REVISITING CELL PHONES AND MALIGNANT GLIOMAS

Representatives of the cell-phone industry in the US continually assure us that cell-phones don't cause cancer since there is "no known mechanism" for radiation from their instruments to affect brain tissues. While the National Cancer Institute asssures us that the incidence of brain cancer has remained relatively steady over the years.

On the other-hand, the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the US-- a data base that should count heavily--has detected a rise in some forms of brain cancer. According to officials from that organization, the cause the increase in these lesions is still "uncertain" and "needs further study" . (See: LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus9the-2009sep09,0,7825195.column downloaded September 12, 2009.)

One suspects the authors in the American press such as the LA Times piece above, purposefully take a "on the fence" position. Their reports are so non-committal they seems designed only to confuse and titillate the reader. It is well to remember that in the US, as Calvin Coolidge said so famously, and with such innocence and brevity--"The business of America is business". Meaning if you're making money here in some capacity --the government is in there with you. It will do next to nothing to control your efforts (baring perhaps a release of radioactive nuclear waste) to restrict your profit making! So don't expect to hear any early alerts or warnings from that quarter. Trade groups are suspect for good reason. While scientists are often on the payroll of the very industries they are evaluating. And for newspapers-- remember they are in the business of selling advertisments.

Thus we can not expect any real "plain talk" until an verified health-care bill is passed some day and the government and insurance companies have an actual monetary stake in our citizen's health and long-term welfare. Until then, please look elsewhere for your health-related information.

Often that's what I do. I scan the foreign press--where "business bias" is somewhat modulated by other factors. Then again, sometimes I find it is better to evaluate how people are reacting to certain types of information, rather than to what they say or write. For that reason I was particularly alerted by Jeff Lean’s piece in the UK's Telegraph newspaper (on line) entitled: “Mobiles and Cancer—The Plot Thickens” (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/6175172/Mobiles-and-cancer-the-plot-thickens.html) down loaded September 11, 2009.

My proverbial ears perked up as I read Jeff's statement in the Telegram: “The official European Environment Agency (EEA) is sounding a discreet alarm. And the French government is so concerned, that it is developing measures to ban the (cell-phone) devices from primary schools, stop their promotion to children under 12, and prevent them being sold without a headset to heavily reduce radiation exposure. ” Try to imagine that happening here in the US. The cell-phone lobby would have gone "postal" at such a move. Perhaps that is one of the underlying causes that the EU countries enjoy so much longer life span and reduced disease incidence while spending less than half of what we do on health care.

Those few sentences gave me pause. Lean added that “evidence is increasing that radiation from handsets present a cancer hazard, particularly to children and to those who use their phones for more than a decade.”

Furthermore, Lean's piece states that recent studies from Sweden, where heavy mobile phone-use began years before other areas in Europe (and the US), have now included these early users in their evaluations. The resulting research indicates that long term users "are about twice as likely to get malignant gliomas – an incurable brain cancer – and importantly these occur on the side of the head where they held the handset. Lean warns that "as the latency period for cancers is usually 20 to 30 years, this may indicate a much bigger toll to come.”

Other Swedish results evaluating the effects of cell phone use on children and teenagers "found that people who started using the phones before the age of 20 were five times more likely to contract the cancers, and eight times more prone to get them on the appropriate side of the head.”

If these warning prove valid, the more than two billion people using mobile phones around the world today may be subject to the threat of malignant glioma. This is a very troubling thought. Lean notes that in Britain – "where there are now nearly two cell phones in use per person – and where at least 90 per cent of 16-year-olds have their own handsets, as do more than 40 per cent of primary pupils."

Prof David Carpenter, dean of the school of Public Health at the State University of New York, Albany, flatly predicts an “epidemic of brain cancers” among today’s children as they grow up.”

I think those facts are pretty scary. I would be very careful using the cell-phones close to your body…or too close to your young children.

Get the picture?

rjk