Comments on: Worst Science Article of the Week: Use a Cell Phone, Damage Your Baby http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/20/worst-science-article-of-the-week-use-a-cell-phone-damage-your-baby/ Quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:42:29 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Stan Hartman http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/20/worst-science-article-of-the-week-use-a-cell-phone-damage-your-baby/comment-page-1/#comment-20394 Stan Hartman Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:24:21 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/20/worst-science-article-of-the-week-use-a-cell-phone-damage-your-baby/#comment-20394 It's certainly consistent with what we know about health effects of microwave radiation that the younger an organism is the more susceptible it will be to damage, with an unborn child being the most at risk. Reassurances from the wireless industry are just profit-protecting PR. There used to be something called "tobacco science" - profit-protecting spin in the guise of serious research. Now we have "wireless science." You can design studies to show anything you want, so the first thing to consider when looking at them is who funded them. In the large Danish study, for instance, a "regular cell phone user" was defined as someone who used their mobile phone once a week for six months - and the results were promoted to show that there was no correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer. In another study that touted the same result, the rats that were used were designed to be exceptionally cancer-prone only when exposed in utero, but in the study were exposed in adulthood. Trying to get people's attention to the dangers of wireless technology, which is exposing us to billions of times the radiation we evolved with, is like trying to talk about the dangers of tobacco back in the fifties. Will we adapt? Brain cancer is now the leading cancer killer of children, overtaking leukemia (which has also been linked to electropollution). The rates are also rising for young adults. We never adapted to excess ionizing radiation, arsenic, lead, cadmium, etc., or even heat. What we're seeing is an old story - get people addicted to a product before its health dangers become apparent, after which they won't want to hear about them, then rake in the profits until the dangers can't be ignored anymore. It’s certainly consistent with what we know about health effects of microwave radiation that the younger an organism is the more susceptible it will be to damage, with an unborn child being the most at risk. Reassurances from the wireless industry are just profit-protecting PR. There used to be something called “tobacco science” – profit-protecting spin in the guise of serious research. Now we have “wireless science.” You can design studies to show anything you want, so the first thing to consider when looking at them is who funded them. In the large Danish study, for instance, a “regular cell phone user” was defined as someone who used their mobile phone once a week for six months – and the results were promoted to show that there was no correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer. In another study that touted the same result, the rats that were used were designed to be exceptionally cancer-prone only when exposed in utero, but in the study were exposed in adulthood.

Trying to get people’s attention to the dangers of wireless technology, which is exposing us to billions of times the radiation we evolved with, is like trying to talk about the dangers of tobacco back in the fifties. Will we adapt? Brain cancer is now the leading cancer killer of children, overtaking leukemia (which has also been linked to electropollution). The rates are also rising for young adults. We never adapted to excess ionizing radiation, arsenic, lead, cadmium, etc., or even heat. What we’re seeing is an old story – get people addicted to a product before its health dangers become apparent, after which they won’t want to hear about them, then rake in the profits until the dangers can’t be ignored anymore.

]]> By: Protect Your Phone with Shock-Absorbing Nanotubes | Discoblog | Discover Magazine http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/20/worst-science-article-of-the-week-use-a-cell-phone-damage-your-baby/comment-page-1/#comment-12258 Protect Your Phone with Shock-Absorbing Nanotubes | Discoblog | Discover Magazine Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:47:17 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2008/05/20/worst-science-article-of-the-week-use-a-cell-phone-damage-your-baby/#comment-12258 [...] if only they could make cell phones waterproof, [...] [...] if only they could make cell phones waterproof, [...]

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