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Study Shows Cell Phones Safe
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."
why start now?
Finally some concrete evidence to set the rumors to rest once and for all. I shall now continue to excessively use my cell phone without the worry of detrimental repercussions other than to perhaps my wallet.
appleguru.org
I carry my cell phone in my pants pocket. Is it safe?
Grundes!
Even the summary of the article doesn't agree with the title of the article. Whilst I am of the opinion that mobile phones are safe, it is impossible to prove it. It is possible to demonstrate that it is almost certainly not the case, but it is impossible to demonstrate to a mathematical certainty that mobile phones (or any other treatment, e.g. medication, having blonde hair, being called Fred) is safe.
... is now safe!
Sometimes you need more than a staggering, howling lack of cancer-causation evidence to convince the alties.
causes cancer.
Hey, at least there's a mechanism. Stress has been implicated in contributing to a lot of other diseases, why not cancer?
AccountKiller
They didn't take into effect the amount of vehicular accidents that are caused by inattentive cell phone drivers. This is probably the most unsafe aspect of them
Saying cell phones are safe because they don't cause cancer is saying that cyanide is safe because it won't scald you. The health issue with cell phones has never been about cancer, but about cell phone radiation penetrating the skull and opening up/damaging the blood-brain barrier, allowing toxins and other foreign materials in your bloodstream to cross over and damage your brain cells. Additionally, normal electromagnetic brain functioning is disturbed by cell phone radiation, with brainwave patterns being abnormal several hours after cell phone use.
They've studied cell phones since 1985? They were only made legal in the U.S. in 1983, and used very different tech than today. I'm skeptical.
Knowing Mythbusters, they had to somehow crank up a cell phone to a ludicrous level to induce cancer. Poor Buster! Still, it might make for an interesting episode.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
...'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."That's just the problem with these surveys and tests, they are never 100% conclusive. This urban myth (or not) will go on for years and years, untill someone gets cancer from a cell-phone (or points in that direction) and then this theory will be crushed, other than that, it`ll always be taken with a grain of salt.
This is similiar to "Video games cause violence in children" - everyone will preach and put a lot of effort into trying to prove that the two are not related, and all it takes is one ignorant politician or psychologist to tie them together and everything goes down the drain.
Anybody remember the cell-phone at the gas station incident? Same thing, disproven - but the myth will hang in the air for years to come.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If I had an important paper published in a respected scientific journal and someone told me my work was 'worthy of the Mythbusters' I'd punch them in the face.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
That's true with anything, including that what you see is real. I don't have the time or the energy to teach you basic philosophy but this is not a new debate. Descartes thought about it, and many have after him. For the best modern thought on how scientific method works and how we prove things empirically, get the Logic of Scientific Discovery by Karl Popper.
This "study" tells us nothing. 21 years? How many people even had a cell phone 21 years ago? Of those people, how many of them talked on said phone for two hours a day, every day, for 21 years?
Today you've got people talking on the phone for hours a day, every day. How about we study them, and then see if they don't have a higher rate of inoperable brain tumors in 30-40 years time.
You know, I can smoke one cigarette a week for 15 years, then a pack a week for the remaining 5 years and probably not get lung cancer and the end of that 20 year time period. That doesn't exactly mean that smoking isn't harmful.
Putting a device that emits radiation next to your head is harmful. How much? Who knows. Maybe in 30 years we'll find out.
Saying cell phones are safe because they don't cause cancer is saying that cyanide is safe because it won't scald you. The health issue with cell phones has never been about cancer, but about cell phone radiation penetrating the skull and opening up/damaging the blood-brain barrier, allowing toxins and other foreign materials in your bloodstream to cross over and damage your brain cells. Additionally, normal electromagnetic brain functioning is disturbed by cell phone radiation, with brainwave patterns being abnormal several hours after cell phone use.
Please note that this doesn't make chatting on the highway at 85 mph any more safe.
Or perhaps any less safe than chatting with a passenger while drinking a soda at 85 mph, unless we have data to show otherwise.
I hate those one-liner reassuring titles. Check out verizon's checkered past here: http://malfy.org/
This is not at all a "move worthy of MythBusters" as the submitter stated. Mythbusters is entertaining and generally informative television, and this Danish study sounds solid, but the methodologies are totally different, for the obvious reason that sifting through hundreds of thousands of medical records accumulated over many years and applying complex statistical models to them does not make for compelling television.
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
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
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/CoverageLocator Controller?requesttype=newsearch
It's like europe was in 1993.
>'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."
I am just flipping appalled at the number of people in academia who have not internalized the concept that You Can't Prove A Fucking Negative! Can you prove that Neandertals are extinct? Can you prove that space aliens aren't controlling Bush and Blair with mind rays? Hell no! People seem to spend a huge amount of time worrying about shit that just might maybe could be true because, even though there is absofuckinglutely no evidence FOR it. On the other hand, they will blithely put up with 50,000 automobile deaths per year in the US and god knows how many deaths from tobacco and alcohol. Sheesh!
Speaking of which, I think I'll go have a medicinal gin and tonic and calm down.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Come on guys, JS is very easy to write - I can't see how you nanaged to fuck it up!
Obviously this study has a lot more scientific integrity than what the Mythbusters do, but to say that what they do isn't science just isn't true.
Mythbusters is probbably the only show on TV that actually DOES science and shows what it is rather than just acting as a mouthpiece for science. The do everything that other scientists do, albiet within the confines of a television show. They repeat experiments, they accept "peer review", they establish controls. They do everything but publish a paper in a journal. Tell me how what the Mythbusters do isn't science?
It might not be something you'd want to site in a research paper, so it's not really up to the standards of acadamia, but calling what they do not science is simply wrong.
AccountKiller
Actually they do a pretty good job of science. They perform experiments that test hypotheses (urban myths). That's what science is all about. Just because something is simple, it doesn't mean it isn't profound. Just because something is complicated and hard to understand, doesn't mean it is profound.
Who paid for this study?
It sounds like they are trying to make things appear better than they are. How many people in this study were using cell phones in 1980s? 10? 20? Certainly not "420,000 cell phone users" as they claim.
Additionally, how much were those users using their cell phones in 1980s, with the rates of $9/minute? Not much, I sure.
We are bombarded by radiation all the time.
A small piece of material the emits alpha particles isn't very dangerous at all.
Also, duration plays a large role.
Now the amount of 'radiation' emmitted from a cell phone is incredibly tiny. And looking at 20 years of use they didn't find any evidence of cancer.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"They didn't take into effect the amount of vehicular accidents that are caused by inattentive drivers."
Fixed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They may not have all the glamour of a white lab coat and a zillion dollar lab, but Adam and Jamie have put together some rather credible experiments.
For example, with the helium football myth, where a football filled with helium apparently will kick farther than one filled with air, they took a collection of standard footballs into a large indoor room to eliminate the effect of wind and kicked and threw them in customized machines to eliminate any human bias, then took their collected data to a professional statistician to analyze it all. I don't think a professional scientist could have conducted the experiment any better than they did. Besides, when is actually testing a hypothesis and designing an experiment to elimnate bias not science? I agree that Adam and Jamie sometimes take liberties with bias and method, but at least they have the balls to test some of these urban myths and not just yap about them.
Mythbusters has come a long way from their first episodes and while I don't always agree with some of the logical shortcuts they take, I think overall they do a credible job.
You better stop your needless worrying. According to my new theory, worrying about cell phones causing cancer causes cancer. Don't believe it? Well no one has disproven it yet!
;)
Also according to my made-up numbers, 10 years ago people used to only worry about cell phones causing cancer 5 minutes a day. These days with people like you around people worry about cell phones causing cancer 20 minutes a day! Maybe the worrying wasn't detectable back then, but it is now! We'll only know in 30 years!
Putting a device that emits radiation next to your head is harmful. How much? Who knows.
Worrying about dangers that don't exist is harmful. How much? Who knows. But if I state things as if we don't know anything about it, that totally false sense of uncertainty sure sounds scary.
My prescription includes making fun of people that don't understand science.
AccountKiller
The numbers form the study (males and females) of cell phone users between 15-21 years: 10,968 and between 10-15 years: 45,680. Total number of subjects were 420,095 persons. The study was supported by the Danish Strategic Research Council and the Danish Cancer Society. According to the article: "The funding sources were not involved in the study design or data collection, analyses, or interpretation."
The article do discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the study, any blame on putting things in a better light should be placed on the regular media that is reporting about their article and findings.
What about cataracts?
Someone once told me a similar theory about syphilis (maybe thinking about it raises the risk! ). I think they died.
You have to remember that many times Jamie and Adam are looking for aggregate effects and not the minute differences that professional scientists are looking to find. A lot of professional science is attmepting to increase the resolution or accuracy of previous experiments. Hurricanes and straw, crashing cars, exploding cell phones, most of these experiments are more concerned with specificity than sensitivity, i.e. whether a particular event does or does not occur rather than to what degree.
Just like science, the methods Jamie and Adam have used over the years have improved as have the certainty of their results.
I haven't heard of anyone not believing in the concept of birth actually being born, so maybe you're right.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Sorry to rain on your parade but excessively worrying about anything, including cell phones causing cancer can lead to all kinds of health problems including cancer. So it isn't your theory at all ;)
I would think not. If the final word was "there", the government would have no reason to continue funding his research. One thing I've noticed about these kinds of studies is the automatic "... but more study is needed" caveat at the end of every article. Perhaps I'm getting cynical in my old age, but is it really possible that no scientific study is ever conclusive enough to not require further study?
Science doesn't work the way this article claims. The Danish study doesn't show that cellphones are safe. It can't, unless it demonstrates exhaustively every mechanism by which cellphones interact with human biochemistry, which no study will.
What it shows is that their study did not prove cellphones dangerous in the way that it studied. Which means their test failed to prove that it's dangerous. Which doesn't mean that it's safe.
When science returns some useful results, which are then perverted into lies, then it's even harder to take the liars seriously. When it's the cellphone industry, with nothing to gain from finding risk in their products, then their abuse of the science just makes it harder to believe their claims.
--
make install -not war
"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."
But look at how much privacy was lost in the process.
Odd, I'm not seeing any. CSS errors, on the other hand, sure, though at least some of them (like _height instead of height in a little style block all on its own) are clearly deliberate hacks.
if you keep them in a safe them cell phone rays can't hurt you! wait...
Ever since amateur radio operators started using 70cm (440 MHz) there has been an ongoing conversation on 'fried brain or not'.
Understanding the workings of this digital octopus starts with Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association who hired former Rep. Steve Largent (R) of Oklahoma as its president during 2003.
We've all heard the phrase "follow the money" if one wants to learn something, but in this case, we'll follow the Politician.
Steve Largent
1996 - Bob Barr (R-GA) and Steve Largent (R-OK) introduce Anti-Gay / Lesbian H.R. 3396, "Defense of Marriage Act,"
1998 - Congress Drops Anti-Gay/Lesbian "Largent Amendment", sponsored by Oklahoma Republican Steve Largent
1999 - Both the honorable Steve Largent (R. OK), and James Inhofe (R. OK), refuse to answer questions in relation to US military activities within the southern Mexican State of Chiapas. According to a representative of the local district office of Rep. Steve Largent, Mr Joe Adams, had stated in a hand written response, that the information you had requested in relation to subject is classified, and cannot be answered by our office.-see letter to Shawn Garner. Questions sent to Steve Largent, and James Inhofe:
1. who are the drug cartels within the southern Mexican state of Chiapas?
2. How many tons of cocaine and heroin have been confiscated and destroyed within the southern Mexican state of Chiapas?
3. Who are the US backed paramilitaries within the southern Mexican state of Chiapas?
4. How much funding do they get from the federal government?
5. How many members of the SOA are present within the nation of Mexico?
6. How many combat troops are on the ground within the southern Mexican state of chiapas, and the nation of Mexico?
2003 - Republicans take over K Street By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor "Most of the recent new hires in the lobby shops along the K Street corridor, and especially the top ones, have been Republicans, many from the Bush administration and Capitol Hill. Last week, the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association hired former Rep. Steve Largent (R) of Oklahoma as its next president.
Getting the Picture?...Someone who hates individual sexual preference, Gays, Lesbians, and reminiscent of Brown Shirts is now the president of an organization that is going to tell you if cellular telephones are safe.
More information located at:
Citizens Against Second Hand Cellular Phone Radiation
http://www.flyingsnail.com/CASHCPR/cellular.html
Is there any European that does not use a cell phone?
This means nothing for US sheep.
The radiation levels are much worse here.
Don't fry your brain.
Cigs used to be good for you...
... then we would be talking about the nation of Japan in the past tense. I rest my case.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
There where no cell phones 21 years ago! 10 years ago less than 1% of north american and european population had cell phones.
This is another sample of CAPITALISTIC CORPORATE MANIPULATION!
Wow. I've come across some biased Wikipedia articles before, but the one you referenced sets a new low. It's current version, (with a single exception in non-bolded typeface buried in a paragraph), only mentioned studies which illustrate the safety of cell phone tech, and it does this using bolded headline entries. This is a shamefully poor representation of the available data on the subject. The article also fails to mention any of the many cases of conflict of interest which pollute many of the studies which claim safety. That's just pathetic and Wikipedia needs a solid re-write on this one.
I don't think the claims being made are bullshit, as you suggest, and I certainly am not motivated in my opinions because I like 'dangerous' sounding things. I just don't trust the telcos or the military, and there is plenty of reason not to. Anybody who argues differently is, in my opinion, either ignorant or willfully ignorant. It's the second variety of ignorance which baffles me.
-FL
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
So what your saying is that if I don't believe in death.....
gotta find the nearest bridge and try this out!
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
doesn't 420,000 mean 420 in denmark?
If you're going to omit the "The" then it becomes jsut "Penn State". I know, I work there - and University relations gets cranky when you don't use either the full The Pennsylvania State University or the short Penn State.
Ah Ha! Now they just need Mythbusters to prove that using your cellphone is an aeroplane DOES NOT disrupt the navigational systems and cause planes to fall out from the skies.
Hang on, they've already done that.......
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alex_gab_0 61205_bush_adminstration_i.htm seems somehow related to this.
Have you seen the movie "Thank you for smoking" http://imdb.com/title/tt0427944/ ?
Well there's one phrase on this movie that stunded me like a thunderbolt. It went something like this: Even though we are constantly exploring the subject WE HAVEN'T found direct link between cell phone usage and brain cancer.
Instantly i saw my self 40 years ahead in time watching the movie "Thank you for talking!".
I don't know whether this is true, but if it is, the study has a potential flaw, because the analog NMT was replaced by digital GSM around 1992 in the middle of the study, and I can't see this being taken into account. It would be interesting to see if it made a difference.
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
Foil-hat brigade: Oh no they're not!!
Vested interests: Oh yes they are!!
Republicans: The terrorists are behind you!!!
Mythbusters would have had to do it on a budget of $200 and spend less than one week, additionally, the would have found an excuse to wrap a cell phone in detcord and see what happens when they blow it up.
http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c ontent/abstract/jnci;98/23/1707 Requires subscription
When one hears about something - anything being "safe" - better examine what the "risks" are for the something that has been labelled "safe".
For example, there are a variety of carcinogenic compounds that have been approved for use in foods as well as in many household and industrial products and these products have been deemed "safe". What that means is: that the impact of the particular compound on a 150 male ONLY causes X number of cancers. And that X number of cancers is ACCEPTABLE (that is, acceptable to the industrial chemical complex lobbiests! But of course, no one studies the impact of those same toxic compunds on a 30 infant whose is going through rapid cell development. OR on a 100 pound pregnant woman.
Another example, when it comes to nuclear power plants - "we" all read or hear about how "safe" nuclear plants are. But what do "they" mean when they use the word "safe". All nuclear power plants leak, in a continuous fashion all day all night everyday, every year, radioactive isotopes into the air in a downwind plume from the NUKE plant. The NUKE industry calls these leaks "emissions"; and at the same time the NUKE industry says there are no leaks. Which is all smoke and mirrors. Dr. Rosalie Bertell has published research to show that these legal emissions in these downwind plumes are causing a plethora of chronic illnesses in children! So much for "safe".
The REAL question is: who should decide on what is an acceptable level of RISK. Some idiot in a white lab coat?Some idiotic lobbiest? No thanks!
This is the original report on the cell phone radiation research. Much better than abc news http://jncicancerspectrum.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/c ontent/abstract/jnci;98/23/1707
You suck zonk
However, blood-brain barrier permeability due to EM radiation has been demonstrated numerous times.
here
here
and here
and here's an actual post from another prominant researcher, Allen Frey, regarding his own experiments in the area.
And here is perhaps the most interesting. . . An excerpt I scanned from a book on the subject; the notes are regarding something called, cyclotronic resonance, an electromagnetic mechanic which shows one likely candidate for how certain chemicals manage to cross the Blood Brain Barrier when the subject is exposed to an EM field. . .
"In 1985, Dr. Carl Blackman of the EPA and Dr. Abraham Liboff of Oakland University, working independently, integrated the reports of Jafary-Asl and the attempts to duplicate Bawin and Adey's experiments. They concluded that the strength of the local steady-state magnetic field of the Earth at the site of each of the laboratories was the hidden variable that determined the different frequencies reported."
Also. . .
here's an interesting article on how the original experimenter, Henry Lai, has been repeatedly undermined by Motorola in an effort to discredit his work.
-FL
So, be skeptical. But don't be lazy. --Read the article and then do some more searching based on what you find there. If you are smart and diligent, you will be able to find supporting material or counter-claims which will solidify your knowledge in the subject. But please, (and I see this all the time), you cannot expect people to do your work for you. Learning is a personal journey. The old stand-by, "You must provide proof of claim," is only partly valid. Far too many use it as an excuse for personal laziness. Yes, proof is useful, but it is not actually owed to anybody. If a claim is interesting, it is up to each of us to research it. This is one of the reasons I like Slashdot so much; it provides a networking forum.
In that spirit, here are some more links you might look at with regard to the blood brain barrier. . .
here
here
and here
and here's an actual post from another prominant researcher, Allen Frey, regarding his own experiments in the area.
And here is perhaps the most interesting. . . An excerpt I scanned from a book on the subject; the notes are regarding something called, cyclotronic resonance, an electromagnetic mechanic which shows one likely candidate for how certain chemicals manage to cross the Blood Brain Barrier when the subject is exposed to an EM field. . .
"In 1985, Dr. Carl Blackman of the EPA and Dr. Abraham Liboff of Oakland University, working independently, integrated the reports of Jafary-Asl and the attempts to duplicate Bawin and Adey's experiments. They concluded that the strength of the local steady-state magnetic field of the Earth at the site of each of the laboratories was the hidden variable that determined the different frequencies reported."
Also. . .
here's an interesting article on how the original experimenter, Henry Lai, has been repeatedly undermined by Motorola in an effort to discredit his work.
-FL
Chuck Norris killed me with a cell phone once. True story.
First the title shouldn't say "safe"; it should say "not linked to cancer."
But it's not about *cancer*; it's about *tumours* (which may or may not be, or become, cancerous).
Take an egg. Kind of like your brain: sloppy goopy stuff in a hard shell. Now put it in a hot skillet. Leave it there for the length of a phone call. Do it several times a day. Do it every day for years.
Now then. Let's open up the hard shell and check the part of the egg that's been against the skillet. Look at that! It's not cancerous! We mightn't even call that rubbery white stuff a tumour. Alright! Even safer!
HOWEVER, if you were looking to find the same old sloppy goopy stuff, maybe you should check an egg that hasn't been against a skillet even once.
That and Fantastic Lad's blood-brain barrier issue.
C. Montgomery Burns: Tell you what... See all those 15-year-olds with cell phones glued to their heads? If we come back in 15 years and none of them has developed brain tumours, I owe you a Coke.
Astro
Well now, the problem is that, especially with regard to Cell Phone Radiation, the "common, widespread, consensus opinions", (as opposed to facts, I note), is a hotly pursued bit of real estate when it comes to such huge corporate/military projects to merge certain systems with the human race. Public belief is a very powerful tool if you can make it work for you, which is why governments spend so much on propaganda, and why corporations do the same thing under the flag of advertising and public relations.
--Which is why I want to see the other side of the story; because there is absolutely NO reason to believe that governments, the military, and corporations are telling us the truth with regard to Cell Phone radiation, (and a multitude of other topics, for that matter), while there IS plenty of evidence that they lie to us regularly with the intent to cause harm for their own benefit.
A public knowledge base like Wikipedia is a perfect place for people to learn about REAL things, as opposed to the publicly popular lies as inserted by propaganda and expensive ad campaigning.
In the case of the article in question, it does, in fact, present nearly every wacko theory ever espoused, and then proceeds to provide the scientific studies that address the theories. The studies generally undermine the theories but the tone is neutral and the language sufficiently dense that I worry that people won't realize that the theories are debunked.
See? Now that's a successful sales job! The studies you mention were bought by groups with conflict of interest while the non-partisan studies were left out. Doesn't that say something to you? Obviously not, if you consider the theories in question to be 'wacko', and to have been 'debunked'. Debunked? That's a fear-filled term, and it's not true. When a criminal shakes its head and says, "No, I'm not doing anything wrong," a accusation is not 'debunked'. If you truly did any research, if you truly bothered to think about the motivations involved by those claiming safety, you would recognize this rather quickly.
It sounds to me that rather than look reality in the face and try to plumb its not-always so pretty depths, you instead prefer to live in a warm, fuzzy illusion where corporations and governments never lie, and you want this illusion to be reflected by official culture as represented by public knowledge bases like Wikipedia so that you won't have to be bothered by worrisome ideas which ask you to take responsibility for yourself.
Conservative thinkers are always fearful children when you boil away the surrounding confusion.
-FL