|
IS there a link between heavy cellphone use and
tumors in the neck and brain?
A 10-year study by Interphone of
7,400 cancer patients would have partly answered the question. But
the final report that should have been published in 2006 was delayed
because of disagreements among the researchers.
Michael Milligan, the
secretary-general of the Mobile Manufacturers Forum, said that the
industry was disappointed. (Doreen Carvajal, The New York Times,
June 30).
Interphone brought together
scientists from more than a dozen countries to investigate the
health risks of cellphones. It was taxpayer-supported as well as by
mobile phone makers, including Nokia, through their organization,
The GSM Association. The total cost of the study was US$24 million.
Interphone’s director,
Elisabeth Cardis, was vague on when the report might be released.
She did admit that the delay was “caused” by additional research
on how cancer patients, compared to those in a control group,
remembered details of past phone use—frequency, length of use,
position of the phone when in use and so on. This was necessary
because both cancer patients and those in the control group
“tended to underestimate the number of their calls while
overestimating the duration of calls” (Carvajal, NYT, June 30).
At the annual meeting in June of
the Bioelectromagnetics Society in San Diego, California, Louis
Slesin, the editor of a trade journal called Microwave News,
reported that the panel discussion on brain tumors showed clearly a
split among the Interphone researchers. For example, the Israelis
and the Australians were for urging people to moderate cellphone use
while the English and the Germans were reluctant neither to draw
conclusions nor to suggest specific actions because of “recall
bias.”
Joachim Schüz, the cancer
specialist who headed the German team of Interphone, was dismissive
of the disagreements. The evidence, he told the New York Times, was
convincing that there was no risk from short-term cellphone use
although there were “uncertainties” about long-term use.
Long-term was defined as more
than 10 years on the same side of the head. Some countries, despite
small national samples, have begun recommending moderate cellphone
use that they might revise once the final report had been issued.
However, institutions like the
World Health Organization, are not likely to draw any conclusion,
even for moderate use, until publications of the Interphone report.
The European Commission coursed
its financial contribution to Interphone through the International
Union Against Cancer in order to isolate the scientists from any
possible influence by mobile phone manufacturers.
The industry, however,
scrupulously maintained its distance from the debates among the
scientists although there are still skeptics who believe that they
will not be all that detached.
At the San Diego meeting, two
versions of the Interphone report were circulated. There were no
details in the New York Times story on the differences between the
two versions but it did quote Cindy Sage who was involved in a
review of existing studies on the health risks of cellphone use. She
said: “This enormous project may come to nothing but ambiguous
results. It sounds pessimistic at this point. What I worry about is
that the study will be publicized as an ‘all clear’ when in fact
the study failed to do a good enough job to know.”
Perhaps a more balanced point of
view is Elisabeth Cardis’s who has since left Interphone for a
position at the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in
Barcelona, Spain. She told Le Monde: “I would concur with the idea
of limiting the use among young people, first of all because
throughout their life they are going to be using a phone a lot more
than all of us but I would certainly not ban phones because they are
too useful.”
Filipinos are already among the
heaviest users of cellphones but more for sending text messages
rather than for voice communication.
But as the cost of voice declines
due to competition, government regulation, technology improvement
and economies of scale, talk could equal or even exceed text in both
frequency and duration of use. If there’s a proven link between
cancer and electromagnetic radiation, then the government and the
cellphone companies have an obligation to give timely and accurate
advice on cellphone use.
opinion@manilatimes.net
|
