free useage for safer driving.
Just wear tinfoil on your head. Not only does it protect you from catching cancer from your cell phone but it keeps people from reading your thoughts and protects you from gamma radiation caused by microwave ovens. Tinfoil is the best thing since duct tape!
What is *Fuzz*. The *fuzz* that comes to mind is referenced in an old ZZ top song. Thousands of sons and daughters buried their mothers and fathers and other family members over the past 50 years just after the *Fuzz* was released about cigarette smoking from manufactures. Years later we found out they knew all along the smoking caused* lung and throat cancer also heart disease.
We are not discussing the *Yerkes Primate Center* we are real people. There should be no *Fuzz* at all. Cell phones have been in use over 10 years or longer, that should be long enough to determine what effects they have on people and if they are a hazard.
Americans' addiction to the phone is amazing. I must be one of the strange ones because I try to be away from my phone as much as possible in order to get some quiet time. Who needs someone calling you every minute? Not to mention the health hazards. I know, when you say there are health issues, the addicts get real defensive, much like a drug addict or an alcoholic. What is really stupid is that all risks can be avoided by simply using a headset or as I do, use the speaker phone feature so my head never comes close to the phone. Of course, when everyone gets cancer, they will expect me to pay for their stupidity.
JobSeeker -- good post. Years ago someone said to me that people who have to talk all the time are uncomfortable with themselves. I know that figures into it for the true cell phone addicts. For the younger ones, teenagers, it's probably about the life-or-death need to appear cool.
Here's a study we can all do. Get a pencil and paper.
Measure out two containers of equal parts water using like containers. Pour the water from one container into a pot and boil the water.
Pour the other into a microwavable container.
Bring both containers of water to a boil for three minutes. Remove the containers and let cool to ambient room temperature.
Go purchase two like starter plants. Your choice. Label these plants, one Boiled and one microwaved. Water them as you would normally when starting new plants. Monitor their progress and appearance daily.
See what happens.
Why didn't the people just look on their phone bill and add up the minutes used? They could also get the duration time of each call giving them a quantative mesure of radation recieved. The "scientist"? should of gotten permission to recieve call info from the phone companies to start with.
Did they not mri everyone to see if anyone had a tumor?
I don't know much about what the phone emits, but I did accidentally get my BBCurve close to a led flashlight and the flashlight lit up with lights very bright. That tells me the the phone is putting out enough of whatever it is to cause the flashlight to turn on by itself. That can't be good for our head.
So, no word at all about what the study "seemed" to suggest? Why?
Does anyone actually believe the telecommunications industry would allow any negative conclusive evidence to be released? Not!
Useless study...people are too subjective. What has happened to science? Makes me wonder about the theory of evolution, we are not evolving....we are reverting!
WOW!!!!!! You can almost "taste" the disappointment among the media types and do-gooders. Let me see... a study($30 million) that relied on anecdotal data with no paper back up. I now understand how Odumbo got elected. It is all about what we want. Not what is. True science is dead in this country.
Has no one thought to just look at their phone bills?
Mine lists the date, time and duration of each call I make.
No 'recall' bias there at all, just don't pay any mind to the
weird or strangely fuzzy costs for services.
The best solution to be 100% safe is to use Air Tubes Headset. There are several models and even a wireless - Bluetooth stereo headset based on the hollow tubes earphone to conduct the sound to the user ear without any metal wired. My recommended supplier is www.smart-safe.com
CTIA–The Wireless Association®, on behalf of the wireless industry, would like to highlight some third party health and scientific organizations statements about the Interphone Study.
World Health Organization (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer Interphone Project, Interphone Study Group: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/ije/press_releases/freepdf/dyq079.pdf
“Overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones. There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at the highest exposure levels, but biases and error prevent a causal interpretation. The possible effects of long-term heavy use of mobile phones require further investigation…Much biological research has been done in recent years on possible biological effects of RF fields. This work covers in vitro and in vivo exposure, alone and in combination with other physical or chemical agents, and has found no evidence that RF fields are carcinogenic in laboratory rodents or cause DNA damage in cells in culture.”
WHO Fact Sheet on Mobile Phones: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheetsfs193/en/index.html
“A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established for mobile phone use.”
U.S. FDA: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/UCM212306.pdf
“Although research is ongoing, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says that available scientific evidence—including World Health Organization (WHO) findings released May 17, 2010—shows no increased health risk due to radiofrequency (RF) energy, a form of electromagnetic radiation that is emitted by cell phones.”
National Institute of Health National Cancer Institute: http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/Interphone2010Results
“Interphone, an international collaboration, and the largest study of its kind to date, reported that overall, cell phone users have no increased risk of two of the most common forms of brain cancer -- glioma and meningioma. Furthermore, there was no evidence of risk with progressively increasing number of calls, longer call time, or time since the start of the use of cell phones. However, for the small proportion of study participants who used cell phones the most – measured as cumulative call time over their lifetime – there was a suggestion of increased risk of glioma, though the authors call this finding inconclusive.”
Finally, CTIA has developed a website which provides additional information from around the world on this matter. Please visit: http://www.cellphonehealthfacts.com
By: John Walls, Vice President of Public Affairs for CTIA
there is a sac surrounding the brain that, when a cell phone is placed to the ear, thins out and allows waves to penetrate and influence the brain in various ways. Causing tumors and brain development issues are definitely possible effects from this.
Marlon Brando out!