Re: UN Urges Study Into Mobile Phone Risks
Hi Caxton,
Well, these WHO experts really sound like a bunch of clowns to me, I'm afraid. I say this mostly because of the attitude displayed toward the supposed cancer risk from EMF from power lines. My background is in physics, and I know that the idea of human health effects from fields emitted by power lines has been very thoroughly discredited. The fields are just too small and too low frequency.
I would not suggest that the American Physical Society is exactly infallible or even completely trustworthy, but when they essentially say "the government doesn't need to give us money to do research on this topic," that's about as close to certainty as you could ever come! The fact that the spokesman is still making reference to the old Scandinavian studies suggesting a highly increased leukemia risk in children living near power lines despite the fact that for years, larger and better studies aimed at replicating these findings have found no such evidence really makes me lose respect for this group.
Note that I am not implying that there could be no risk from mobile phones; that's a very different situation, much higher frequency and much closer proximity. But even here, I get suspicious when the group says that "long-term studies are needed before scientists could assess possible links, if any, between mobile phones and cancer." The only kind of studies that would need to be "long-term" would be epidemiological-type studies, which are probably the worst kind to use to try assess whether there's a risk in a case like mobile phones. This is because such studies do not examine the causation mechanism for any health effects, and because it is very hard to control for all the other confusing factors that exist in the real world. In my opinion, the medical science community has a really bad track record of publishing epidemiological studies with inadequate controls. I would suspect that the real reason for calling for long-term studies is that the WHO bureaucracy wants to ensure itself of long-term funding!
Sorry for the long-windedness, and thanks for posting this item.
==John |
