Misleading Press Reports on Cell Phone Cancer Risks
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Misleading Press Reports on Cell Phone Cancer Risks A spate of spurious stories on cell phone cancer risks that were in the news last week need to be aired and corrected. They also provide yet another reason to get the Interphone study out as soon as possible. Read our latest post at: http://www.microwavenews.com/ Louis Slesin, PhD Editor, Microwave News A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation Phone: +1 (212) 517-2800; Fax: +1 (212) 734-0316 E-mail: <m...@pobox.com> Internet: <http://www.microwavenews.com> Mail: 155 East 77th Street, Suite 3D New York, NY 10075, U.S.A.
October 20… A
spate of spurious stories that were in the news last week need to be
aired and corrected. They also provide yet another reason to get the
Interphone study out as soon as possible.
Le
Soir,
one of Belgium's leading French-language newspapers, kicked it off on
the 15th. "GSM
Is Carcinogenic" ran the headline at the top of its front
page. The paper based its scoop on what it called the first results
of the Interphone study, adapted from the latest project update,
which had been posted on IARC's Web site
the previous week. In fact, they were really old news. The last
update, issued in February, had already included those results that
point to a tumor risk. As Elisabeth Cardis, the coordinator of
Interphone, later confirmed to Microwave
News,
"There is nothing new in terms of risk in that [October]
update." In two follow-on stories in its inside pages, Le
Soir
took a more measured tone, noting that these new "disturbing"
results need to be confirmed. Cardis, now at CREAL
in Barcelona, told the paper: "We must remain cautious in the
interpretation of the Interphone results" —which stands in
contrast to the less than cautious warning on page one.
By the
following day, the "news" had crossed the North Sea and
been amplified by a couple of U.K. papers. "Mobile phones do
increase the risk of brain cancer," stated both the Telegraph
and the Sun.
The papers ran identical quotes from Cardis: "To underestimate
the risk would be a complete disaster." This did not fit with
what Cardis has said in the past and was even inconsistent with her
interview with Le
Soir.
Not surprisingly, Cardis told us that the quote was wrong. She
disavowed it.
We saw Cardis at a workshop hosted by the Swiss
national EMF
research program in Zurich earlier this month, where she gave a
talk on her latest project: the soon-to-be-funded MOBI-Kids,
an 11-country study on the possible carcinogenic effects of mobile
phones on children and adolescents. As we always do, we asked when
the Interphone results would be submitted for publication. We got the
now-standard answer. "Soon," she said. Cardis seemed
genuinely candid and we believed her.
We hope Cardis is right
this time and that we aren't being too credulous. Otherwise the rumor
mills will continue to spew out more nonsense about what we do and do
not know about the consequences of long-term cell phone use. It's
easy to blame the press, but equally responsible are those members of
the project who have been arguing about how to present the results
for three long years without reaching consensus.
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