Cellphones Cause Brain Tumors

Submitted by Eternity on Mon, 08/31/2009 - 17:02.

Max Eternity - A new blockbuster report, which provides definitive confirmation for the cellphone = brain tumor connection has just been released. The report is entitled "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone." Research for the document, which was both written and endorsed by an international collective of renown doctors and scientist, began in 1999, but it's full publication has been held up for years.

The lead author of the paper, Lloyd Morgan, a member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, is quoted by Medical News Today as saying "Exposure to cellphone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some 4 billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors from use of cellphones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed."

A PDF document of the paper can be found here.

A partial list of endorsors to the report are:

  • Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
  • David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany
  • Martin Blank, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University
  • Professor Yury Grigoriev, Chairman of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection

The report says no such thing

The report makes multiple claims of a correlation between wireless phones and cancer, but claims of a causal relationship are weak.  As I explained here, correlation and causation are two different things, and we must be careful not to confuse the two.

If you read the report (a big 'if' when it comes to the majority of the population, unfortunately),  you'll find that a large portion of it is a critique of the so-called and still-not-fully-published "Interphone Study," implying that the study's "design flaws" make the data unreliable.  Besides the fact that the authors are evaluating this study before it's published in its entirety, their analysis has a few flaws of it's own.

Many of the "flaws" in the Interphone Study (it's actually a large group of studies) result from the fact that they are retrospective studies rather than prospective ones.  This, however, is true for the studies that show a positive correlation between phones and cancer as well.  Most (and probably all) studies of cell phone radiation on humans are retrospective.  The only prospective ones seem to have been done on rats.

The authors stake many of their claims on the fact that studies which show no correlation between cell phone use and cancer are typically funded by the Telecom industry, and this is supposed to make them suspect.  Well, even if the researched was biased in this way (another big 'if'), the peer-review process prior to publication takes care of that.  You see, once a research study is completed, its findings are written up and submitted to professional journals for publication (such as the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the New England Journal of Medicine, the European Journal of Epidemiology, etc.).  There, disinterested professionals in the field (i.e. those who stand to neither gain nor lose from the research) review the research, it's methodologies, and data.  If these are sound, the article is published.  If errors, bias, or faulty methodologies are discovered, it's not.  The research criticized by this report's authors has been subject to peer review.  Their report itself has not.

The authors ignore the benefits of peer review when studies do not support their conclusion.  However, they boast about the value of peer review on page 15 of the report when citing research that supports their argument.  This is a type of bias itself: selection bias, selecting information that supports your hypothesis and ignoring that which doesn't.

Another example of this selection bias is when the authors, on page 17, cite a study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility as conclusive evidence that cell phones reduce male fertility.  However they fail to acknowledge that two of that study's co-authors published a follow-up article in another professional journal, Reproductive Biomedicine, just four months later, which stated

Evidence of detrimental effect of mobile phones on male fertility is still equivocal as studies have revealed a wide spectrum of possible effects ranging from insignificant effects to variable degrees of testicular damage. Although previous studies suggested a role of cell phone use in male infertility, the mode of action of EMW emitted from cell phones on the male reproductive system is still unclear. EMW can affect the reproductive system via an EMW-specific effect, thermal molecular effect or combination of both. Studies performed on human males are scarce and therefore further studies with a careful design are needed to determine the effect of cell phone use on male-fertilizing potential. [Reprod Biomed Online. Sep. 2007;Vol. 15, No. 3, pages 266-70.]

And other supposed "evidence" that cell phones cause cancer?  The authors cite one Israeli study to support their claim.  The trouble is, it was a study of the effects of x-rays on children's scalps.  Hardly comparable to cell phone radiation.

Inconsistencies like these should set off your baloney detector.

Don't be fooled by alarmism.  So a few dozen medical professionals endorsed this?  With the millions of oncologists, epidemiologists, neurosurgeons, fertility specialists, pediatricians, chemists, and physicists in the world, you'd think the authors would've garnered a few more endorsements than this!

Anyway, don't listen to them.  Don't listen to ME!  Read these studies yourself!  Many are online.  All are available at the library.

Beats being scared unneccessarily.

Yours truly,

skepticalthinker

Transparency -- Legitimacy, and those darn red flags!

 

*****   ATTENTION  *****          *****  ATTENTION  *****

 

To all @ RealNeo:

Should we give credence to those who blog not? 

On this site “skepticalthinker” amounts to what we call in cyberspace, a comment troll. This person has never posted blogs of their own, but nonetheless has much negative bullshit to spread around.  

See prior post on the Cellphone = Brain Cancer topic here...w/comments.

“skepticalthinker” is neither skeptical nor a thinker.  I am that and so are many other contributing bloggers to this site.  Instead what “skepticalthinker” is, is a cowardly disinformation hog lurking in the shadows, concealing his/her identity, hiding from the light of day like a dis-eased parasitic armchair-quaterback who thinks himself/herself to be some omnipotent souce of relevance and objective cognition. 

Nonetheless, this certainly comes as no surprise to me, because of the constant onslaught of FOX News (FIX News and Oberman rightly calls it) Americans have been taught to believe that right-wing, toxic-corporate, imperialistic, stealthy, xenophobic veiled threats filled with misinformation hype-hysteria is "fair and balanced." But this, the same crowd that told us that segregation was good, is the same crowd that told us that smoking cigarettes is good, is the same crowd that told us that women belong at home barefoot and pregnant.  This thinking is the "skepticalthinker" brand of thinking, using Orwellian language for his/her name so perfectly exemplefies to psych-op.

Bombs of mass-distraction.

But just ask yourself this, who benifited from hiding the truth about cigarettes?  Now ask yourself who benefits from concealing the brain cancer/ cell phone connection?  And while you're at it, ask yourself this too, who benefits by scaring the hell out of people with their "death panel" talk on the subject of healthcare for all.

So just like Bush's No Child Left Behind where every child gets cheated, the name "skepticalthinker" really announces...biased con-artist has just entered the room.

Get it???  What did the Patriot Act do?  It was anything but patriotic, as "skepticalthinker" is anything but a thinker.

Please take a moment to view “skepticalthinker’s" profile page, where one will see no blog posts there, only comments directed at others; usually negative.  Furthermore, “skepticalthinker” aka Schlep, has already been sufficiently debunked by not just me, but an entire panel of several core contributors to RealNeo.  But like a good Limbaugh-Palin-Cheney-Beck psycho-sadist, he/she seems to have in their store an endless supply of anti-social disinformation and hate.

If you follow this fool you deserve what you get, but henceforth no one can say red flags were not sufficiently raised.

Eternity

"To Blog is To Know." or "How To Abandon Critical Thinking."

"To Blog is To Know." or  "How To Abandon Critical Thinking and Become a Credulous Wannabe."

I'm sorry, Maxi.  You just don't seem to get it.  You caution readers not to "follow" me.  This says a lot.  You may have noticed that I implored readers NOT to listen to me, but rather to do the research themselves.

Your ...uh, warning...that the information that I posted is somehow tainted because I have "never posted blogs" reveals that you are all too willing to place trust in random internet chatter rather than take the time to do any actual research.

What a sorry little sheep.

But I understand.  You are obviously undereducated.  You probably found higher education to be too difficult and time consuming.  So you missed an exposure to critical thinking, where questions are answered by investigation and information is gathered by going to the source rather than by trolling the internet for the latest sensationalistic gossip.

But, again, I understand.  Why spend all those boring hours studying, reading textbooks, or using the library when there's a whole blogosphere in which you can simulate intelligence?  I'm guessing in person you're pretty much a douchebag that everyone tries to avoid.  So you go join any blog site that will have you.  When you post on a blog, you feel the whole world is paying attention to you!  This is where you feel like you have real friends.  You may even come across as a chivalrous hero when you come to the defense of a poor maiden who's suffered under the Secret Government Plots and Conspiracies.

So your world view is shaped not by textbooks, libraries, professional journals, and critical thinking.  It's downloaded from YouTube and the Living section of Huffington Post.

But that makes you feel powerful.  Like you are "in the know."  You know what all these poor "schleps" don't.  You can come to the rescue!  Of course, if you just took a few minutes away from your precious blogs to do some actual research, you'd discover that your opinion are naive, and you come across as paranoid and uneducated.  Who wants THAT??!! 

So it's back to YouTube.

I suppose your only hope of getting people not to consider the recommendations I present is to try and paint me as some sort of right-wing ideologue.  Tell me...is doing independent research, looking at the science, and basing your opinions on the totality of the research a mark of right-wing ideology?  If so, why was the Bush administration on the WRONG side of stem cell research, birth control, abortion rights, etc.  I'm sorry little man...you come across as a paranoid, credulous little lemming.

If anyone is still following this thread: Think for yourself!  The information is out there!  Visit the library as much as you do the blogs!  Question authority...but follow up with actual research!  YouTube is not a reliable source of truth!

Yours truly,

skepticalthinker

Skep - let's do coffee...

I have found that de-fusing UXB's is usually pretty easy over coffee.  Hit me up on my "contact" tab.    Cell phones, or whatever. 

 

best. jeffb

I'm sorry, Jeff, but what B

I'm sorry, Jeff, but what B is UX?  You've challenged my claims previously, but you did so in a truly skeptical way (with only a modicum of understandable snarkiness), which I found inviting and appropriate.  I hope I replied in kind.  Coffee?  I rarely have time...but perhaps some day.  In the mean time, thanks for your interest.

 

Yours truly,

skepticalthinker

To Legitimate RealNeo Contributors and Readers

To Legitimate RealNeo Contibutors and Readers:

To all legitimate RealNeo contributors and readers.  In regards to my comments and other sensibilities relating to the already proven Cellphone = Brain cancer link, please see my post and comment above.

To those @ RealNeo who wish to address me, revealing their full identity and credentials, I will gladly consult and communicate with you freely.  This includes Norm Roulet, Susan Miller, Jeff Buster and many others.  To those who have no legitimacy, no credentials, who are too ashamed of themselves to sign their own work (instead using an alternative secret name) I direct you to Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Bill O'reilly and all the other asswipes of this world.  They will gladly embrace you, your willful ignorance, intellectual myopia and your  Blackwater-styled, Mossad-like, corporate-whore venom.

Now it should be mentioned, for those who may not yet be aware, as with all members to RealNeo, whether fully legit or full of shit, I too have a RealNeo profile.  My profile represents a very detailed, very public papertrail that is overflowing with an abundance of texts, links, videos and other cross-referenced material.  I even provide a bit of original poetry and original art. 

View my profile is here.

I live a fully transparent life and I'm very proud to call myself an actively engaged, contibuting blogger @ RealNeo.

Yeah! Go RealNeo Go!!!

Eternity

All well and good, but it

All well and good, but it never addresses the veracity of your info.  Being an "actively engaged, contibuting blogger" does not mean you're right.  I acknkowledge that readers should NOT trust me.  Rather, they should do the research themselves to find the truth.  Can you say the same?

 

Yours truly,

skepticalthinker

You've earned my love and respect Eternity

I haven't forgotten about those pictures of the Broadway Mills building - I need to pull them off my hard drive, and I don't have that hooked up right now (we're in the middle of finally finishing-up our home). I'm sure you would dig it - century Tudor built by a company that previously built wooden ships (had to get out of that business around the turn of the century) - they were partners with the White Family, of White Sewing Machine, I believe, developing my end of my street in East Cleveland, which was the first suburb of Cleveland, developed between 1906-11.

Disrupt IT

Norm, the feeling is mutual

Norm,

If it weren't for people like you, I wouldn't even bother to contribute here.  I got to know Susan Miller at the end of 2008 and she introduced me to Jeff B and Sally Levine.

I love all you guys, and that goes for dbra, lmcshane, Debbie et all, because in your struggle to make your world a better place, you're inspiring me to make my world a better place.  And no one can tear that apart...no one.

And Norm, about your house...can I just say...FABULOUS!

What a gorgeous home.  It's the real deal.  And let me just tell you, a historically-correct (and it appears to be so) house of that period, in Atlanta, would easily fetch upwards of 500K; even in this economy.  Though if it were located in certain ideal neighborhoods, like Loring Heights, Buckhead, Ansley Park, Dunwoody, Candler Park or Midtown, you'd be talking upwards of a million dollars; regardless of condition.

Thanks for keeping me abreast on the 300 Central Viaduct pictures, and thanks for all the great work you do at RealNeo.

Go RealNeo Go!!!

Eternity

oh, you guys

are just being so touching. It is a love fest. Need a little more of this in this space but will settle for respect.

Debbie