IP: CELL PHONES AND CANCER: DOES THIS STORY SOUND FAMILIAR?: What's New for Dec 22, 2000

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>1.  It
>should, it features many of the same players who brought you the
>power line controversy.  It began on Jan 23, 1993; a guest on
>Larry King Live, whose wife had died of brain cancer, was suing
>the cell-phone industry, claiming her cancer was caused by a cell
>phone: "She held it against her head, and she talked on it all
>the time," he said (WN 29 Jan 93).  With such "evidence," story
>after story in the media focused on the cancer question.  At that
>time, people still thought power lines caused cancer.  The power
>line controversy was not put to rest until the National Cancer
>Institute released a definitive epidemiological study of the
>connection between childhood cancer and residential EMF exposure.
>Any link, the study concluded, is too weak to detect or to be
>concerned about.  This week, two major studies of cell phone use
>and cancer were published, one by an industry group and one by
>the National Cancer Institute.  Both concluded that cell phone
>users are no more likely than anyone else to have brain cancer.



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