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FDA Questions Swedish Cell Phone Cancer Study
ZZeta writes "Following up on the Swedish study on cell phone cancer risk, the FDA released a statement today questioning its reliability. From the statement: 'These facts along with the lack of an established mechanism of action and supporting animal data makes the Hardell et al's finding difficult to interpret.' Also available several links to other studies."
will be very hard when there is a billion dollar industry based on cellphones
its like global warming vs the oil industry, it will take numerous studies over decades until the "truth" will finally come out
Most animals cannot hold cell phones up to their ears and many simply can't fill out the contracts required to obtain a cell phone.
Animal Data. that's ridiculous!
Can someone tell me why the FDA is releasing a statement about this? Cell phones and RF are neither a food nor a drug, nor a medical device. Does this fall under some part of the FDA I'm not aware of?
AccountKiller
So long as someone is advocating the viewpoint I'm more personally comfortable with regardless of the facts I'm happy!
Of course if no one is taking my side, then I have a foolproof plan -- I just say studies contradict each other too often and hence can't provide any reliable information about anything. Then I can do whatever I want, risk-free!
The authors conclude that there is no substantial risk of this tumour in the first 10 years after starting mobile phone use. However, an increased risk after longer term use could not be ruled out.
This seems to be their reasoning, only after longer (10 years) use does it have any effect. So people who've had a phone for more than 10 years could be at higher risk.
Common sense is not so common
That's why I only use text messaging on my cell phone. But I'm sure my thumb cancer is unrelated.
What if that mime really is trapped in a box?
I don't think that you could call a vast government beurocracy which costs industry billions every year and has almost absolute power to dictate policy to buisnesses a capitalist organization. I realize it is the fashion for Socialists to call anything they don't like "Capitalist", in the same way Pat Roberson and the Christian Right call anything they don't like "Satanist", but really your definition of "Capitalism" makes the word meaningless. Why not call things you are against "Badism", and say you are a "Goodist"... that would say about as much.
The FDA, in particular, is considered a bit overzealous if anything. Many drugs, food products, etc., which are totally legal most places in the world, get banned in the U.S. by the FDA. The usual critism is not that the FDA doesn't go far enough in regulation, but that it goes too far compared with places like Western Europe.
By my reading, it sounds like they sent mailings to people that have diagnosed brain tumors in those previous two studies and asked them how much they used the cell phone over the last 10 years. They then compared that to a general population sample. Deriving exposure levels from questionnaires is, in my opinion, almost worthless. How many minutes have you used the cell phone in the last 24 hours? Week? Month? Can you come up with a number you believe accurate to within a factor of 2? 10? 100?
This reminds me of a study released in the early 90's that suggested that 60 Hz EMF fields caused cancer. The "researchers" went through death records and picked out people who were listed as having "electrical related" occupations such as electricians and such, then seeing how many of them died of cancer. This study got lots of press, of course. However, a follow-up study was done that looked at 30,000+ workers at an electric generating plant where they actually measured real exposure levels and no correlation was found.
The FDA statement itself says basically that because of all these loose or non-existent controls, it this study cannot really be compared to the other better controled studies that were done. That is a perfectly reasonable and well-explained statement, so I am not sure what the knee-jerk posts about corporate control and suppressing the truth posts are based on. Personally I think that if the study in question was run in the manner described, it is essentially worthless and should not have received any press coverage in the first place.
When the study came out, most of the comments here were refuting it. Now that the FDA has refuted it, everyone seems to be claiming that they were bought by the cell phone companies.
So, what? Are all the people in the cellphone-cancer camp on one side of the globe or something?
Remember, the methodology for this study was step one: find people who already have cancer. Step two: do a survey (not a lab observation or a running record) to get data about their past cell phone usage. How can you bitch when someone contradicts that?
I used to work on mobile phones at a large company. SAR rating used to be a big deal to us. One of the major reasons for using extendable antennas was to get the EMF away from the head, hence lowering the SAR. But the market got quite competitive and external antennas went out of style. Before I left, we only cared about meeting the FCC requirement rather than aiming for a truly low SAR of 0.2-0.4.