Seriously, we’re two years out from the greatest near-depression the world has experienced in 80 years, not a single executive has been charged or prosecuted, and this very same Web site not 24 hours ago posted a Rolling Stone article detailing the depraved depths of greed that occurred as a RESULT of said near-depression, yet you still believe executives would fear prosecution? Please, come on. The last people to be prosecuted for anything in the Western world are executives with plausible deniability and massive legal resources to protect them.

There’s a lot of belief in hoodoo in the U.S., things like copper bracelets, hologram bracelets, magnet cures, that monosodium glutamate makes them sick, etc. Americans thrive on quick fixes, superstition, and scapegoating.

Many of us have no basic understanding of biology or physics. Much less the motivation to do research on anything, even to the point of just looking something up on Wikipedia. If they say it on teevee, it must be true.

And we’re terribly susceptible to suggestion. You can try this at home: Next time you’re with friends, pick an object, then ascribe some ridiculous property to it in conversation. Then later, comment on it again, and ask your friends if they sense that property too, e.g., “This Fuji water kinda tastes like bubblegum”, or “My TV remote makes a high-pitched whine when I change channels, do you hear that?”, or pick up a random rock from outside, and make up a story about how you bought it at a health food store and that it’s supposed to make you get a natural high if you hold it in your armpit for a couple of minutes. Be sure to mention magnetism and ions, and special rare earth metals. Or that it’s a piece of a meteorite.

Hopefully one or two of your friends will be skeptical and call you an idiot for believing such nonsense. Others will come to your aid and verify your claims.

Honestly, hope is a better word.

My grandparents said that in their day folks just thought smoking winded you a little – no one thought it would kill you.

I can remember when I was much younger talking on the phone with a friend for hours. I also felt a heat like sensation and it did seem to me that the handset was radiating heat. This was because I had been holding a piece of bakelite to my head for over an hour. Any heat the handset was radiating came from my body. I have a strong suspicion that the sweat that covered the phone came from me too.

What is the mechanism by which a cell phone could cause cancer? If there is no mechanism I don’t care how strong of a statistical correlation you have, there is no cause at work.

It may well be that non-ionizing radiation doesn’t *cause* cancer — it just interferes with natural defenses against the typical pre-cancerous cellular misfires that happen everywhere in your body all the time.

No, you don’t know that. Gossip is not knowledge. Did you know that Dr’s once kept the head of a newborn baby alive in order to conduct experiments on it? IT’S TRUUUUUUUE! A friend of a friend of a friend TOLD ME!!!!

Brain cancer is a concern that Ms. Davis takes up. Over all, there has not been a general increase in its incidence since cellphones arrived. But the average masks an increase in brain cancer in the 20-to-29 age group and a drop for the older population.

“Most cancers have multiple causes,” she says, but she points to laboratory research that suggests mechanisms by which low-energy radiation could damage cells in ways that could possibly lead to cancer.

Children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults, Ms. Davis and other scientists point out. Radiation that penetrates only two inches into the brain of an adult will reach much deeper into the brains of children because their skulls are thinner and their brains contain more absorptive fluid. No field studies have been completed to date on cellphone radiation and children, she says. ”

…

“Henry Lai, a research professor in the bioengineering department at the University of Washington, began laboratory radiation studies in 1980 and found that rats exposed to radiofrequency radiation had damaged brain DNA. He maintains a database that holds 400 scientific papers on possible biological effects of radiation from wireless communication. He found that 28 percent of studies with cellphone industry funding showed some sort of effect, while 67 percent of studies without such funding did so. “That’s not trivial,” he said.

The unit of measurement for radiofrequency exposure is called the specific absorption rate, or SAR. The Federal Communications Commission mandates that the SAR produced by phones be no more than 1.6 watts per kilogram. One study listed by Mr. Lai found effects like loss of memory in rats exposed to SAR values in the range of 0.0006 to 0.06 watts per kilogram. “I did not expect to see effects at low levels,” he said. ”

…

“The largest study of cellphone use and brain cancer has been the Interphone International Case-Control Study, in which researchers in 13 developed countries (but not the United States) participated. It interviewed brain cancer patients, 30 to 59 years old, from 2000 to 2004, then cobbled together a control group of people who had not regularly used a cellphone.

The study concluded that using a cellphone seemed to decrease the risk of brain tumors, which the authors acknowledged was “implausible” and a product of the study’s methodological shortcomings.

The authors included some disturbing data in an appendix available only online. These showed that subjects who used a cellphone 10 or more years doubled the risk of developing brain gliomas, a type of tumor. ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/business/14digi.html

All of the above (including data from the Interphone study) seems to contradict claims made by the “non-ionizing radiation CANNOT cause cancer” crowd. Any responses?

My suggestion to people who have trouble sleeping is to experiment. Turn off your wireless devices at night and see if there is a difference. There are many shielding materials and products that you can find at http://www.lessemf.com.

It’s made a world of difference in my life to use shielding products.

AFAIK some people with solid, relevant credentials have considered this cell-phone-cancer-cause thingy and have argued for the Precautionary Principle. Green America (ok ok I know I’m not going to convince anyone here who already hates all “green” stuff) published several articles here on this: http://www.greenamerica.org/pubs/greenamerican/index.cfm

It’s no wonder folks are scared of the magic talking machine.

As for Interphone, read the story I link to here. It addresses those and other concerns. Better yet, read the Interphone summaries, not even the studies. I don’t get the ‘only available online’ bit in what you’re quoting. When I went to read the Interphone results, I downloaded a few papers at the top level of the site, and one of the first I read (an overall methodology and results summary) specifically called out the unusual results that came out in comparing information across components of the study. It’s reasonable that researchers call out something that didn’t arise out of the research itself, and which appears to be an error. They suggest additional analysis on the topic. And the Mukherjee article I link has several paragraphs providing context.

Personally, I don’t like moderate powered RF transmitters near my head, and I don’t like standing near the microwave while it is running. But, there seems to be no credible scientific support that either causes cancer.

What studies? Peer-reviewed? Mainstream? Or articles published on sites that purport stuff? I’d love to see studies with good methodology on the topic.

Finding a CC image to use because it’s funny or ironic (or just plain relevant) in relation to the story is great, but searching for “person using cell phone” on shutterstock is not the same thing…

Do cell phones cause cancer? via Skepticblog

Can You Hear Me Now? The Truth About Cell Phones and Cancer via Scientific American

Cell Phones and Cancer via Skepticblog

I’m not bringing up the “same scientists” here. I’ve read dozens of studies, and there are hundreds, about two main topic areas: a link between cell phone use and cancers, typically brain cancers, but others have been tracked as well; and electrosensitivity and its testability.

“I realize that it is hard for someone to believe that another person feels something that they do not, but it is the case over and over.”

If you read my comment, that is precisely the opposite of what I state. I do not attempt to deny or explain away anyone’s discomfort, illness, disease, etc.

Rather, I point to the four dozen studies that individually and in meta-analysis are unable in controlled conditions to reproduce the linkage that you believe is there. I don’t dispute you believe it, or that you have conducted your own personal tests to this end.

What’s more about many of the studies is that people who find themselves suffering experience symptoms during controlled testing that they assert is caused by the presence of a signal, and they say is identical to the symptoms they experience when near transmitters. But the studies show that those symptoms manifest with no correlation better than chance during testing when a signal is present or absent.

It would produce a result if sufferers never exhibited symptoms during testing that they associated with and stated were a result of a signal being present, too. That doesn’t occur. And it’s cross checked against control groups who have far less symptom presentation (so less to check against signal absence/presence).

When there were a handful of studies, one might dispute their methodology. When you have nearly 50, conducted under different funding by hundreds of researchers across at least a dozen countries with different methodologies (and different cohorts) that produce the same results, you’re starting to deny reality about the reproducibility and accuracy of self-identified suffers.

That has no bearing, of course, on what you personally experience, nor the case you have built for yourself.

You understand how this sounds. If you can’t test a proposition, and it’s inconsistent, how can it be true?

But I’m glad you’ve sorted out something that works. We’re all individuals and need to shift our own way through life, regardless of what statistical analysis tells us.

However, making public policy and broad pronouncements based on non-testable, inconsistent outcomes would make little sense.

I did gather that these increases in gliomas are suspected to be a result of recall bias (yes, 12 hours continuous hours of cell phone use is hard to believe).

“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.”

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/05/17/ije.dyq079.abstract

To me, recall bias is a somewhat insufficient explanation in that it could be used to ignore potential informative anomalies. On the other hand, it could be totally accurate. It seems this is a limitation of the study that was acknowledged from the outset. The summary simply states that it “require(s) further investigation.” I tend to agree.

However, the point I was making (which you, Mukherjee, and Interphone also make) is that although it is theoretically unlikely, we currently have insufficient evidence to DENY that non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer (as many comments here claim). The Mukherjee article goes into some detail of the various mechanisms being investigated as to how (or if) this might occur. It’s premature to say it can’t happen. Although, to be fair, the evidence is definitely leaning against that conclusion.

>> Don’t cell phones operate on the same frequencies that we use to cook food?
No. They are about 500mhz or so apart. Microwave ovens – as long as the tissue in question stays cool; heating any meat enough will denature the DNA and proteins in it, that’s why you can die of heat stroke in the summer – do not cause DNA changes.

Also, the power level involved is radically different: my microwave oven is a 1600 watt model. My cell phone puts out about a tenth of a watt, less if I am closer to the cell tower (the power output is scaled back to the minimum required, both to prevent cell areas from interfering with each other and to conserve battery life).

>> Doesn’t your head get really hot after talking on the phone for a while?
No. If it’s going to be *that* kind of conversation, I’ll just hang up on em’… ;-)

Actually – holding anything to my head for long enough will make it feel hot and irritated… even a set of earmuffs (with no electronics of any kind in them). Which, of course, is a good reason to use the speakerphone function on the cell phone…

There are now thousands of studies across many different areas of this subject, which Dr Mukherjee references directly and indirectly. You can go and read Interphone, for instance: several different papers have emerged from that research, and read about the statements of funding as well as find critics of how the funding came about (both those that think it favored and disfavored industry).

While we can’t individually vet every study, a lot of the work produced is from academic funded by national grants rather than industry-underwritten ones.

Your question is completely valid. I’ve spent years reading studies and examining funding sources and concerns about funding bias. You shouldn’t trust my say-so, but pretty much everything I’ve read and learned is publicly available.