Comments on: Do Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors?

By: erichirota

erichirota — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:54:46 +0000

You can see how reluctant they are to say anything too substantial because of all the pressure on them from the military and the private sector. WHO’s international agency for research on cancer actually did a study and found that incidences of brain tumors were more than doubled in industrialized nations, so I think that the problem is a little biut more real than they are making it out to be. My neighbor actually had a dish from http://www.satelliteinternet.com on his balcony about 3 feet away from his bed for 10 years and he was diagnosed with a brain tumor recently. I know that doesn’t make them correlated, but it def doesn’t look good either.

By: juster

juster — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:08:24 +0000

I’m pretty convinced that cell phones do emit enough radiation to cause problems and that it makes sense to protect oneself. There’s a great research article found here:

http://www.mthr.org.uk/research_projects/documents/PorteretalEindhoven_000.pdf

One of the recommendations is to use a ferrite bead attached to a wired headset to reduce the radiation that travels up the wire. I bought mine from http://www.brainbeads.com, and they also have them at http://www.mercola.com

Even if the jury is still out, that doesn’t mean the verdict is innocent.

By: NeuroLogica Blog » More on Cell Phones and Brain Cancer

NeuroLogica Blog » More on Cell Phones and Brain Cancer — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:06:31 +0000

[...] year I wrote an entry summarizing the evidence concerning the association of cell phone use and brain tumors. The bottom [...]

By: Science-Based Medicine » Cell phones and cancer again, or: Oh, no! My cell phone’s going to give me cancer!

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:30:32 +0000

[...] fearless leader Steve Novella also summarized the state of the evidence regarding cell phone use and the risk of cancer and [...]

By: andrew

andrew — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:45:58 +0000

Arthur Firstenberg is making another news round, claiming allergies to WIFI in public buildings:

http://kob.com/article/stories/S451152.shtml?cat=517 and http://www.crn.com/networking/208400676

“I get chest pain,” Arthur Firstenberg told the TV station. “It doesn’t go away right away. I suffer for a couple of days.”

Firstenberg, 57, added: “If I walk into a room of a building that has Wi-Fi, my most immediate sign is that the front of my right thigh goes numb. If I don’t leave, I’ll get short of breath, chest pains and the numbness will spread.”

By: NeuroLogica Blog » Wireless Technology and Autism

NeuroLogica Blog » Wireless Technology and Autism — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 15:03:15 +0000

[...] George Carlo is a legitimate researcher, and has been involved with research into the health effects of cell phones for years. He is at one end of the spectrum of this debate, however, claiming that the evidence [...]

By: TheBlackCat

TheBlackCat — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:46:22 +0000

There is a common thread here including homeopathy, vaccine autism, aspartame. There is no strong evidence supporting the conclusion and no plausible mechanism by which it could work, yet people still hold to it. Meta studies that include potentially or outright flawed regular studies in their analysis find an effect, but the larger and better-controlled the study the less effect is found. This is, of course, the correct way to look at it. These are all pseudoscience. What I fail to see is any difference with the current cell phone controversy. The arguments you make for not concluding that the effect is bogus could just as easily apply to homeopathy or vaccines causing autism. Your suggestion that people do certain things to be careful because the jury is still out could apply just as well to autism or aspartame. What makes cell phones causing cancer any more plausible than vaccines causing autism or homeopathy curing people?

I don’t think any of those things are plausible myself, but neither do I think cell phones causing cancer is plausible. It all looks the same to me. If any effect is found there are either possible flaws in the study or the effects are at the edge of statistical significance. Meta-analyses can show an effect but large-scale, well-controlled studies do not. There is no plausible physiological mechanism by which the effect could be caused. Where does the difference lie that leads you to think this is plausible while all the other effects you criticize are not?

By: dougsmith

dougsmith — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:54:57 +0000

Just noticed this thread. I was at a talk on this very subject given last summer in Bilbao, Spain by two professors from the University of País Vasco. It was organized by the spanish Círculo Escéptico and the Center for Inquiry as well as a few other local organizations. There is a short writeup about this, in spanish unfortunately, here:

http://blogs.elcorreodigital.com/index.php/magonia/2007/07/03/dos_cientificos_valientes_contra_la_sinr

I also started a thread about it on the CFI web forum here:

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/2652/

The long and short of their conclusion is that there is no credible evidence that cellphone radiation is of any danger. Cellphone radiation lacks the energy necessary to break chemical bonds, which is the only known method of action for cancer-causing radiation. All it can do is to heat tissue. The maximum allowed heating capacity of a cellphone tower is on the order of a half of a degree centigrade in a human body, which is something less than you’d get on a sunny day.

This dovetails nicely with physicist Robert Park’s treatment of microwave and powerline radiation in his book Voodoo Science. It also fits nicely with the World Health Organization’s take on the possibility of cancer from cellphones:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs193/en/

“Current scientific evidence indicates that exposure to RF fields, such as those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations, is unlikely to induce or promote cancers.”

By: edyong209

edyong209 — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:56:42 +0000

The thing about that recent meta-analysis is that they found that, overall, mobile phone use (even long-term use) had no significant effect on the risk of glioma or acoustic neuroma. That very simple and very key negative result was not reported in the abstract or in any of the subsequent press coverage.

The analysis also found that mobile phone use was linked to a significantly increased risk of a tumour on the same side of the head that people reported holding their phones too. That could well be due to recall bias i.e. people with brain tumours mis-reporting the side-of-head they held their phones on. Especially since a few of the studies included in the meta-analysis also found a reduced risk of cancer in the opposite side of the head.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:27:31 +0000

johnny: Well, in Steve’s case, it’s no doubt because the studies that have been done have all (or mostly) come back negative, unlike the cell phone studies which tend to be mixed.

I’m not a doctor, though. I’m an electrical engineer. So for me, it’s a matter of frequency. AC power is typically run at very low frequency (50-60Hz). These frequencies are biologically harmless.

Cell phones, on the other hand, run at much higher frequencies that could have plausible biological action, particularly the newer technologies that run in the microwave range.

(Of course, it’s not a simple matter of high frequency = bad, but rather that the frequency ranges that actually cause damage to tissue are all much higher than the frequencies used in power transmission.)