Mobile Phone Use - A Sponsored Study?

Original posting, January 2006

Mobile phones and health (July 2009)
Mobile Phones And Microwaves (Science Journal, July 2010)

Mobiles 'don't raise cancer risk'

Doesn’t raise risk doesn’t mean doesn’t represent a risk or is not an actual cause. Some still believe that smoking does not CAUSE lung cancer. Still in denial even now. Amazing.

Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation

[Nicotine may not be responsible for lung cancer, but smoking certainly is. Passive smokers do not get addicted to smoking, but they do still get lung cancer (Roy Castle). Such addiction is caused by nicotine and lung cancer is caused by all the other impurities in tobacco smoke. Nicotine is itself only an impurity: the hook.]

Children are still advised not to use mobile phones unless necessary. Why? If there is not a problem. There is clearly more that we are not being informed about.

Disinformation

Mobile phones represent BIG money. Mustn’t harm the business and mobile phone use does not lead to a greater risk of brain tumour, the largest study on the issue has said.

The research was carried out by the British arm of an international project called Interphone.

The study of 2,682 people across the UK found no link between the risk of glioma - the most common type of brain tumour - and length of mobile use. This is, in fact, 966 people diagnosed with glioma and 1,716 without the condition in five areas of the UK. A very, very small study group. Yet, why should glioma be selectively chosen (cherry picked)?

The proper selection would be

any type of brain tumour

Of 40m users, many of them children who are 'advised' to not use them, 2,682 is less than 0.007%. Not a representative group of the whole UK.

It does only say "people across the UK" and there's nothing about age, social class...

Among cancer sufferers the tumours were more likely to be reported on the side of the head where they held the phone. Rocket science there! But the British Medical Journal study said people over-reported phone use on the side their cancer developed.

I am missing something there, I think. Over-reported? Presumably, people were asked to report the incidence of a tumour. Phone usage, ear preferred. Things like that. It seems the BMJ wants to imply a disassociation between phone use and mobile phone. Not very scientific. A small study and a meaningless result. That's my interpretation only, of course.

Some sufferers sadly died. Couldn’t respond. It never said that all 2,682 were survivors. It just never mentioned survival rates at all. Not important. It would spoil the story.

This makes no explicit link between cancer sufferers and mobile phone users. As far as I know these "cancer sufferers" do not use mobile phones. An implied link only.

Isn’t it probable that as a cancer develops in the hearing side normally used, the user switches to the other ear as hearing deteriorates? A tumour along the hearing nerve (acoustic neuroma) will cause poor hearing - and the reason won’t be obvious until it’s too late. Slow, loss of hearing over an extended period of many months or years does not get noticed. Much like vision. Someone who has never used glasses remains unaware of deteriorating vision. No comparison can be made between current vision status and how it can be when corrected.

The 'research', reiterates the findings of most earlier studies in saying that there is no connection between cancer and mobile phone use. Is Interphone sponsored by the phone companies? Rather like McDonald’s stating that their ‘food’ isn’t harmful. The source of comments like these is critical to know.

The team of researchers, involving scientists from Leeds University, the Institute of Cancer Research and the University of Nottingham, spoke to 966 people diagnosed with glioma and 1,716 without the condition in five areas of the UK. All 2,682 were interviewed about their history of mobile phone use over the previous 10 years.

No young kids were involved, then. What a surprise!

They were asked to recall in detail how much they used their mobile phones, how often they used hands-free kits and what types of phones they had used.

Sounds like a survey for the phone companies to see what sells the best.

Market RESEARCH

Research author Professor Patricia McKinney, Professor of Paediatric Epidemiology at the Leeds University, said:

"For regular mobile phone users, there was

no increased risk of developing a glioma

associated with mobile phone use."

But, she acknowledged that there appeared to be an increased risk among brain cancer sufferers on the side of the head where they held the phone.

Wait a minute: if you have a brain cancer then there is an increased risk of getting... brain cancer. Just happens to be on the same side as most phone use. How odd. Mobile phones are safe then. Unless you’re predisposed to cancer in the brain or already have it. All brain tumours are brain cancers.

MOBILE PHONE FACTS

Available in the UK since 1985. Widely used since late 1990s (the 'kids' of the 1990s are at most only in their early 20s even now). Such phones are now estimated to be owned by more than 40m Britons, including many children. The UK population is only around 60m. Most studies (recent by definition) have found no raised risk of brain tumour, but long-term effects cannot be known. Children still advised to use mobiles only when necessary.

Why the warning if mobile phones are essentially safe?

Children are probably the major users today (2009)

The team, however, did not put this down to a causal link, because almost exactly the same decreased risk was seen on the other side of the head, leaving no overall increased risk of tumours for mobile phone users.

What amazing (cynical) spin. Decreased risk on non-use side to balance increased risk on the other! Wow! I am reassured. Anyway, there is not any dependency on the one on the other.

But there is an attempt
to link them

They blamed biased reporting from brain tumour sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on. Eh? Another research team member, Professor Anthony Swerdlow of the Cancer Research Institute, said:

"It would be very misleading to the public to say that because there 
was a positive that this (mobile phones) causes brain tumours."

This would suggest that mobile phone use could be dangerous. Of course, the public is just too dim and wouldn’t understand anyway. He explained:

"If we had found a raised risk overall

and it was all coming from one side,

I would believe there was a real case.

But as there is a drop on the opposing side

- the overall risk is not raised."

How is this ‘drop’ measured? It would imply that balance means there is no issue.

"That makes it rather unlikely
that there is a raised risk."

Is that an assumption? Draw your own conclusions. But he added that epidemiological studies could never show there was no risk of an activity, they could only suggest there was no raised risk.

The National Radiological Protection Board said the research was good news, but that it did not give mobile phones a clean bill of health. The board said it would not be changing its advice that children should not make unnecessary mobile phone calls.

Dr Kat Arney, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said research such as this was vital for getting to the environmental causes of cancer.

• "This is the biggest and most thorough study into mobile phones and glioma so far, and it adds to the growing evidence that there is no link. Although we still don't know about the very long-term effects of mobile phone use, these results are reassuring for everyone with a mobile."

• 2,682 were interviewed about their history of mobile phone use over the previous 10 years - no children by implication. Don't know about the very long-term effects

Everyone is reassured except for me it seems. It may be so that mobile phone microwave emissions are not harmful. Less than half an inch from the brain. I am totally not reassured with all this. Remember:

this BIGGEST and most thorough study
so far considered ONLY LESS THAN 0.007%

of users within the UK population

Wendy Fulcher, who founded the Brain Tumour Research Campaign, said she hoped people would be finally reassured by the results of the research.

NO! NO! NO!

She added:

"In relation to other cancers, brain tumours

are the poor relation when it

comes to research funding."

That is absolutely correct.

"There should be more money focused on the root causes of brain tumours."

All causes including mobile phones. Almost certainly there is no single cause.

Alasdair Philips, director of the campaign group Powerwatch, says the study "doesn't really prove anything. I think they should have waited another couple of years and recruited more people with brain tumours so they could have interviewed them because the trouble was they went back a few years and the people had died."

There's your 'answer'. Are you reassured? How did these people die?

I've no idea

"If you get a grade four glioma you can die

within a year or 18 months of it being
diagnosed, and these people are just gone,

so they couldn't get their mobile phone history."

My point exactly

A 10 year-use history is meaningless,
especially when some of the users aren’t even...

10 years old!