Scientist: Study claiming cell phones cause cancer has big problems

DC-NEWS 300X71By Andrew Follett

A leading radiation health scientist criticized a widely publicized study Monday, after the report allegedly found a link between cell phones and cancer in mice.

The study, published late last week, generated results that don’t support its conclusions, according to a leading radiation researcher. Dr. Rodney Croft, the director of the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research, argues in an article published by a medical news site Monday that the study exposed the mice to far more radiation than cell phones actually emit. He also points out that the control group of mice used in the study that weren’t exposed to cell phone radiation, actually died earlier than the animals that were exposed. Croft points to other missing information and methodological errors that were highlighted during the study’s peer-review, but were never addressed.

“It’s difficult to interpret the report in the proper light because it was released without normal scientific evaluation,” Dr. Croft wrote. “The authors argued that they did this because of both strong media interest and the importance of the results to human health. This argument would suggest that they had shown something sufficiently unambiguous to clarify this important issue.”

The study was conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program and was lavishly funded with $25 million. This was sizeable, well-funded research, and was eagerly awaited by health scientists and policy makers, but is apparently unable to settle the matter conclusively.

“The problem is, the results of this report are far from unambiguous,” Dr. Croft continued. “Even given that science can never be 100% certain of its conclusions, there is still reason for me to believe that the report’s conclusions have overstepped the mark.”

A 29-year long study in the medical journal Cancer Epidemiology, published online in early May, examined the association between cell phone use and cancer among a group of 19,858 men and 14,222 women diagnosed with brain cancer in Australia between 1982-2012. The study’s abstract states that it “found no increase in brain cancer incidence compatible with the steep increase in mobile phone use.”

The scientists “compared the actual incidence of brain cancer over this time with the numbers of new cases of brain cancer that would be expected if the ‘mobile phones cause brain cancer’ hypothesis was true,” Simon Chapman, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of Sydney, wrote in IFL Science. “[W]e are seeing no rise in the incidence of brain cancer against the background rate.”

The only statistically significant link found by the 29-year long study was in older than 70, but that increase in cancer began in 1982 before cell phones, so it could not be explained. The most likely explanation of the rise in brain cancer in this older age group was improved diagnosis.

The research was specifically targeted to debunk claims that radiation from cell phones causes brain cancer.

Recent studies show the radiation risk in general has been massively overestimated for a long period of time. Predictions of thousands of cancer deaths from radiation incidents like Chernobyl or Fukushima have consistently failed to be borne out.

Previous science and existing regulations are premised on the belief that any dose of radiation, no matter how small, causes some harm. These regulations have no “scientifically valid support,” wrote Dr. Carol S. Marcus, a professor of nuclear medicine at UCLA, in a statement to The Wall Street Journal last December. Other scientists previously showed radiation is far less dangerous than current regulations assume.

Some studies even reveal small doses of radiation actually modestly reduce cancer risks. A study of radon gas by a Johns Hopkins scientist suggested that people living with higher concentrations of the radioactive gas actually have lower rates of lung cancer than the general population.

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