Media
Puts The Public In More Danger!
AT&T Stock Gains
& The Publics Health Loses! First Posted 12/21/00
Muscat
& Inskip Cell Phone Study is worthless!!
E-mail this
web page to a friend
This
e-mail page may take a few to read but will give you a good understanding of
the BS the press is pushing, This is no different than when the press called
bush the winner before the election was over! The press printing the Muscat
and Inskip studies as proof cell phones are safe is only saying how stupid
they think the public really is! Media is guilty of taking advantage of the
fact that we trust them to give us good information based on facts and truth.
I hope after you read this you will support us in exposing the truth about
your safety when using a cell phone! The E-mail in blue is the story the ST
Pete Times ran, NY Times and most every major newspaper ran......... all on
the same day!
Note:
12/23/00 we never heard from the times lacker@sptimes.com
after they sent us the story they ran. We need your help to get them to inform
the readers of their paper that they're not saying cell phones are safe and
that more studies must be done!
Click
Here To
Read What UniSci
wrote about this BS study on cell phones being safe
<<<<<Starting
e-mail to SP Times>>>>>
-----Original
Message-----
From: rfsafe@intnet.net
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000
To: Lacker Eric [mailto:lacker@sptimes.com]
Subject:E-mail To SP Times RE:Cell Phone Hazards
Hello,
I have had a few people e-mail me that you just ran a story claiming cell
phones not to be a hazard and safe is this true?? I can't seem to find
anything on your web site about it. Can you send me a URL to review the story
if you did?
Thank You!
John Coates
RF Safe Corp.
www.safecellularphones.com
<<<<<Starting
e-mail reply from SP Times>>>>>
-----Original
Message-----
From: Lacker Eric [ mailto:lacker@sptimes.com
]
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 4:24 PM
To: rfsafe@intnet.net
Subject: ---E-Mail. Subject : Cell Phone Hazards
This was reprinted from the New York Times on 12/20/00
HD: Studies: No link between cell phones, cancer
SO: New York Times
Two of the most rigorous studies yet completed concerning cellular phones and
brain tumors have found that cell phone users are no more likely than anyone
else to develop either benign tumors or malignant brain cancers.
One study, supported by the National Cancer Institute, was released Tuesday,
several weeks ahead of its scheduled publication in the New England Journal of
Medicine, to match a similar study, which was paid for by the cellular phone
industry and the federal government, that is being published today in the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
Scientists and public health experts said the results should help ease the
fears among many Americans that cellular phones now estimated to be used by
more than 90-million residents can cause brain cancer, which strikes 16,500
Americans a year.
Other large studies are under way or nearing publication, according to Dr.
Kenneth Rothman, a professor of epidemiology at Boston University's School of
Public Health. But, he said of the new studies, ""they are the best
information to date, and they provide much reassurance.''
The Federal Communications Commission has set standards for the maximum amount
of microwave, or radio frequency, radiation that cell phones can emit. In a
published statement, the commission explained that while the federal
government is continuing to assess research on cell-phone safety, studies have
led ""expert organizations to conclude that typical RF exposures
from these devices are safe.''
The cancer institute's study, directed by Dr. Peter Inskip and Dr.Martha Linet,
involved 782 patients with brain tumors or with benign tumors of the lining of
the brain or of the acoustic nerve, which connects the brain to the ear. The
researchers compared their cell phone use to that of 799 patients who were of
the same sex, age and race but who did not have brain tumors.
The other, smaller, study, led by Dr. Joshua Muscat of the American Health
Foundation, a private, non-profit research organization in Valhalla, N.Y.,
compared the cell phone use of 469 brain cancer patients to that of 422
patients who were of the same age, sex and race but who did not have brain
cancer.
Both groups of investigators found that no matter how they analyzed the data,
there was not even a hint that use of a cell phone was linked to brain tumors.
The patients with brain tumors were no more likely to use cell phones. Those
who used cell phones for longer periods of time were no more likely to get
brain tumors. And brain tumors were no more likely to occur near where the
cell phone was held to the head than on the opposite side of the brain.
""Based on the published evidence to date, I don't think there's any
evidence that cell phones cause cancer,'' Inskip said.
Dr. Mark Malkin, a neurologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in
New York who was an author of the smaller study, said, ""We think
this is reassuring news.''
Malkin noted that cell phones had not been in widespread use for many years
and that cancers can take years to develop; thus, he said, it might be
worthwhile to repeat the studies.
But Malkin said he uses a cell phone and will continue to do so. And, he said,
he tells his brain cancer patients not to worry about using the phones.
Scientists said a study from Denmark, to be published soon in the Journal of
the National Cancer Institute, provides equally reassuring news. Danish
researchers identified many thousands of cell phone users from telephone
company records, then reviewed medical records to examine if any association
existed between phone use and development of brain cancers. They found none.
Some scientists said they were not surprised. Dr. Eleanor Adair, a senior
scientist at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, who has studied the
effects of microwave radiation on animals and people, said the sort of
microwave radiation used in cell phone signals has not caused damage in
long-term studies and has not damaged cells in repeatable laboratory studies.
There is no biological reason to expect it to cause cancer, she said.
John Moulder, a professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of
Wisconsin in Milwaukee, noted that two previous studies also failed to find a
link between use of cell phones and brain cancer. Moulder has consulted for
cell phone service providers in Australia, Bermuda and Britain.
Dr. Michael Thun, who heads epidemiological research for the American Cancer
Society, said there was no evidence of an increase in brain cancer or
mortality during the past decade, when cell phone popularity mushroomed.
""The evidence so far is reassuring,'' Thun said, ""but
cell phones are a recent phenomenon and it is extremely difficult to prove
that a new technology is absolutely safe.''
But Dr. George Carlo, who once headed an industry group, Wireless Technology
Research, that supported the smaller study of brain cancer and cell phone use,
said that the two studies were inadequate to assess the risks of cell phones.
Most of the patients they enrolled, he said, had brain tumors that were
located too far from where they held their cell phones to have been caused by
the phones.
Carlo, who is an author of a new book, Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the
Wireless Age, said he remains concerned about the dangers of cell phones,
adding that studies have indicated that microwaves can cause genetic damage
and can weaken the blood-brain barrier that protects the brain from toxins.
Others, including Moulder and Adair, said scientists had tried but had not yet
succeeded in replicating those studies.
The brain cancer question received widespread publicity in 1993, when David
Reynard of Madeira Beach appeared on CNN's Larry King Live program saying that
his wife had gotten brain cancer from a cell phone he bought for her. Stocks
of cellular phone producers, like Motorola, plunged the next day.
But some physicists, like Dr. Robert Park of the University of Maryland, asked
how microwaves might cause such an effect. The radiation cannot break chemical
bonds and so cannot damage genetic material, he said.
All the radiation can do is heat things up which is why microwave ovens heat
food. But cell phones use so little microwave energy that even heating is a
non-issue, Park said. And digital phones, which are rapidly replacing analog
models, use even less.
""I go running at noon every day in the summer hatless, under a full
sun,'' Park said. ""The heat load on my brain is something like a
million times greater than it would be from a cell phone.''
Individuals who worry about cell phones causing brain cancer, scientists said,
were unlikely to be assuaged by the new studies and statements about microwave
energy.
The problem, said Dr. Barnett Kramer, the director of the Office of Medical
Applications of Research at the National Institutes of Health, is a limitation
of science. ""You can prove that if something has an effect, it is
below your ability to detect it, but the nature of science is that you can't
prove zero effect,'' he noted In the end, Kramer said, people are divided.
""For believers, no proof is necessary. And for skeptics, no proof
is possible,'' he said. ""Somewhere in between, hopefully, are the
bulk of the people who will weigh the evidence.''
<<<<<Starting
Reply e-mail to SP Times>>>>>
-----Original Message-----
From: rfsafe@intnet.net
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000
To: Lacker Eric [mailto:lacker@sptimes.com]
Subject:Cell Phone Hazards
Hi Eric,
Thank You For The Quick
Reply & Happy Holidays!
So, the stories you're
referring you ran were actually press releases about studies funded by
the industry which were published worldwide I see. You are welcome to
use what follows and convert it into your own words, But I feel you should
take the time to look deeper into the BS you are helping the public to think
is a good study proving them safety and DOES NOT!!! I hope you will print the
TRUTH for the health of your readers I know I will!
Although I will try to review some of the interesting things about the press
releases below, you really should take a look at the Reuters wire about this
by clicking the following url: http://news.excite.com/news/r/001219/17/health-cellphone
Then also look at original
contribution from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by
clicking the following url: http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v284n23/rfull/joc00222.html
One of the first clues you will find about the nonsense in the
contribution is if you examine the table showing phone usage in the study. The
following url is a shortcut to the table. http://jama.ama-assn.org/issues/v284n23/fig_tab/joc00222_t3.html
1st the criteria for defining a cell phone user was whether
or not an individual subscribed to a cell phone service and for how long. You
will notice it did not include the number of people that have already died
from brain tumors caused by cell phones. As you can see from the
table, 403 out of 489 people (approximately 87%) did not use their cell phone
at all. Of those that did use, only
3% used it for more than 480 hours over a 4+ year period. Using 4 years as an
example instead of 4+ years, this equates to only 600 minutes per month.
2nd , the
press releases were published (coincidentally?) just after a few significant
events were announced during the past week.
3rd, Peter
Angelos, a very well known attorney announced he would join JoAnne Suder in
suing the phone companies and carriers for the neurologist's brain tumor
mentioned in the press a few months ago.
4th,
AT&T and other carriers announced lower cell phone sales this holiday
season than in 1999, and they may see the cell phone controversy as the reason
for this. Note The day after these reports ran AT&T stocks gained after
taking a beating days before
5th,
George Carlo published an autobiographical, self serving book last week which,
although full of nonsense, may have something to do with the timing.
6th, The
study clearly indicated it had no answers about the effect of long term use
and that long term studies are extremely important.
7th, Their study
only addressed Analog phones and DID NOT INCLUDE DIGITAL PHONES, they readily
admit they have no idea about the effects of digital (which includes PCS)
phones. We and many scientists believe digital phones are far more dangerous
than analog phones because the signals are pulsed at much higher Mirowave
Frequencies and laboratory studies have shown that pulsed radiation is more
damaging to biological tissue than steady state radiation (Analog). as found
with the Dr.
Henry Lai reports of DNA single and double strand breaks,
at lower then most cell phone power levels, using the RF frequencies of newer
digital cell phones! The Lai Studies results were or are repeatable as done in
DNA comet
tail assay
8th, their
study found an odds ration of about 1.0 for all brain tumors - meaning that
there was no correlation between tumor occurrence and cell phone usage, but
they found an odds ratio of 2.1 for the occurrence of neuroepethelial tumors -
tumors of soft tissue. Even though this a weaker statement of correlation of
tumor occurrence with cell phone usage than the authors announced earlier in
preliminary releases of their results, it is significant when one considers
the rare occurrence of these tumors in general.
An Australian
journalist friend of mine sent the following to me today.
I think you might find his assessment very interesting.
"The protocol being used by the Muscat/American Health Foundation
brain-cancer study and that being used by Repacholi's WHO/brain cancer study
are pretty much the same, and both have very significant defects."
In both cases the researchers proceed in this way:
1) They identify people with brain cancer in a hospital.
2) Interview them to determine basic matching information (age, sex, etc.)
3) Look through hospital records to find a match to each, using a patient
admitted for some other reason (This is a way of establishing a
control group).
4) Interview both the brain-cancer patient and his/her match to determine
cellphone use, asking such questions as:
a) Which hand is used to hold the phone (relying on the reporting)
b) How many hours use a month (relying usually on memory of past
bills)
We should know from experience that people are notoriously bad at reporting
such information. Which hand is used, depends entirely on the situation - and
whether the person needs to write, or is driving, etc.
However, if there is no statistical difference between the brain-cancer group
and the control group in this kind of epidemiological research, the findings
are interpreted as meaning that cellphones don't cause or contribute to the
brain cancer.
However this interpretation relies on a number of assumptions that are just
not viable or acceptable:
The first, and most obvious assumption is that both groups have been using
mobile phones for long enough to allow incipient brain cancers to incubate to
a level where they will be detected. And as people have already pointed out,
three years is not enough. You probably need five to ten at an absolute
minimum.
However, another assumption being made here is that the whole population is
equally susceptible to RF-induced brain cancer, in terms of both absolute
numbers, and with the incubation period.
We can see the relevance of this if we were to take the RF exposure to an
extreme in a quick thought-experiment, and assume that everyone in the
community had an equal exposure to RF. We would still then expect those people
who were more susceptible to be the ones in the hospital with clearly
identified brain cancer -- and for the controls to show the same average
exposure. Of course, in the real world not everyone gets the same RF exposure.
But to completely ignore potential differences in susceptibility in conducting
such research is ridiculous. It is only acceptable in a research protocol, if
any publicity surrounding the release of the results clearly spells out the
fact that there are multiple possible interpretations.
Muscat's finding that there are no significant difference between his control
and exposured groups, could arise from any (or all) of these hypotheses:
a) Cellphone use does not normally influence brain cancer development, OR
b) People who get brain cancer are more susceptible to RF damage than the
average, OR
c) People need to use cellphones for more than three years to get brain
cancer.
The Muscat report only deals with the first hypothesis. Yet the second and
third are equally as likely as the first, judging from current evidence found
by other researchers.
The protocol also appears to assume that brain cancer can only be a related to
RF exposure in some direct (one-to-one) way, and not via intermediary
conditions such as the reduction in the immune response. Nor does it treat
multi-causal factors (geneticpredisposition, chemical DNA damage, virus
infections, etc.) as a possibility. Nor does it discuss the possibility of
off-setting factors. For instance. Say brain cancer rates were much higher in
those people who have easy RF breaches of the blood-brain-barrier (a very
likely scenario according to Salford). I would expect these susceptible people
also to get more discomfort from using a cellphone, and more headaches with
longer phone use ... and therefore tend to use them less. So it is quite
feasible that the group most likely to get brain cancer will be those who have
a natural disinclination to use their phones for long periods. Yet this would
still fit Muscat's findings.
Scientists always claim that they only test hypotheses as set out in the
research protocols, and produce the results. They loudly protest that they
don't create the interpretations that often circulate around and are reported
by the media. But they can't shaft the responsibility for interpretation to
the media when they know the media don't have the skills to intelligently
interpret complex results. Scientists are often very keen to disclaim
responsibility for newspaper headlines of the sort that read "Study finds
cellphones don't cause brain cancer" from their findings, and are quick
to protest that no one can ever prove a negative ... and that we no one can or
should draw conclusions based on just one study. Yet here we have the Journal
of the American Medical Association (JAMA) headlining with precisely the same
sort of unwarranted interpretation in its report or the Muscat study.
"HANDHELD CELLULAR TELEPHONE USE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH RISK OF BRAIN
CANCER" Such conclusions are rubbish.
There is probably a lot more I can say about this, but it would serve
no purpose. There have been a number of similar releases over the years and
without exception, each time it was revealed the industry supported scientists
and doctors were wrong, there was no mention in the press about it.
It should be remembered that for these two press releases, there have been
hundreds (or thousands) of articles and papers published in the past year by
very credible doctors and scientists that say just the opposite. (HAND HELD
CELLULAR TELEPHONES DO CAUSE CANCER!!!) By the way, what about all of the
other reported health effects besides brain tumors? That make up MOST of the
hazards of Microwave RF Radiation Exposure!
We will, of course, hope that the SP Times will post this information
in some way to inform people of the BS you have printed when it could effect
so many peoples lives!!!! Please print only the press release information that
presents good information for the publics health by organizations such as on
our site and others that are truily looking for answers and prevention of the
possible health effects, just as we do with all other newsworthy materials.
Press like
yourselves should also be reporting on all the products made on the market
that are made to provide cell phone safety and provide NONE!!!! So that these
companies will soon fold that are only making money off of peoples fears not
providing them with a answer for protection!!!! But only good press, flashy
Ads and Cool web sites, they MUST BE SHUT DOWN!!! JUST AS MEDIA MUST DO ITS
REPORTING FOR THE GOOD OF THE PEOPLE NOT THE GOOD OF THE COMPANIES STOCKS THAT
PLACE ADS WITH THEM!!!!
Like always I will post
this online @ www.safecellularphones.com
and www.rfsafe.com
also I will post any reply to this e-mail so others can see our efforts to
show them the truth !!!!!
Please note I will be
linking much more information to support the claims RF Safe makes that RF
Safety is a MUST with Cell Phones, on the page I post this e-mail too!
PS Please have someone
contact me, if it's money you want for the space on your news paper to print
the truth...Then I will pay to inform your readers of the mistakes in the
report you have printed!
Please Reply
Once again, have a wonderful holiday!
Best regards,
John Coates
RF Safe Corp
In Closing
Study
Cell Phones Are Safe Was Wrong
Not Enough Proof To Say! Muscat & Inskip Study is worthless!!
In the comments on the recently published brain tumor studies it was stated
correctly that there are a number of hypotheses which should be tested in
epidemiological studies and that the Muscat (and Inskip) study tested only the
hypothesis that 'cellphone use does not normally influence brain cancer
development'. It might be no surprise to you that in these studies not even
that hypothesis could be tested. It is by far too general.
First of all, there is no such thing as 'brain cancer'. What is called brain
cancer is a multitude of completely different entities (that have their origin
in different tissue types, are slowly or fast growing, and have different
etiology and predisposing factors). If cellphones influence brain tumor
development (without affecting incidence) there are at least two
possibilities: There could be an influence on speed of development and there
could be a reduction of latency from malign transformation to the onset of
clinical symptoms.
For the first possibility there are again at least two hypotheses: The
dissipation of heat in superficial regions of the brain (especially at the
temporal lobe) could reduce the speed of development because hyperthermia is a
known tumor growth inhibiting factor, and the exposure can lead to a faster
development due to its possibly promoting potential. Again these mechanisms
will have an impact which depends in the type and localization of the tumor.
Both studies did not have enough power to detect any of these effects.
Not even an attempt was made in these studies to test the assumption that
exposure could increase speed of tumor development. This would have involved
inspection of the patients records for early clinical signs and to determine
the duration until tumor diagnosis.
A further problem
of these studies is that they didn't account for latency. If cellphones
influence tumor development at an early stage only exposures which have
occurred maybe many years ago (depending on type of tumor) should be included.
To cumulate exposures up to hospital admission is nonsense given the
hypotheses that were tested (it makes, however, sense if the tumor growth rate
would have been analysed).
Be RF Safe................
