Subject: Fist's push for EMF research in Australia (fwd)
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 040106 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 2 Aug 1998 15:25:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: marjorie lundquist
To: fist@ozemail.com.au
Cc: rbeavers@llion.org
Subject: Fist's push for EMF research in Australia
Stewart, I wish I had the opportunity to read your column on a regular
basis. It's quite good, I think.
Regarding your lobbying effort in Australia to fund cellular phone
research by a tax on handsets, the idea is a good one, but I see a
major problem: who is going to decide how the research money will be
spent? I do not know of ANY group doing research in this area that is
doing what really NEEDS to be done!
I suggest that you make it an integral part of your lobbying effort
that the very first project to be paid for from this research fund
(unless funds have been committed from another source to this project)
is an epidemiological study in Western Australia of the relationship
between brain cancer and cellular phone use there. This is a study
that BADLY needs to be done, just as soon as possible.
It would be ideal for the cellular phone company that is involved to
co-operate, but I understand that it has refused (with good reason, I
feel sure: it does not want to finance the proof that cellular phones
are giving its customers brain cancer), so the study must be designed
to be done without its help, I suppose.
The proper people to do this study are physicians, I think. So you
must make this a specific provision of the lobbying you are doing, so
that if the this fund is established, this study actually gets done.
The study must be done on the population in Western Australia, not
elsewhere; it should be retrospective, covering the time from the
introduction of cellular phone use, or soon afterward, until such time
as digital cellular phones may have been introduced there (I am not
aware that this has happened yet in Western Australia). The reason is
simple: Western Australia is the only population I am aware of that
has used ONLY ANALOG cellular phones. It is important that any
attempt to associate brain cancer with cellular phone use be made ONLY
on a population that has used ANALOG cellular phones EXCLUSIVELY. The
Western Australian population is the only one I know of that meets
this criterion.
The electromagnetic fields around analog and digitial cellular phones
are different in some important ways, and these differences manifest
themselves in disease differences in the populations who use cellular
phones.
Brain cancer can readily be associated with the use of analog cellular
phones in a well-designed epidemiological study that covers a
sufficiently long period of time (years), but if the study is done of
both types of cellular phone users mixed together, then it will be
hard to get any meaningful conclusion from the study (which is what
has happened here in the USA).
The ideal study will include total length of time the person used the
cellular phone (either an estimate, or else data from phone company
records, or perhaps some combination of the two, if one cellular phone
was used by several people in a family). It is easiest to get this
information if the phone company co-operates, but if the cellular
phone user has kept bills, it can be obtained that way, also.
Basically, as I conceive it, death certificates would be obtained of
those who died from brain cancer, and then survivors would be
interviewed to determine which of the deceased had used a cellular
phone, and for how long (date when first use began, total number of
hours of use).
The site of the brain tumor must be behind the ear on the same side of
the head where the person habitually used the cellular phone. Then
one counts the number of these cases each year, and checks to see
whether these numbers account for the rise in brain cancer incidence
that was reported. If it does (and I am confident that it will) then
one can look at statistics on duration of cellular phone use to gain
some further useful data. I suspect the data will fit a Poisson
distribution. It is important to confirm this, and to establish the
mean of the distribution. This will make possible some quantification
of risk (though only on a statistical basis).
It is important that this study be done, no matter what ideas other
professionals have. Fortunately, there is one doctor, at least, who
agrees that it needs to be done: Dr. Andrews, who wrote that letter
in the Medical Journal of Australia at the beginning of this year
reporting on the suspicious increase in brain cancer in Western
Australia in both sexes. -- Marjorie
*********************************
Marjorie Lundquist, Ph.D., C.I.H.
Bioelectromagnetic Hygienist
P. O. Box 11831
Milwaukee, WI 53211-0831 USA
*********************************
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Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html