Doctor's
Job Cut After Phone Concerns Raised
The Age
Journalist: Garry Linnell
December 16, 2000
Telstra staff
complaining of illnesses when using mobile phones had their appointments with
a neurologist cancelled by company lawyers - despite Telstra's chief medical
officer requesting the examinations.
Within weeks
of referring four staff to the neurologist, and having grown increasingly
concerned about a potential link between mobile phones and health, Bruce
Hocking, Telstra's chief medical officer for 18 years, was told his job had
been abolished because his activities "were not relevant to core
business".
After
learning that company lawyers had cancelled the appointments without
consulting him in early 1995, Dr Hocking protested to Telstra's legal
department, saying he sensed "a strong conflict of interest in these
matters between our duties to the shareholder, the employees and our
customers. I believe this is an appropriate matter to refer to the Telstra
ethics committee".
Dr Hocking's
claims have been made in a submission to a Senate committee now inquiring into
the effects of electromagnetic radiation, and are detailed today in a special
investigation in Good Weekend into the growing debate over mobile phones and
health.
The
investigation has found that:
One of
Australia's largest law firms, Maurice Blackburn Cashman, is considering
launching the country's first test case alleging a link between mobile phone
radiation and health.
The Senate
inquiry chairwoman, Democrat Senator Lyn Allison, has claimed there was a
"distinct pattern emerging of funding not being made available to those
doing certain research". Her allegation comes two weeks after the
National Health and Medical Research Council denied more funding to an
Adelaide-based scientist, who believed a preliminary study into the effects of
mobile phone radiation on mice might have implications for the development of
cancers.
A Telstra
spokeswoman said the staff appointments with the neurologist had been
cancelled because normal company occupational and health procedures had not
been followed.
She said Dr
Hocking's job had been abolished because of a decision to outsource his work
to the private sector, and not because of his work into mobile phones and any
potential health effects.
But Dr
Hocking has criticised Telstra's response, saying he considered it
"irrational to claim the appointments I made in early January, 1995, were
cancelled because of failure to follow an `endorsed strategy' since such a
process did not then exist and was only being drafted in March".
The four
staff at Telstra had complained of headaches and dizziness when using their
mobiles.
Since leaving
Telstra in 1995, Dr Hocking, a specialist in occupational medicine, has
conducted several studies into the health effects of mobile phone radiation.
He has told
the Senate committee that recent research he and a clinical neurophysiologist
conducted into the case of a man suffering headaches on the same side of his
head where he held his phone had, for the first time, uncovered "a clear
demonstration of a health effect in humans attributable to a mobile phone ...
there is considerable likelihood that mobile phones, at the low levels of
radio frequency which they operate on, are causing disturbances of neural
functions".
More than 8.5
million mobile phones are in use in Australia. The industry estimates that by
2005, more than 19 million will be in use.
