25/08/2009 - Cellphones Cause Brain Tumors

A new report was released today by the International EMF Collaborative entitled "Cellphones and Brain Tumors: 15 Reasons for Concern, Science, Spin and the Truth Behind Interphone".

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Groups affiliated with the report include Powerwatch and the EM Radiation Research Trust in the UK, and the EMR Policy Institute, ElectromagneticHealth.org and The Peoples Initiative Foundation in the US.

The exposé discusses research on cellphones and brain tumors and concludes:

• There is a risk of brain tumors from cellphone use;
• Telecom funded studies underestimate the risk of brain tumors, and;
• Children have larger risks than adults for brain tumors.

This report, sent to government leaders and media today, details eleven design flaws of the 13-country, Telecom-funded Interphone study. The Interphone study, begun in 1999, was intended to determine the risks of brain tumors, but its full publication has been held up for years. Components of this study published to date reveal what the authors call a 'systemic-skew', greatly underestimating brain tumor risk.

The design flaws include categorizing subjects who used portable phones (which emit the same microwave radiation as cellphones,) as 'unexposed'; exclusion of many types of brain tumors; exclusion of people who had died, or were too ill to be interviewed, as a consequence of their brain tumor; and exclusion of children and young adults, who are more vulnerable.

International scientists endorsing the report include Ronald B. Herberman, MD, Director Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute; David Carpenter, MD, Director, Institute for Health and the Environment, University at Albany; Martin Blank, PhD, Associate Professor of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University; Professor Yury Grigoriev, Chairman of Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, and many others.

Also in the news

ES and Psychology, 2 approaches, 2 results

King's College London and a private psychotherapy practice in Germany have both chosen to approach the condition of electromagnetic hypsersensitivity (ES) from a psychological perspective. However, one approach attempts to detect irrefutable evidence of the condition through double blind provocation experiments, the other through the principle of treatment effectiveness, and both come up with very different findings.

The psychology department in King's College London, home to Simon Wessely and James Rubin, has become synonymous in the United Kingdom for their work on mobile phones and their link with electromagnetic hypsersensitivity. Their conclusions are that while ES is undoubtedly a real condition, it is not likely to be caused by electromagnetic fields. Christine Aschermann, a psychiatrist and psychotherapist from Germany, has a very different perspective based on her professional experience with sufferers, and offers further insights into the complexity of the issue, and why it is unlikely that simple double blind trials are likely to move the issue forward.

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