News Center: Short Takes Archive
A paper on the effects of a mobile phone on the reproductive function of adult male rabbits, has been withdrawn by the International Journal of Andrology. In an advisory posted on March 14, the journal's editor-in-chief, Ewa Rajpert-De Meyts, states that Nader Salama, the lead author of the paper, requested its withdrawal. She cites three reasons: (1) "Lack of approval" by Salama's coauthors at the Tokushima School of Medicine in Japan; (2) "Lack of evidence to justify the accuracy of the data" in the paper: and (3) "Overlap" with two other papers by the same group. Salama is affliated with both the Tokushima medical school and the Alexandria Faculty of Medicine in Egypt.
Soon after the paper was posted by the International Journal of Andrology in December 2008, Alex Lerchl of Jacobs University and Christian Bornkessel of IMST, both in Germany, expressed "severe concerns about the validity of the exposure conditions and the reported biological effects" in a letter to the journal (open access). Though Salama and his Japanese colleagues stood by the paper in their response to Lerchl and Bornkessel (not open access), they have apparently now changed their minds.
Lerchl tells Microwave News that "other retractions will follow soon." In recent years, Lerchl has taken up the role of policing the EMF and RF literature to weed out what he believes is bad science and misconduct, with special if not exclusive attention to work that reports weak field effects. His most high-profile campaign was against Hugo Rüdiger's findings of RF-induced DNA damage, carried out in Vienna as part of the EC's REFLEX project. In this case, Lerchl failed to get Rüdiger's papers withdrawn (see "Three Cases of Alleged Scientific Misconduct").
The now retracted paper by Salama and colleagues is only a small part of the growing literature implicating mobile phone radiation in fertility problems (see "Keep That Phone Out of Your Trouser Pocket!").
A new study, out today, by a team headed by Hugh Taylor at Yale University has found that mice exposed to cell phone signals in the womb run the risk of altered neurological development and subsequent behavioral disorders. The paper is open access. For more on the new paper, see the write-ups from the Yale press office and IEEE Spectrum.
The Yale study lends support to the surprising finding, reported a couple of years ago that young children born to mothers who had used cell phones during pregnancy were more likely to have behavioral disorders, such as hyperactivity and emotional problems. That 2008 study was repeated by the same group in 2010 with similar results.
He's back. George Carlo, that is. Though not in the cell phone game, but baseball. Carlo has reinvented himself, this time as a brain scientist. He is now working with Brian Peterson, who calls himself the "Performance Enhancement Instructor" for the Detroit Tigers, according to the Web site Fangraphs. This is Peterson on Carlo's qualifications: "He's an MD, he has a PhD in pathology, and he also has a law degree. By trade, he's a brain researcher. George is a research scientist and an expert on how the body works in conjunction with the brain." That MD degree is news to us. Peterson might have added industry fixer and con artist to Carlo's résumé. After all he used to be a pitchman for BioPro, which sold useless gizmos that promised protection against cell phone radiation. And in the 1990s, Carlo ran the biggest scam of all, WTR, the CTIA-financed industry research program on cell phone radiation risks (see "WTR and the Betrayal of the Public Trust"). Twenty years later, no one yet knows what happened to the $25 million that was supposed to have been spent on health research.
“I am the happiest man alive,” says Robert Dill-Bundi, the Swiss Olympic cycling champion. Dill-Bundi developed a glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive, usually fatal, type of brain tumor, but is still alive years after being treated with electric fields. The therapy was developed by Novocure, an Israeli company (see: “Weak Kilohertz Electric Fields Kill Tumor Cells”). Bill Doyle, Novocure’s chairman, describes how the treatment works in a lecture recently posted by TEDMED, an offshoot of TED, the technology/entertainment/design consortium. Take a look at the 16-minute video and see what might well be the future of cancer treatment.
Carl Blackman of the U.S. EPA has published an editorial comment accompanying the new Boris Pasche paper on modulating frequencies to treat cancer in the British Journal of Cancer. In "Treating Cancer with Amplitude-Modulated Electromagnetic Fields: A Potential Paradigm Shift, Again?," Blackman puts Pasche's new findings in context with the work on amplitude-modulated (AM) signals by Ross Adey and Suzanne Bawin from the mid-1970s, as well as Blackman's own studies from the same era. Blackman concludes: "The group of [Pasche's] three papers demonstrate a new, potentially important modality in the treatment of cancer that could lead to a paradigm shift in disease treatment. I hope that this medical application of AM-EMF will not be allowed languish without funding, as happened with its previous, ill-fated emergence." The editorial is open access, as is the Pasche paper.
The Observer in the U.K. is the first mainstream news outlet to cover Boris Pasche and Frederico Costa's cancer therapy that uses weak RF radiation to shrink liver tumors. The story was posted today by Robin McKie with the headline, "Hopes Rise for New Cancer Treatment After Tests with Electromagnetism." McKie includes a cautious assessment from Cancer Research UK, a leading charity and the publisher of the British Journal of Cancer. Pasche reveals that he has a go-ahead from the FDA to embark on large-scale trials —and that he is now looking for financial support. (See our earlier story on Pasche's TheraBionic therapy and "Specific Frequencies Block Growth of Cancer Cells," his most recent paper). January 8… Today, Sunday, the Daily Mail picked up the story from the Observer under the headline, "Hopes of Cancer Breakthrough with Treatment Using Electromagnetic Fields To Shrink Tumours.
Switzerland’s Meike Mevissen and Chris Portier of the U.S. offer their insiders’ acccount of last May’s IARC search for consensus on the cancer risks of RF radiation in their article, “The Eyes of the World Were Upon Us.” It’s a serious look at the give-and-take among the 29 participants over the weeklong meeting (hint: they never mention pickled vegetables). Ten years ago, Mevissen and Portier were also members of the IARC panel which classified power-frequency EMFs as a “possible human carcinogen (2B),” the same designation assigned to RF last spring.
Christopher Ketcham, who made a splash early last year with his GQ piece, "Warning: Your Cell Phone May Be Hazardous to Your Health," is back on the EMF beat with a cover story in the latest issue of Earth Island Journal: "Warning: High Frequency." The first warning centered on brain tumor risks; the new one focuses on electromagnetic hypersensitivity. One quote from Carl Blackman of the U.S. EPA highlights how controversial the whole issue is: "With my government cap on, I'm supposed to tell you you're perfectly safe," Blackman tells [a woman whose family and farm animals are bedeviled with health problems after a cell tower was installed nearby]. "With my civilian cap on, I have to tell you to consider leaving." See also the accompanying comments by the editor of Earth Island Journal.
Italy's National Health Council is recommending a precautionary approach to the use of cell phones by children, according to La Repubblica, a leading national newspaper.
Although the announcement comes right after the airing of a hard hitting TV program last night (see item below), La Repubblica reports that the decision to advise precaution was made at the council's November 15 meeting. In a press release, the council states that its move was prompted by IARC's classification of RF radiation as a possible cancer agent. An information campaign is planned to "raise awareness."
Tomorrow, Sunday, Italy's TV news documentary program, Report, will present the findings of its investigation on cell-phone health risks and the role of industry funding for research. The program will air on RAI3, a national network, at 9:30pm local time (3:30pm on the U.S. East Coast). The show may be seen on the Internet. Watch a short preview.
November 27
Now you can watch the entire hour-long show. There is also a transcript, and with Google Translate, you can make sense of it all even if you don't speak Italian.