Slashdot Mirror
Study Links Cell Phones and Eye Cancer
Sara Chan writes "There have been lots of claims that cell phones might cause cancer. The Sunday Times of London reports that there now seems to be real evidence to show these claims are true, at least for cancer of the eye. A study found a strong statistical link and a feasible mechanism is known: microwave radiation is absorbed by
certain cells (melanocytes) in the uveal layer of the eye (which affects their growing/dividing). The study
appeared in the journal Epidemiology
and the abstract is available here."
I agree with this but don't you think that the people carrying out the research thought about it ? The research was done by reputable scientists, I know that doesn't mean that they don't make mistakes but it would surprise me if they overlook stuff like that.
You haven't read many research papers, have you?
Check out the last two lines of the paper's abstract:
This is the first study describing an association between radiofrequency radiation exposure and uveal melanoma. Several methodologic limitations prevent our results from providing clear evidence on the hypothesized association.
In a nutshell, this says (1) we're the first ones to do the research and (2) we couldn't prove our hypothesis to begin with.
In other words, No valid conclusions may be drawn from the experiment!
This is a perfect example of the unfortunately common method of gathering a sizeable amount of data, performing some flashy statistical analysis, and publishing, ignoring the fact that there is little signal amongst the noise.
An unfortunate trend in science, primarily in this country, but apparently also found in Germany, is the lack of attention paid to research methodology. At the same time, the quality of scientific journals is decreasing more and more, so poorly done research is getting published more and more.
Add in incompetent and irresponsible journalism, and the end result is a bad article, a headline that is even worse and misleading Slashdot stories....
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Now we'll have to deal with blind people on cell phones in traffic.
Given the current saturation of cell phones, there could be a study that showed they cause instant death or mutations, and I doubt that many people would stop using them. That's pathetic.
Disclaimer: I'm a physics student. This means I know a bit about the subject, but certainly not everything.
The mechanism by which the radiation might cause cancer is uncertain but it is known that the watery contents of the eye assists the absorption of radiation.
The watery portion of the eye would only experience very mild thermal effects (heating). Microwaves aren't ionizing radiation.
Other research showed that cells called melanocytes found in the uveal layer started growing and dividing more rapidly when exposed to microwave radiation.
Since uveal melanoma starts within such cells, there is a ready-made mechanism by which mobile phone radiation might help to initiate cancer, especially in people with a genetic predisposition to the condition.
This is a poor explanation. If microwaves cause unusual growth rates among the melanocytes, then microwave radiation could act as a promoter, not an initiator, of cancer. Ultraviolet light is both a promoter and an initiator, because it is high-enough energy to ionize DNA molecules and cause mutations. Microwaves are non-ionizing, so there is no known mechanism by which they could act as an initiator.
As for increasing growth rate of melanocytes, this is hardly surprising. Melanocytes reproduce and produce pigment in response to electromagnetic radiation (this is how you tan). It would have to be shown that melanocytes reproduce at an unusually high rate when exposed to microwaves (of the levels emitted by cell phones), as compared with the reproduction rate from exposure to sunlight. In short, until someone shows that melanocytes react more strongly to cell-phone level radiation than to sunlight, this is a straw man.
When the results were analysed they found the cancer victims had a much higher rate of mobile phone use,
They found a correlation. That's not the same as cause-and-effect. One strong factor that many people overlook is socio-economic effects. For instance, perhaps affluent Brits are more likely to own cell phones and more likely to go on vacations to places to sunny places. People who are normally exposed to low levels of ultraviolet light (i.e. Brits) who suddenly find themselves in sunny climates have very little skin pigment, and are much more prone to get cancer-causing sunburns (or perhaps eye damage) than those accustomed to those levels of sun.
though Stang cautions that his study needs confirmation
Good for him. It sounds like he's a responsible scientist who's found a correlation worthy of further increase. He also has at least the beginnings of a mechanism to explain the correlation. Unfortunately, the Sunday Times has done the usual media thing, and overreacted. One study does not a fact make.
Sadly, the lawyers will probably jump all over this. It's not like science, truth, or facts ever had any place in the courts...
I've read the articles that have come out in the past two years or so about cell phones and possible epidemiological links to brain tumours, and so far I've felt reassured that I wasn't taking any big risks. Several of the studies have had serious methodological shortcomings and the problem of "multiple comparison bias" (if you make 100 comparisons between samples which are unrelated, you will find 5 "significant" correlations, and if you only highlight those in your report it will give many people (and less scrutinous daily papers) the same impression as if you'd done a study specifically to examine those and actually found correlations).
Something to be remembered is that uveal melanoma is a very rare type of cancer; its incidence (in Europe) is about 1/30 of that of melanoma of the skin, or around 8/million/year. However, since it's a tumour which causes unilateral visual disturbances/blindness once it expands enough it's one that's unlikely to be underdiagnosed to any significant extent. Thus, the next few years' worth of uveal melanoma incidence figures should point a finger at whether we're doing anything that's increasing the melanoma risk. I don't recall how strong a risk factor sun exposure is for uveal melanoma (compared to other melanomas, for example), but I'd check whether any increase in uveal melanomas was disproportionately larger than the increase in all melanomas. In summary, if cell phones do increase the risk of UM, we'll be able to detect it quite reliably in a few years. Also, the results of a pilot study with little biological rationale to explain it doesn't warrant any particular caution while on the cell phone in my book, though of course that's a political decision that can easily swing either way.
For those who are interested in reading up on biological effects of cell phone RF "radiation", the British Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones came out with its report in May of 2000, and it goes through (complete with references) the case for and against there being significant adverse health effects of cell phone use. So far the case against cell phones seems to be weak, and most of the evidence that's piling up (a whole bunch of articles in major publications in the past two months alone) seems to cement it that way.
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I'd like to believe that when the right woman comes along I'll have the courage to say, "no thanks, I'm married."
AND AAAAAAA PARTRIDDDDDDGE IN A PEEEEEEEAAAARRRR TRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
Oh shit.. a bit late for that. Sorry.
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According to the abstract the conclusions are based on intreviews with volunteers (self-selection being one confounding factor). The only source of informatiuon is the interview script, making it likely that many other corrolations were missed in questions unasked.
No mention was made about conmtrolling for even such obvious effects as family medical history
The "control" is an interpretation control but not a test grou pcontrol. Given that herte is no control on the writing of the questions, control on the interpetation of the results is of minimal value.
In short, this looks like very very very BAD science.
You have to realize that before this was published in "some limey tabloid", it was published in Epidemeology, which is a quite reputable scientific journal. We should never take any of these studies as "truth" - in fact, no amount of scientific studies can ever prove something as true. They only offer more or less correlation between two things. The study offers a possible correlation between microwave radiation and cancer - that's all. It warrants further investigation.
/dos]# file msdos.sys
-Karl
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[root@kgutwin
[root@kgutwin
msdos.sys: fsav (linux) virus (17518-87)
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In all the years that we communicated with ham radio instead of cellphones, not one study showed that anyone was getting cancer from radio spectra. Part of that might have to do with the weaker-energy radio waves (longer wavelengths) and the positioning of antennas relative to the body, but we'll never know, now that cellphones have supplanted ham radios (and at much greater cost).
Ham radio has to adapt now. We have to get rid of all those stupid restrictions like morse-code tests for liscenses. Anyone can buy and operate a cellphone without a liscense. The same should be true for ham radios.
Read the rest of this comment...
Does anyone else find it somewhat disconcerting that the biggest fear this report seems to raise is that of law suits? Wouldn't it be better if this research led to the study of safer cell phone technology, rather than act as an excuse for "short-sighted" freeloaders to jump on a band wagon and sue their favorite cell phone company?
I would expect this sort of mentality from some parts of the world, but surely The Times would be above this?
My source for this is the Wall Street Journal (although not perfect, probably more reliable than the Sunday Times).
.uk people buy the (Murdoch owned) paper called "The Sun" than buy a newspaper. The Sun isn't a newspaper. It is a daily rag based on the (very profitable) concept that a lot of people with 35p (==$0.5) are happy to spend that on a paper that has headlines like "Phwooarrr! Look at the tits on that!!!". Page 3 of The Sun (Every day) has a topless photograph of a young woman (aged 17-20).
As a Brit, I tried to work myself into a state of righteous indignation over that statement. Then I realised that you're right.
There was an era, in the dim, distant past, when The Times was the 'newspaper of record', and The Sunday Times was the paper that did serious, well researched investigative journalism. Then, Rupert Murdoch happened.
It is a sad fact that more
It is very hard to gain the moral high ground about *anything* when you live in a country where the highest-selliing daily paper is largely filled with young women's breasts, and salacious, inaccurate and often inflammatory stories about sexual misdemanours of priests.
To summarise for US citizens: Our biggest-selling daily paper is a supermarket tabloid, with tits in. It's published by an Australian gangster.
Ye Gods. We *deserved* to lose our Empire.
Second-hand cell-phone radiation is not a threat, due to the inverse-square law. The cell phone is 5 cm (2") from the user's head, whereas it's probably at least a metre (3'3") from your head. That means you recieve about one quarter of one percent of the radiation the user does. Hardly significant.