Slashdot Mirror
Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this Reuters story, from which he excerpts: "Italy's supreme court has upheld a ruling that said there was a link between a business executive's brain tumor and his heavy mobile phone usage, potentially opening the door to further legal claims. The court's decision flies in the face of much scientific opinion, which generally says there is not enough evidence to declare a link between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and some experts said the Italian ruling should not be used to draw wider conclusions about the subject. 'Great caution is needed before we jump to conclusions about mobile phones and brain tumors,' said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering at Britain's Royal Berkshire Hospital. The Italian case concerned company director Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand, while taking notes with his right hand. Marcolini developed a so-called neurinoma affecting a cranial nerve, which was apparently not cancerous but nevertheless required surgery that badly affected his quality of life."
I've been reading slashdot at least once a day for the last few days, and I see this story for the first time.
But regardless - I would like to amend your "Can ppl stop..." to also stop claiming the story is a repost but NOT GIVE A LINK to the story of which this is supposed to be a repost? It's the equivalent of footnotes to back up claims, and it's what the Web (HTML) was actually MADE FOR.
Thank you.
That is the country of Italy (southern Europe, part of the EU), not Italy, Texas. We return you now to the regularly scheduled posts.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Well, Italy hardly stands alone. Here in the United States, idiot judges and legislators have been doing whack-ass stuff like declaring women pregnant two weeks before conception (by law). Other legislators have passed resolutions effectively banning global warming research, or attempting to legislate how said research is conducted so as to prevent certain conclusions from being reached. All around us, worldwide, science is under attack from the idiocracy.
Science is dangerous because is allows people like you and me to understand the world. Knowledge is power, and science as an institution makes no bones about who gets it. That's why the Dark Ages happened, and why we're just one major disaster or war away from it happening again. Every time science shows us a way to improve the lives of everyone, it gets locked down, barricaded behind licensing and laws, shuffled into a box marked "top secret", and buried. Pharmaceuticals spend billions developing new versions of dick hardening pills, while research into HIV, cancer, and other serious quality of life diseases languish. It seems that lifelong illnesses are only ever treated anymore, never cured. Curing a patient means denying yourself all that profit from name-brand life-saving drugs. I could come up with a hundred more examples from every industry in every country worldwide -- but you get the point.
Soon, we're going to have to start hiding printing presses and books in our basement, writing down how to rebuild our technology after our governments fail and the world plunges into darkness... all because we tolerate allowing people to become too rich and powerful, and invariably they turn into sociopaths and destroy us. :(
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Cell phone causes tumors because court says so?
Here comes the storm of posts defending mobile phones, wifi and radio waves of all kinds, so my post should stay nicely buried at -1.
I wouldn't go as far as to claim that the human brain is some infinite mystery, but right now we are VERY far away from understanding its processes clearly.
What exactly takes place inside the brain during orgasm? That's pretty common. Or how about when we are drunk? Surely that one is completely understood. But the merest scan of wikipedia or a more in-depth piece of researching will show you that we understand very little about either.
But when it involves gadgets that throw out radio waves at various frequencies, well that's obviously fine. Because we love gadgets, and many of us are scientists. In fact on slashdot, the only radio waves that seem to be capable of harm are used by the TSA. TSA bad (admittedly, they are).
If we can't measure what is happening during orgasm or drunkenness inside our head, then why do we assume that we know what happens when we hold radio transmitters next to our heads for many hours a day?
I'm not saying that radio waves are actually harmful - I'm saying that we don't know either way, and it could be decades before we have proof of the long term safety of mobile phones etc. In the meantime, as empirical thinkers it is our duty to leave the possibility open.
"The evidence was based on studies conducted between 2005-2009 by a group led by Lennart Hardell, a cancer specialist at the University Hospital in Orebro in Sweden. The court said the research was independent and “unlike some others, was not co-financed by the same companies that produce mobile telephones.”
I suppose this marks a turning point in public opinion. Not as a time that correlation between cell phones and cancer was proven, but for the time people started distrusting researches concluding that "no link has been found". I can only think this is a good thing. We've been down this road before with cigarettes.
We all know that brain tumors cause mobile phones!
FTFS:The Italian case concerned company director Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years.
Heck, I'd probably get a tumor too if I held a rock against ear 5-6 hours a day for 12 years.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
>>> developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand ...
Maybe he was holding it wrong
Apple already foresaw this and avoided it altogether in their phones.
Too bad other companies cant use this solution since Apple obviously hold the patent.
I must have missed the post.
Um if you spend that much time with a cell phone glued to your head, why not get a hands free option. then he wouldn't have that much time with the phone to his head.
I'm no fan of the civil law inquisitorial systems which operate in most of continental Europe. I vastly prefer the adversarial common law system with the judge strictly as impartial adjudicator. The civil law system confuses the roles of detective, prosecutor and judge while also supposedly delivering impartial judgement.
That said, civil law countries seem to do more to protect rights than common law countries, and a lot of that seems to come from their legal system.
His studies is much debated in Swedish popular and
professional media.
I recommend trying to read the original Swedish language articles, because Google Translate sucks donkey balls when it translates from Swedish. The translated text usually looks correct, but is full of factual errors (missing negations, faulty prepositions et c.). Even if you don't know how to read Swedish, if you can read English, German/Dutch and French, you should get a better understanding of the content of the articles then the Google translation can give you. Swedish is just a mix of Old Norse, Old French, English, French, Latin, Low German, Romani, Turkish and some other languages to make it spicy, with a funny spelling (yes, it is even worse of a bastard language then English, but at least Swedish, unlike English, is a very expressive language).
i've met someone who also had a tumour develop behind his ear - the same one where he was using a phone. over 15 years ago he was a sales executive, on the road a lot, and he had one of those "brick" mobile phones. they had to be powerful because the number of cell towers was less than it is now. again, he was holding the device up to his ear for over 6 hours a day.
the problem was that it took 13 years for the tumour to develop to the point where it became painful enough for him to notice something was wrong. by the time he noticed it, the tumour was one centimetre diameter. he's retired, now, having had surgery.
The reason something is classed as potentially carcinogene, is when some study spring out to show some possible link , and a lot of people could be affected, then it get classed so. If you read the PDF carefully you will see that all they have is a few study of correlation from 2004. All the study of non link in the mean time cast the 2004 study as "correlation but no causation". As others said the radiation is too low in frequency or even intensity to do any damage. That's a fact not a supposition. I would not be surprised OTOH to find out 10 years down the road that some of the plastic used in the fabrication had some added substrat which was carcinogen.
Everybody understands that scientists have to make a living, but what happens when the result of their sponsored studies are not in their employer's favor?
Indeed. This doesnt even have to be scientists cooking the books. With this type of science the conclusions are statistical in nature, which means if you run enough studies you will sooner or later get the results you want.
So all the sponsors of the studies have to do is bury the results that they dont like, and trumpet the results that they do like. All this while the science itself remain completely neutral. Now add in the fact that the scientists may in fact be cooking the books too, and trust in the system is looking pretty grim.
This is why all studies should be considered suspect if future funding levels depends on the outcome, and even more so if the funding sources arent independent.
"His name was James Damore."
The funny part is, those corporate researchers that I've met -- and it would be dozens over the years -- all use cell phones, and buy them for their spouses and children. What cold-hearted bastards! Or ignorant fools! Or both!
And the corporate cell phone designers that I've met -- and it would be hundreds over the years -- all use cell phones and, despite their decades of work on improving the size, weight, battery life, and range of their devices, never once realized that it would be to their competitive advantage to minimize any radiation absorbed by the body, since that represents wasted energy that could have been used to reach the cell tower instead. Idiots!
But the managerial genius of the corporations! They can stay in the business for twenty years or more, and each hire hundreds of EM researchers and tens of thousands of engineers, without one of them cracking and letting the Great Corporate Secret -- those Top Secret studies that show how dangerous cell phones are -- out to the public. The maintained secrecy would impress the NSA and NRO, while the control of their people would impress Kim Jong-un. Masterful!
In France in the 90s I remember that a judge decided to grant compensation to people who got multiple sclerosis who claimed that it was linked to hepatitis B vaccine. Of course the scientific community completely debunked that link. The only reason some people who got it after vaccination was that tons of people got that vaccination at the same time, so coincidences were very very likely to happen.
Anyway, it is good thing for "equality of chances". If you sucked at school, you can become a judge.
This study was done by a cancer researcher, who would have an incentive to say that cellphones cause cancer because then his field gets more funding. It is just as bad as the cellphone companies co-funding research as far as bias goes.
The only way we can actually prevent studies being buried is to require studies to be 'registered' with the journal before they are started in order to be published. Once the are registered they have to be published, no matter the result.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
There are essentially 2 main groups of effects related to electromagnetic radiation in the frequency range in questions:
a) direct: Influencing cell chemistry, ion channels, reactions, and disturbing neuronal functions by electromagnetic fields/absorbiont of energy quanta. They are unproven at best, and some of them are unklikely since the quanta are too low energy for most transitions of molecules in the body, yet the fluctuation is to fast to influence the pseudo-static potentials in the cells. This needs to be checked very carefully, since complex systems may have rectifying effects on fast timescales, but the last time i looked for studies there was no indication of a problematic effect.
b) indirect: the energy is absorbed by and translated to vibrational excitations (heat), heating the tissue like a chicken in the microwave oven. This effect is well known, and, even if seemingly weak, problematic on a long timescale. Studies have shown that a non-negligible temperatue increase may/will occur, which in turn may have all kinds of bad effects. The order of magnitude for this is easy to caclulate on a paper napkin. And since it is well known it was already mentioned *in the manual of my mobile phone 7 years ago* that one should not use it contineously without a headset and keep a minumum distance (i am unsure about the manual from my phone in 2003, but i believe in may have been included). It was well known to anybody paying attention to what he uses that such an extreme use will cause harm.
So yes, all this boils down to: ignore well known facts (or even the manual) about the things you use, and get medical problems. Yes, for sure you can wait until warnings have to be placed on coke bottles that drinking 3 liters per day, every day are bad. But its no excuse to not listening the 6 years befor to a proven fact with the excuse that the manufacturer does not state that using it far outside the normal use may affect you negatively - maybe he even did so on the bottom of page one of the quickstart, but you found reading unnecessary. Every thing manufactured has a an avergage use. Is you are so far outside of this that you are in a small percentile of users only, you are somewhat on your on own.
The whole point is that for years and years now I've been hearing that there are conflicting studies and you really should be using a hands-free if you use the cell phone a lot, you know, just in case. And the recommendation goes on to avoiding wired hands-free as Bluetooth should probably be safer. My 70 year old mother has heard of this and uses Bluetooth, since she is on her phone a lot (but of course not 5-6 hours/day), I am sure an executive would have heard this. So, did he take the advice or just risked it? If he did take the advice then it can't have been the cellphone and we should be looking into Bluetooth/cancer research (I haven't heard of something like that though). If he did not take the advice, I don't see how he should be compensated by anyone (was someone certain he could get cancer, yet forced him to use one directly on his ear?).
But this topic seems quite bizarre to me. I mean, I have read about dozens of cases where management knowingly put poor workers in lethal danger (radium girls, asbestos workers etc), so hearing an executive suing for his cellphone usage at least ironic.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Six billion cell phone subscriptions
22,910 new brain tumor cases in USA in 2012 out of 300M people or 0.008% of the population.
So practically everybody on the planet old enough to use one has a cellphone, but practically nobody on the planet gets a brain tumor.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
How did this garbage moderated to +5 insightful when it's a collection of lies and deceiving half-truths?
Real life is overrated.
I have never once worried about cellphones causing cancer. I understand how non-ionizing radiation works, and have built a suitable tin-foil hat.
The real danger is that some jackass judge from the northeastern states or more likely in LalaLand California, who believes that it is appropriate and necessary to consider FOREIGN laws and precedence when deliberating American laws and precedence, will open the litigation floodgates here in the U.S.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Italy’s supreme court rejected an INAIL appeal against that ruling on October 12 though its decision was only reported on Friday.
INAIL - I'm Not An Italian Lawyer ???
Considering it wasn't too long ago that Italy put geologists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake, it's a bit difficult to give this latest development anything more than "there they go again...."
My, my, you seem to have no idea how science works.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Depends who does the science, apparently.
I wonder who has more money to spend? Independent labs or those financed by the guys taking $70+ a month from your bank account to pay the telephone tax?
http://www.electricsense.com/2597/cell-phone-radiation-studiesâ"-is-this-as-much-truth-as-you-can-fit-on-one-page/
Slashdotters are well informed and rather mouthy about such phenomenon as "Confirmation Bias". Why don't they apply it to themselves when it comes to their beloved little devices?
The heart wants what it wants and it is very good at blinding people to uncomfortable truths.
I am quite prepared to accept a link between brain damage and using a mobile 6 hours a day, but has it been shown which came first?
If a cancer researcher does a study, what diseases do you think he might find cellphones cause? Tuberculosis? Clearly that is a bias, and if you want to claim that the cellphone companies are biased you can't ignore the cancer researcher's bias otherwise you have a double standard.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Most research these days on cell phone radiation and tumors end with the warning "more long term studies need to be done on heavy users"
Is today a fandroid day off? How can there be this many posts about cell phones and cancer without someone saying "if there were a connection, there would be cancer clusters for colorectal cancer around every Apple store on the planet"?
And saying that is not ok. Stop it.
lol, for a moment there i thought i accidentally logged into world of warcraft again
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Skip to the third to last paragraph here, just under the map of Italy. Hilarious.