Most jaw-dropping statement in the article:
It draws on growing evidence ... that using handsets for 10 years or more can double the risk of brain cancer. Cancers take at least a decade to develop, invalidating official safety assurances based on earlier studies which included few, if any, people who had used the phones for that long. (2)Surely, someone had thought about this before? It's so obvious I had to read it twice to make sure I had got it right the first time. Previous safety assurances neglected to account for the fact that it takes a while for cancer to develop.
Omitting something that obvious can't - surely - be accidental. Because if studies of safety routinely miss REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF like that, then how can we trust any of them? Like the assurances given about Prozac, GE crops, nuclear power, and everything else that might have devastating effects on our health, but has the potential to make someone else very rich.
But if it isn't accidental, it is just as bad, for then the assurances are obviously corrupt and unreliable. So we're screwed either way. Funny, that.
(n.b. It should be pointed out that the study advancing this claim has not gone though a peer review process at this stage. It is, however, being prepared for publication in a peer-reviewed journal).
1 - 'Mobile phones 'more dangerous than smoking',' by Geoffry Lean in The Independent, 30th of March 2008. (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-802602.html)
1 comment:
Longitudinal studies of technology use are tricky at the best of times, and when the technology is being replaced every ten years it's nigh on impossible. 15 years ago cell phones were a bit of a novelty and used primarily by rich people. Even 10 years ago I suspect few people used cell phones as much as many people do today - certainly not sleeping with one on their pillow. The big hole is bound to be that the actual emissions from the phones have changed dramatically during the course of the study.
So yeah, no surprise that it's taken a while to get a ten year longitudinal study out.
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