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Conspiratorial fear mongering about cell phones and cancer, courtesy of The Nation
There was a thread about cell phones and brain cancer here last week. The always excellent David Gorski (Orac) weighs in again on the topic.
https://respectfulinsolence.com/2018/04/09/more-fear-mongering-about-cell-phones-cancer/
Far more frequently than I’d like it to be necessary, I find myself writing about various health fear mongering about cell phones and wifi. The idea that the radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation used by cell phones and wireless networks is somehow causing horrendous health effects in humans, be it cancer (brain, breast, or other), behavioral problems, mental illness, or whatever is, like antivaccine pseudoscience, a claim not supported by evidence that just will not go away. Indeed, some take it a step further, inventing a syndrome called “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” in which certain people are especially sensitive to the claimed adverse health effects due to radio waves. It doesn’t help, either, that organizations like the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) erroneously categorized cell phone radiation as a “possible carcinogen” or that the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) wasted $25 million on a study of cell phone radiation in rats that, at the time of a partial report of its results for gliomas and cardiac schwannomas, had produced singularly unconvincing results for a link between cell phones and cancer, but it produced sensationalistic headlines claiming a link. As of last month, the full study has shown no more convincing evidence. As Dr. Christopher Labos explained last week, the results are most consistent with random noise. It’s even gotten to the point where some have tried to label smart watches as dangerous.
The latest magazine to publish a sensationalistic story about cell phones is The Nation. Amusingly, someone in The Nation‘s PR department thought it would be a good idea to send me a link a week ago, as though I might blog about it. Of course, I’m happy to oblige, because this story is an example of much of what is wrong with reporting on the issue of cell phones and health effects due to cell phone radiation. Written by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie and entitled “How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation.” Its tagline? The disinformation campaign—and massive radiation increase—behind the 5G rollout. The basic thesis of the article is that “big wireless” is a lot like “big tobacco” in hiding the science or preventing definitive science from being done because, presumably, it has something to hide. It’s the very same sort of argument that antivaxers like to make about big pharma and vaccines, likening vaccine manufacturers to big tobacco and claiming the same sort of disinformation campaign that big tobacco waged for decades to hide, minimize, and obfuscate the emerging scientific evidence of the harm cigarette smoking was causing through causing lung cancer, heart disease, and a variety of other diseases.
No one, least of all I, is claiming that big telecom and big pharma are pristine, as clean as the driven snow. We do know from science, however, that vaccines do not cause autism and that cell phone radiation not only does not cause the health effects attributed to it but almost certainly cannot cause those health effects because the energy carried by radio waves is too low to do what is claimed. It’s basic physics. For instance, I like to say that, although a link between cell phone radiation and cancer is not homeopathy-level implausible, it is incredibly implausible, simply because most of mechanisms of carcinogenesis we know involve as an inciting event the breaking of chemical bonds in DNA to cause mutations, and even the mechanisms we’re coming to understand that might require chemical bond breakage as an inciting event are incredibly unlikely to be impacted by such low energy waves.
Enter The Nation.
The latest magazine to publish a sensationalistic story about cell phones is The Nation. Amusingly, someone in The Nation‘s PR department thought it would be a good idea to send me a link a week ago, as though I might blog about it. Of course, I’m happy to oblige, because this story is an example of much of what is wrong with reporting on the issue of cell phones and health effects due to cell phone radiation. Written by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie and entitled “How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation.” Its tagline? The disinformation campaign—and massive radiation increase—behind the 5G rollout. The basic thesis of the article is that “big wireless” is a lot like “big tobacco” in hiding the science or preventing definitive science from being done because, presumably, it has something to hide. It’s the very same sort of argument that antivaxers like to make about big pharma and vaccines, likening vaccine manufacturers to big tobacco and claiming the same sort of disinformation campaign that big tobacco waged for decades to hide, minimize, and obfuscate the emerging scientific evidence of the harm cigarette smoking was causing through causing lung cancer, heart disease, and a variety of other diseases.
No one, least of all I, is claiming that big telecom and big pharma are pristine, as clean as the driven snow. We do know from science, however, that vaccines do not cause autism and that cell phone radiation not only does not cause the health effects attributed to it but almost certainly cannot cause those health effects because the energy carried by radio waves is too low to do what is claimed. It’s basic physics. For instance, I like to say that, although a link between cell phone radiation and cancer is not homeopathy-level implausible, it is incredibly implausible, simply because most of mechanisms of carcinogenesis we know involve as an inciting event the breaking of chemical bonds in DNA to cause mutations, and even the mechanisms we’re coming to understand that might require chemical bond breakage as an inciting event are incredibly unlikely to be impacted by such low energy waves.
Enter The Nation.
Gorski writes a detailed commentary, with dozens of links to prior research and articles. It's a long read, but well worth the time.
Sid
8 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
the fumes are clouding your mind.
