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Study Shows Cell Phones Safe

Posted by Zonk on from the safe-for-our-human-brains dept.

PreacherTom writes "In a move worthy of the Mythbusters, scientists in Denmark tracked over 420,000 cell phone users over the course of 21 years in an attempt to determine if the urban legend that cell phone use causes cancer is true. Their results: the RF energy produced by the phones did not correlate to an increased incidence of the disease. Please note that this doesn't make chatting on the highway at 85 mph any more safe." From the article: 'This so-called Danish cohort "is probably the strongest study out there because of the outstanding registries they keep,' said Joshua Muscat of Pennsylvania State University, who also has studied cell phones and cancer. 'As the body of evidence accumulates, people can become more reassured that these devices are safe, but the final word is not there yet,' Muscat added."

7 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. They didnt let the facts get in the way before, by topham · · Score: 4, Interesting

    why start now?

  2. _other_ parts of the body by 7macaw · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I carry my cell phone in my pants pocket. Is it safe?

    --
    Grundes!
    1. Re:_other_ parts of the body by andersa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, if you are a female, one interesting finding the study came up with, was that cell phone use brings a 30% increased risk of Cervical cancer, which is usually caused by the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus.

      The researchers suggest, while stressing that this is pure speculation, that women who were quicker to adopt cell phone use, might have been more sexually active with multiple partners than average women, for whatever reason.

      The announcement, in Danish, along with some of the statistics, can be found here:

      http://www.cancer.dk/cancer/nyheder/artikler/mobil hjerne1.asp

  3. Evil Cancer Death Radiation! by bananaendian · · Score: 2, Interesting
    What about
    1. non-thermal effects,
    2. alpha and delta brain waves,
    3. non-linear interactions,
    4. resonance,
    5. gene expression mechanisms,
    6. production of heat shock proteins,
    7. electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome
      and other bullshit.

    People want to believe in this stuff cause it sounds dangerous. Advocacy groups get funding, lawyers make money, politicians can scare people. Who's gonna listen to a bunch of boring Danish statistics?

    Even the WHO subscribes to the 'precautionary principle'. Forget about it - its all futile!

    --
    www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
  4. Re:Stupid by SEMW · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Whats wrong with using common sense? During the days of Audrey Hepburn (who's dress is now worth thousands of dollars, can't be that bad) it was quite common to smoke. Guess what people told the scepticists of smoking during those days? Better yet: guess who is laughing last? (this isn't meant as a sick joke. its not my fault the truth is unforgiving). Uhhh, you do realise you've just proved my point? Back in those days it was, as you say, "common sense" that smoking was good for you -- after all, it made you lose weight, and helps you relax, and those are medical benefits, right? Well, wrong. So who's laughing last? The people who decided not to listen to common sense and go out and do scientific research into whether smoking really was good for you. And guess what? It wasn't. So now who's laughing? Anyone who listened to the scientific research rather than "common sense", and stopped smoking. They're laughing last because the other group died of lung cancer (and that, I'm afraid, isn't meant as a sick joke either).

    "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
    -- Albert Einstein
    --
    What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
  5. Re:Sweet Bleeding Jesus! by lamasquerade · · Score: 2, Interesting
    An appropriate subject line;) But I have to point you to this article.



    You are right to be frustrated by the kind of reasoning that the OP was using, but not because it's impossible to prove a negative, but because it is impossible to completely prove anything so broad as 'Mobile phones do not cause cancer'. The article talks about taking the best bet, which is just looking at the evidence which is of course what everyone does every day with just about every action.

    Pedantry regarding provability is pointless. And that sentence was quite nicely alliterative:)

    --

    // It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis

  6. It's not about Cancer. by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It never was.

    It's about fuzzing the brain.

    Please pardon the bold face, but it seems this subject calls for it. . .

    The blood-brain barrier becomes permeable when exposed to EM cell phone frequencies. This is shown by injecting dye into the blood of rats and exposing them to cell phone EM. The short version: control groups don't end up with dyed brains while the exposed groups do. This experiment has been repeated numerous times.

    --Now aside from an artificially permeable blood-brain barrier making your brain more susceptible to whatever agents happen to be in your blood at the time, the really interesting question people should be instantly asking is, "How does cell phone EM cause this to happen?"

    And better yet, "What OTHER cellular responses are stimulated by cell phone EM?"

    This isn't rocket science. It's simply a matter of taking the data as it comes, remembering it as you read more articles, and applying it in a logical fashion to form more questions.

    Why the heck is everybody so caught up by the Cancer question when there is OBVIOUSLY something else important going on?


    -FL