A case of industry data manipulation?
From Lloyd Morgan.
Dear Colleagues:
This document (
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/diermeier/ftp/studentprojects/Fall2000/Motorola.doc
), similar to many "inside" corporate documents is standard corporate
operating procedure (SOP). An example of this SOP was a board meeting
of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) where
George Carlo presented the results of the $25M research program he ran
for 6 years.
Carlo's February 1999 presentation to the full board of CTIA presented
information that the industry did not want to hear. In his book, "Cell
Phones, Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age", he summarized the
results of this presentation, "[T]he risk of acoustic neuroma . . .
was 50 percent higher in people who reported cellphone use for six
years or more; moreover, that relationship between the amount of
cellphone use and this tumor appeared to follow a dose-response
curve."
In December 2000 Joshua Muscat, one of the "researchers" hired by
Carlo, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
(JAMA a paper, "Handheld Cellular Telephone Use and Risk of Brain
Cancer." This paper reported a very near-significant finding that
there was a 2.1-fold risk of a "neuroepitheliomatous" cancerous brain
tumor after more than 4 years of cellphone use (average 2.8 years).
For more details see the attached document. Previously, at the June
1999 meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS), Muscat
presented a statistically significant 2.4-fold risk of a
neuroepitheliomatous tumor. What was the difference between the JAMA
publication and the BEMS meeting? Three tumors, without explanation,
were missing from the JAMA publication. Was this industry
manipulation?
In my view the CTIA board meeting makes the entire cellphone industry
culpable. Come the day, and that day will come, when there are
innumerable lawsuits against the industry, this board meeting will be
proof that the industry knew from early 1999 onwards that cellphones
caused brain tumors.
Motorola has probably been the most active corporation attacking the
science and scientists who report what Motorola already knows.
Currently Motorola is spinning off (selling) its entire cellphone
operation (
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=acUKB3LczJW0&refer=asia
). It's as if though Motorola sees the writing on the wall and wants
to sell both the business and the liability (caveat emptor).
A special thanks to Magda and Børns Fremtid for bringing this to our
attention.
Best regards to all,
Lloyd
_
Lloyd:
A footnote to your comments.
The original peer-reviewed paper submitted by Muscat to the WTR in
1998, showed a statistically significant doubling in risk of rare
neuroepithelial tumors. In the paper included in the book covering our
State of the Science Colloquium in 1999, Wireless Phones and Health
(Kluwer Academic Press, 2001), also peer-reviewed, Muscat reported a
statistically significant risk increase of neuroepithelial tumors of
more than 2.7. Between 1999 and 2001, Muscat communicated frequently
with Dr.Linda Erdreich, who had been hired by the CTIA to 'peer
review' Muscat's paper. With Erdreich, Muscat became a consultant to
the industry, participating in a number of industry sponsored
scientific meetings across the globe during 2000. When the paper
describing his work was submitted to the Journal of the American
Medical Association in late 2000, the three cases of cancer mentioned
previously had been eliminated from the analysis. The explanation was
that there were questions about the pathology. That change in cases --
violative of the study protocols that had been in place since the
research began in 1995 -- eliminated the statistical significance, and
indeed, the industry press release touted the study as showing no
statistically significant findings.
Of other note was that in the original report to the WTR in 1998,
Muscat reported a statistically significant correlation between the
side of the head where tumors were located and the side of the head
where people reported using their phone. This finding is corroborative
to the work of Dr. Hardell showing risk increase with ipsilateral
phone use that was first published in 1999 and thus would have been
very damaging to the industry position that there was no risk. With
the absence of the three cases in the JAMA paper, this statistically
significant finding also conveniently disappeared.
When presented with a pre-print of the paper, I submitted a letter to
JAMA's editor, indicating that I was the funder of the study and that
the data presented in the JAMA pre-print were different from the data
gathered under the peer-reviewed protocol. As such, the report was
inaccurate and was violative of the scientific protocols that were
prescribed in the contract between the WTR and the American Health
Foundation, Muscat's employer. The editor responded that the peer-
reviewers for JAMA reviewed what was presented to them in the paper
submitted. He said they had no basis for questioning the underlying
data and said that they needed to let the paper be published as
planned. I then submitted a letter to the editor describing the
breach, which JAMA refused to publish -- I assume that was mainly
because my letter called into question the integrity of their peer-
review process.
In the end, manipulated data were published in a highly reputable peer-
reviewed journal. The industry was able to use the paper as a public
relations tool to induce further use of cell phones. To this day, the
Muscat paper is in the pile of papers that the industry public
relations machine uses to whitewash the cell phone health effects
issue.
Dr. George Carlo
Personal Contacts
941-312-0789