Posted on 06/03/2008 7:48:27 PM PDT by neverdem
What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?
Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”
Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.
Along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a glioma, a type of tumor that critics have long associated with cellphone use, the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cellphones and cancer.
That supposed link has been largely dismissed by many experts, including the American Cancer Society...
--snip--
Cellphones emit non-ionizing radiation, waves of energy that are too weak to break chemical bonds or to set off the DNA damage known to cause cancer. There is no known biological mechanism to explain how non-ionizing radiation might lead to cancer.
But researchers who have raised concerns say that just because science can’t explain the mechanism doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. Concerns have focused on the heat generated by cellphones and the fact that the radio frequencies are absorbed mostly by the head and neck. In recent studies that suggest a risk, the tumors tend to occur on the same side of the head where the patient typically holds the phone...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We are conducting a very large, uncontrolled experiment.
If millions of people come down with brain cancer 20 years from now, there will be much recrimination.
I don’t use the damn things at all.
Somebody should inform these doctors that their Bluethooth headsets also contain transmitters at a frequency of 2.4 GHz.
A Bluetooth headset stuck in your ear may be much worse than a cellphone antenna an inch or so away from your head, from an ionizing radiation perspective.
THANK YOU....that’s what I was thinking..... those little things stuck in their ears aren’t close to their brains????? And, I’m not even a brain surgeon!
They are laying the foundation for a lawsuit 10 to 15 years from now. 10 to 15 years from now all unexplained illnesses will blamed on cellphone use, which in turn, means the go-ver-ment, will get tens of millions of dollars after extorting this from company to buy votes, making Edwards type lawyers rich.
It’s called emotional terrorism.
Of course, nothing might happen and you would have lost out.
It won’t cook the egg.
Lost out on what? The fabulous privilege of yakking with idiots all day long?
It’s an old internet joke. You call one cellphone with the other and the microwaves cook the egg.
How do we know it couldn't also be associated with having spent extended periods of time with ones head up ones @ss.
So your fellow Americans and friends you have are idiots?
forget it, I figured out what hills you come from.
Ever look at the difference in radiated energy? Most Bluetooth headsets have a fraction of the energy of a cell phone.
There is not enough evidence to say one way or another that non-ionizing microwaves at the energy emitted by cell phones can cause cancer.
I can think of a mechanism that may lead to cancer, however. Ultraviolet radiation (non-ionizing) can obviously cause melanomas. Even though radiation may not be ionizing, it can at the right frequencies cause rotational and vibrational oscillations in molecules. That's why microwave ovens heat water.
I would think that at the right frequencies, telomeres at the end of DNA could be stressed to the point that they break off causing premature aging in a cell and possibly cancer during replication of a cell that has extensive damage to telomeres.
But look at all the people that DON’T get cancer so maybe cell phones acually prevent cancer!
People that get cancer from not using cell phones enough are really going to be upset.
“What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?”
Not much. But cell phone engineers don’t know much brain surgery either.
Most are Class 2 Bluetooth devices, at 2.5 mW max. Cell phones transmit much higher energy levels.
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