Subject: Who is George Carlo?......
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 223337 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru <rbeavers@llion.org>
--------------------------------------------------
......Having just forwarded to everyone the news report ("stab
in the back") about George Carlo, I can just imagine all the voices
"out there" who are now saying: Who In the h___ is Grorge Carlo?
Read again, the Washington Post report of two weeks back....
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)......
rbeavers@llion.org.......
.....It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.....
EMF-L web-site can be found at:
EMF-L archives can be found at:
..................PEOPLE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN PROFITS..................
Study: Cell Phone Use May Have Cancer Link
By John Schwartz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 1999; Page E01
Preliminary results from research funded by the cellular telephone
industry suggests there may be a correlation between cell phone use
and cancer, according to the director of the program. The study found
possible connections both in biological tests and statistical analyses
of cell phone users.
The findings are at odds with many previous studies, which found no
such link. But at a time when use of cell phones is exploding --
roughly 70 million were in use in the United States as of December --
the findings will enter the debate over whether the phones' radio
emissions can be harmful.
The data, while "important," only suggest that more research is
necessary, said George Carlo, chairman of the industry-funded Wireless
Technology Research group. "We're now in a gray area that we've never
been in before with this. When we're in a gray area, the best thing to
do is let the public know about the findings so that they can make
their own judgment," he said.
An official of the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the
safety of cell phones, agreed. "These results seem to have been done
well -- the question now is, 'Okay, we've got a result. What do we do
with it? How do we follow through?' " said Elizabeth D. Jacobson,
deputy director of science at the FDA's Center for Devices and
Radiological Health.
Jacobson and other FDA officials have been briefed on the WTR results;
Jacobson said that if a clear health threat emerged from the studies,
she and the agency would move quickly to address the problem.
In this case, however, Jacobson said the results make a strong case
for conducting more research but not for taking regulatory action at
this time: "We didn't see what we thought were public health
problems," she said.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association would not comment
on the record about the new research, but has called for further
studies to be conducted under the direction of the federal government
and international health agencies.
Early-model cell phones were mounted in cars, with the transmission
antenna and its radio waves far away from the user. But in the 1990s,
as handsets held directly against the ear became common, some people
began to worry that the radiation might be harmful.
The debate broke into the open when a Florida man went on the "Larry
King Live" program in 1993 and alleged that a cellular telephone
caused his wife's brain cancer. Regulators and scientists subsequently
have struggled to shed light on whether the phones have any health
effects.
Radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes
kinds of radiation that are clearly carcinogenic, such as X-rays, and
others that are harmless, such as visible light. Also, cell phone
users -- who tend to be more prosperous than the general population --
might share other risk factors for cancer that have not yet been
subjected to scrutiny.
The industry formed WTR in 1993 to conduct a $25 million series of
independent studies and hired Carlo to coordinate the effort.
The new findings are the first major disclosure by the group of the
results of its research. These and all WTR-sponsored findings to date
will be presented at a colloquium in Long Beach, Calif., on June 19
and 20.
One line of WTR research involved the examination of cells from
various animals that had been subjected to radiation from four types
of cell phones. The research, conducted at Stanford University and
Integrated Laboratory Systems in Research Triangle Park, N.C., put the
cells through 46 tests for cancer-inducing genetic damage. Most
produced the usual result in cell phone research: no sign of
cancer-causing damage.
But one battery of eight tests, known as a "micronucleus assay," on
human blood cells did indicate chromosomal damage.
"At this point there is very little you can make of" this finding,
said Graham Hook, a program director at Integrated Laboratory Systems.
"It's difficult to interpret," and might be attributable to other
factors. The real role of such tests, he said, "is to tell you what
needs to be further tested."
Some scientists who had been briefed on the results by Carlo said they
would reserve judgment until they could see all of the data after it
had been through the peer-review process.
"It's interesting, but not worthy of too much attention until it gets
published," said W. Gregory Lotz, a researcher at the National
Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.
Previous studies that indicated a cancer risk have not been borne out.
In the mid-1990s, researchers Henry Lai and N.P. Singh at the
University of Washington, Seattle, using a test known as the "comet
assay," found DNA breaks in cells exposed to wireless phone radiation.
Subsequent attempts by Joseph Roti Roti of Washington University in
St. Louis to duplicate the work were unsuccessful, an indication that
the first work might have been flawed.
"The fairly simple bottom line is in the work that I've done, I've
found nothing that would alarm me, or alert me to a possible hazardous
health effect," Roti Roti said in an interview. "To me, the biggest
hazard with the cell phone is not paying attention to driving your car
when you're using one."
Other lines of research that WTR has pursued are based in epidemiology
-- they look for patterns of disease in larger populations of cell
phone users.
One WTR-sponsored epidemiology study by Joshua Muscat of the American
Health Foundation showed a near tripling of a statistically
significant risk of a rare kind of tumor called a neurocytoma among
cell phone users, compared with people who do not use cell phones.
Neurocytomas grow from the periphery of the brain inward. The result
of that study, however, is undercut by the fact that the data did not
show that the risk of neurocytoma rose with the amount of cell phone
use, which researchers would have expected to find. In fact, greater
exposure was associated with lower risk.
Another epidemiological study, also not published yet, found that
right-handed people who used cell phones and had brain tumors tended
to have them on the right side of the head -- a result that could show
a link to radiation from the phones. However, no such correlation
appeared in left-handed cancer patients.
Other major scientific exploration of a possible link between cell
phones and cancer is being carried out at the National Cancer
Institute and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in
Europe.
Carlo, who uses a cellular phone with a plug-in earpiece that allows
him to talk without holding the device to his head, said he chose to
issue the results before publication so that government and industry
could take the next step in research. "What we don't want to do two,
three, four years from now is to say, 'God -- this was the tip of the
iceberg, and we didn't see it!' "
© Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html