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Possible Cellphone Link To Cancer Found In Rat Study (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: A giant U.S. study meant to help decide whether cellphones cause cancer is coming back with confusing results. A report on the study, conducted in rats and mice, is not finished yet. But advocates pushing for more research got wind of the partial findings and the U.S. National Toxicology Program has released them early. They suggest that male rats exposed to constant, heavy doses of certain types of cellphone radiation develop brain and heart tumors. But female rats didn't, and even the rats that developed tumors lived longer than rats not exposed to the radiation. The National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, is still analyzing the findings. But John Bucher, associate director of the program, said the initial findings were so significant that the agency decided to release them. A 29-year-old study published earlier this month from Australia reassures us that cellphones are reasonably safe, and do not cause cancer.
People who walk about with their noses in their screens will stand a much higher chance of dying like a bug on a windshield than from radiation.
This debate is getting as old as climate change and "does this belong in slashdot or not?"
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
A more accurate headline would be "Cell Phone Links to Cancer Only Found in Shitty Studies".
The rats and mice had all been given Facebook accounts.
with Darwin Awards
And I've never seen one use a cell phone. At these prices and the lousy service why would they?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Here is definitive proof that cell phones do not cause brain cancer. There is no correlation therefore no causation.
Humans are not rats. And if I dined on 5 pounds of saccharine I'd develop issues as well.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
What is curious is in the linked study BeauHD felt so important to include, there was a slight increase in brain cancer among males - which would match the findings here. While it would be unwise to conclude anything from a partial study and a historical study of available information (which could fail to account for many factors), surely there is room for further study and the possibility of a negative impact? I don't understand the fervent defense of cell phone radiation as being completely benign. Radiation - even beneficial and important forms such as sunlight - can trigger cancer. So why wouldn't exposure be potentially problematic?
Rats are pretty notorious for developing cancer and tumors. Rats are really, really bad test subjects for this sort of thing.
Also if you look at the VERY top of the PDF, you'll note that the study WAS NOT PEER REVIEWED.
So as for the headline, is it possible? Maybe. Is it also possible that the authors of the study are trolling for more grant money. VERY LIKELY.
Mass media reporting on science is fucking awful. Just terrible.
Get cancer, and outlive the peasant who doesn't have cancer. Alright, that seems like a fair deal to me.
I bet if the male rats had a significant other calling them on the cell phone to nag at them all the time, their life expectancy increase would get wiped out.
This ihas been on Facebook all day and driving me up a wall. Take a look at the actual report, something no journalists seem willing or able to do. From the report:
"Exposures to RFR were initiated in utero beginning with the exposure of pregnant dams..."
"All RF exposures were conducted over a period of approximately 18 hours using a continuous cycle of 10 minutes on (exposed) and 10 minutes off (not exposed), for a total daily exposure time of approximately 9 hours a day, 7 days/week."
So yes, if you have been using a cell phone since before you were born, and using it for NINE HOURS A DAY, you have cause to be worried.
Otherwise, take a deep breath, read the Australian study that said there have been no increases in brain cancer over the past 29 years, and give me a call. I'll be on my cell phone.
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Or if, perhaps, you sleep with your phone near your head.
And I just got my rats each a new phone. And I thought their dirty looks were because I got them TracFones. Guess their first call was to their buddies at Cold Spring Harbor Lab.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
even the rats that developed tumors lived longer than rats not exposed to the radiation
Shouldn't the post title actually be New cellphone-caused tumor found to increase your lifespan?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
More than that.
If you look at the study they only had ~90 rats per group so all the cancer incidences were pretty low, I think the worst-off group had 7 positives and I don't see any good reason why the males would be so cancer ridden while the females were fine.
This is a cool experiment for an initial investigation but you can't really conclude anything. I think the next stage is to repeat the experiment by getting as many male rates as you can and splitting them between the control and the two highest exposure male groups for GSM and CDMA.
If this effect is real it should show up there.
I stole this Sig
The study design is worse than that.
Firstly - it adjusts the power so that the wattage per gram is over the whole body.
As a comparison - to do the same with a human with a phone and 6W/kg, would need a 600W or so transmitter (average). (mobile phones typically peak at 2).
It would be so much power it would make you about as warm as sunlight falling on your skin.
In humans, there are several major differences in real life, and in the standard used. ... 'were observed in the head and neck and other sites throughout the body'.
Firstly, it is the peak absorbtion of the gram or ten (US or EU) that is absorbing most signal. This means that even neglecting hours a day of usage, small movements around the head, or using it in a different ear will dramatically reduce the time at peak SAR.
Secondly 'develop heart tumors' - if you look at page 12 of the study, a real problem emerges.
They say 'therefore organs other than the heart were examined for tumors'
But.
Then they present a table, specifically breaking out 'heart' - which shows an apparent effect, from 'others' which really don't.
They do not - for example - show line entries in the tables for 'head' 'neck'.
This is a problem because if you take 20 sites throughout the body, and then analyse them against the control, even with no effect, you will often get an apparently statistically significant result.
This would be less concerning if the numbers were larger - however one more or less rat in the control group getting cancer of the heart (or other parts) would skew this to significant or insignificance.
Secondly, their control rats did not live as long as they historically should have, compared to other studies.
You'd need a much stronger transmitter.
SAR = absorbed power != tx power
In other words, deny the study you choose to.
For the most part, any electromagnetic radiation is bad for you. Be it from an x-ray machine, the sun, or microwave ovens. There will never a conclusive study about this because it's a matter of DNA-damaging odds (think "atomic-level physics/superposition principle") and there are other invisible factors involved (e.g., a person's susceptibility to tumors).
The best thing a study like this can do is describe those odds. If I recall, the Australian study also showed a cancer rate of a few percent...interesting.
Yow! Cell phone radiation extends ratty lifespan ... look on the bright side!
Or possibly Tumors cause life extension in rats! The researchers are such negative nellies
I'm exposed to radiation of all types, including RF, 24 hours a day. Not just 9 hours a day.
Ha! It's the hormones activating and interacting. If there would be a direct effect on RNA or DNA, surely the effects would show in both sexes. On the other hand, isn't the brain and the heart the most energy consuming organs in the body of most non-political mammals? Some kind of effect related to mitochondria haven't been ruled out yet, I assume..
So yes, if you have been using a cell phone since before you were born, and using it for NINE HOURS A DAY, you have cause to be worried.
Also, you have to be a rat. Don't forget that key point.
Obviously, they are upping the exposure time per day because their study was only two years long. The Australian study was nice because it shows that with reasonable cell phone use there appears to be no increase in cancer incidence. But the next step is to see if it is possible to get any cancer incidence increase with extreme cell phone use.
Our understanding of how non-ionizing radiation interacts with cellular function is very limited. High voltage power lines "might" cause cancer over long periods. Strong magnetic fields "might" mess your body up over long periods. Cell phone use "might" do that too.
It's easy to be flippant and just say "non-ionizing radiation" doesn't interfere with cells, any idiot knows this, they taught me that in physics class. But a lot of incorrect things have been taught in physics class over the years, before someone proved them wrong. (Remember the scathing NYT editorial about Goddard not understanding Newton's laws?).
Usually when you get a series of inconsistent results in science, it means that the effect is very weak OR we do not yet understand all the factors controlling it so the experiments can not be done correctly. So if you want to grab on to your favorite study result and proclaim victory, good for you. But that doesn't explain why 50% of the studies give the opposite result, and ignoring them will not advance anyone's understanding of the issue.
Don't forget that the study doesn't appear to have been properly blinded. Improper blinding can easily cause effects as big as they observed.
Nice catch on the multiple comparisons.
People who walk about with their noses in their screens will stand a much higher chance of dying like a bug on a windshield than from radiation.
I doubt you would get that result if you let the people who did this study test that hypothesis. There is not a single uncertainty on a measurement shown in the paper as far as I can tell and they are dealing with tiny statistics which are prone to large fluctuations. Their most statistically significant result seems to by about 5% likely to occur by random chance (based on their own statistical calculation which frankly I would not trust at this point) but with just over 100 measurements it seems very reasonable that this would occur by chance. Indeed they even point out that this rate was achieved in one of the 13 control samples they list in the appendix D!
With a sample size of 90 differences of a few incidents are not statistically significant when you are making lots of measurements and there is a high degree of correlation which has to be taken into account since all comparisons are made to a single control group so a statistical fluctuation there affects all measurements. As the saying goes there are lies, damn lies and statistics and this paper is very much lacking in statistics...not that the authors are deliberately lying but their conclusions do not seem statistically valid.
although the results showed that 3W/kg GSM is more harmful than 6W/kg GSM
The results did NOT show that. All the results show is that if you take a small sample size and take a large number of measurements you can find a noticeable fluctuation. Suppose I told you that I took a coin and tossed it 10 times and got heads every time. With this result you might start to think that the coin is weighted somehow to give more heads. However supposed I told you that I had done that experiment 100 times with statistically identical coins and only once got 10 heads? Suddenly it becomes a lot less statistically significant. This is exactly what they have done here. They have taken 4 small samples and tested for multiple different conditions which is equivalent to make over 100 measurements. That they then find that a few of these are 5% likely (more like only 7-8 heads in our example) is not at all surprising.
This explains so much. And the males lose heart and brain when yacking too long.
Oh look, Cellphone users coming out in full force to rationalize their addiction and sh*t on the research.
Because this 'study' is designed to give the required outcome, and thus more funding. Rats aren't humans. The amount of radiation was ridiculously higher than what a human gets from a cellphone, etc.
But I agree with your post. The study only shows spurious statistic. they are taking 90 pup and out of those find 2 or 3 males and 1 female with brain cancer per group power/kg. And funnily they find a difference between GSM and CMDA. Want to see why I think it is spurious ? Look at the glial hyperplasia statistic table 1. If it was really correlated and related to power, then it would not explain why 3 W.Kg rat per Kg got zero incidence but 1.5 and 6 w.Kg got 2. Once you realize then it spreads from 0 to 2 alone even when you change the power, then you realize that the results are just statistical anomalies. Furthermore the "sick" rat lived longer than the control, so the probability of brain cancer rising with age it could again just be a spurious effect. I am not seeing part of the article explaining how they removed both those confounding effects or explain the discrepancy or even when the diagnose was made (only at autopsy? The age confounding factor is important) but to be honest I skimmed as the typography is horrible to read (compared to what I am used in physic journals - spacing between lines for example).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So yes, if you have been using a cell phone since before you were born, and using it for NINE HOURS A DAY, you have cause to be worried.
I wouldn't be so quick to draw that conclusion.
This is another study with p less than 0.05 as the criterion for significance, which means that 1/20 such studies should get these results by chance. I'm curious how many parallel studies are running.
The study has a sample size of 90 rats in each of control, 1.5 W/kg, 3 W/kg and 6 W/kg groups. Looking at the brain tumor results, 0 tumors were reported in the control rats, but the average number of brain tumors in control rats in NTP studies is reported as about 2%, which is about 2 in a group of 90. The # of brain tumors in the male rats varied by exposure level between 0 and 3, i.e. not that far off from the average number of tumors in all control groups in rats in NTP studies. Oddly, the GSM numbers are twice as high as the CDMA numbers. The CDMA numbers are actually half as large as normal control group brain tumor incidence.
So, these results seem primarily due to a particularly low incidence of tumors in the control group. The study mentions that the survival rate of the control group was 28%, compared to an average of 47% in all NTP studies. If the tumors develop uniformly in life, or relatively late in life, the study's inability to keep the control rats alive may have been responsible for their relatively low rates of tumors.
It would be interesting to see if each of these groups of rats were kept in the same labs. Lots of that type of information is missing from the linked article.
Never realized how much rats use their cell phones? Personally I think cell phones risk your health more as a distraction such as while driving that would cause an accident than concern about radiation. The problem human's have with cell phones is this instant communication addiction people have with them. Because you have this ability to connect you do so even though it's probably something that could wait. In other words, we spend more time using them then probably we need too. But considering all the signals bombarding our bodies everyday. Can you really say the cell phone is the problem?
That there's all this debate about cell phone 'radiation'. It's non ionizing btw and it's RF energy - nothing more.
Let's face it we've all been exposed to high power RF signals for the better part of a century. So say it's the cell phones is a little bit narrow in thinking if RF does indeed cause certain cancers.
And need I remind you a lot of medical equipment absolutely RELIES on RF - like the MRI for instance.
-But female rats didn't, and even the rats that developed tumors lived longer than rats not exposed to the radiation.
Well no shit, me and my generation are already all aware that radiation are good for males rats and turtles and will give them superpower and ninja skills.
Elok
They say things are bad practically every day. "Caffeine is bad, don't drink it." "Oh, caffeine does have some benefits. Go ahead and drink it." "Dark chocolate doesn't do anything except make you fat. Don't eat it." "You know what? Dark chocolate is good for your heart now. Eat some!"
Regardless of this most recent scare, I'm not giving up my phone. They're too useful to be without them.
CAPTCHA: gateway
Correct me I'm wrong. But they found this link while doing a search in some rat's study? Seems improbable to me
That's a bit harsh. It's better than anything the dogs and monkeys have published.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, an Australian based research may claim it is 'safe'. The Australians are also known to deny climate change and cover up the facts of dying corals (because of climate change)....so be very careful!
Perhaps males had larger physical bodies?. Thus the males would have absorbed more energy. (i.e. ~40mm cross section or larger,note: adj absorption for 1/2 wavelength, and velocity factor)..
Perhaps males had larger physical bodies?. Thus the males would have absorbed more energy. (i.e. ~40mm cross section or larger,note: adj absorption for 1/2 wavelength, and velocity factor)..
Then I'd expect to more of an effect in the females at the highest dose, and a stronger dose-response curve in both sexes.
As I said it's interesting, but there's too much noise and not enough signal.
I stole this Sig
The exact opposite occurs, RF absorption in this case is based on physical dimensions.. A larger mass==worse, especially more than 40mm or more per dimensional vector. This also applies to hard radiation, smaller animals can tolerate higher radiation exposures, because much of radiation passes through tiny animals without impacting DNA, and other critical cellular functions.
As for 9 hours day for a 2 year old rat verses 1 hour a day fora human who has a lot more than 9x the lifespan.
As for low signal, that's a function fo the experimental animal's small mass in general, and a similar issue for brain size..
They had 2500 rats and divided them to two groups: radiated and not radiated. What if the radiated group had rats with genetic problems (by chance), generating tumors? Did they randomized the rats to those two groups?
> But female rats didn't, and even the rats that developed tumors lived longer than rats not exposed to the radiation.
I'm just gonna strap my cell phone to my head and get me one of them life saving tumors.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
"Hi honey. I'm working late tonight. Since cell phones cause tumors in males, I need to turn my cell phone off. So, you will not be able to call me."
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.