On May 20, CNN posted the above video with an accompanying article where Dr. Sanjay Gupta talks about cell phones and brain cancer. Besides being CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Gupta is an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Emory University School of Medicine and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2009, it was widely reported that he was offered the post of Surgeon General in the Obama Administration but turned it down.

In the face of repeated alarmist claim that cell phone use causes brain cancer, CTIA and the cellular industry responds with stonewalling that this is no proof and that cell phones meet all government standards - both literally true. Critics though focus on brain cancer although occasionally mentioning a large laundry list of other pathologies - all without any credible evidence. Why the focus on brain cancer as a possible impact of cell phone use? Probably scare tactics from the anticellular forces since brain cancer is one of the scariest diagnoses around and it thus helps grab headlines. Other possible pathologies just don’t get the same headlines.

Faced with this emotion loaded but evidence lacking threat, CTIA responds with legal stonewalling which industry sources says is focused on minimizing industry liability if same adverse health effect of cell phone use is ever proven. That may be a reasonable lawyer-driven response for industry in such a situation, but is it a reasonable approach for a regulator acting in “the public interest”?

While RF exposure to your head may not be doing you any harm, it certainly isn’t doing you any good. Thus while CTIA would prefer that the public just be given reassurances that everything is OK, presumably because “people trust government”. Well, the papers I read seem to indicate that many Americans do not trust government and FCC’s stonewalling on RF safety probably isn’t helping.

A better approach would be for FCC to clearly state that the best evidence shows the current standards are adequate but that individuals can take certain steps to decrease their exposure such as

• using Bluetooth-like earpieces,
• using phone preferentially in locations with stronger base station signal/“more bars”, and
• considering phone with lower SAR values. (Note this last issue is the one that FCC secretly flip-flopped on last year and has never publicly explained.)

The cellular industry’s long term legal liability should not be an issue here. If cell phones are really safe, then it doesn’t matter how any new public information acknowledges possible risk. Yes, such a public information change might impact the industry’s liability if a cause and effect relationship is ever proven, but in that case wouldn’t voluntary lower public exposure have been a government positive action?

So, CTIA feel free to play your silly games with San Francisco on public knowledge of SAR data, but FCC should decide that in the face of uncertainty the “public interest” is not necessarily defense of CTIA and its membership but in protecting the public.

Tags: rf safety