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."
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
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.
How egotistic would USA readers be, for this clarification to be necessary?
You are missing the context. Texas has many times come up with similarly hair brained declarations.
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"!
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!
Interesting. I once knew someone who developed a brain tumor in his head -- the same head he had been drinking water with for the previous ten years. His tumor didn't develop immediately either, and by the time it was discovered, it had become inoperable. He's not around to tell the story, now, having died. Heck, I've even heard that every single person who has ever died because of a tumor has had a history of water use. Pretty damn scary if you ask me!
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."
At least they don't believe the entire universe is only thousands of years old as half of USA thinks.
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.