Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer?

[ralph124c]

See the latest, from a respected brain surgeon:http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-or-asbestos-802602.html?r=RSS
This seems serious to me; is htis something that should be avoided? Or will wearing my tinfoil hat (Faraday cage) be enough to protect me?

[Musicat]

One biased report does not make science, and is contradicted by many others that show no effect. From your link:

Professor Khurana … reviewed more than 100 studies on the effects of mobile phones. He has put the results on a brain surgery website, and a paper based on the research is currently being peer-reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

He admits that mobiles can save lives in emergencies, but concludes that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours”. He believes this will be “definitively proven” in the next decade.

So his study is “being peer reviewed”, which means it hasn’t been yet. And “He believes this will be…proven,” which means that that hasn’t been done yet, either.

Note that this appears to be a meta-analysis, not a new study. No matter how many studies you gather, if they are all flawed, you won’t get a valid conclusion from grouping them and averaging the results.

From here:

Meta-analysis…[is] “a dubious procedure … in which the statistically insignificant results of many experiments are combined as if they were a single, controlled experiment”

Also note the weasel words, “Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos…”

Without looking at the detail of the study, not much more can be said. But, at first glance, it doesn’t look like it was good science, just scaremongering by someone with an agenda.

[flex727]

@ralph124c

See the latest, from a respected brain surgeon:http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/mobile-phones-more-dangerous-than-smoking-or-asbestos-802602.html?r=RSS
This seems serious to me; is htis something that should be avoided? Or will wearing my tinfoil hat (Faraday cage) be enough to protect me?

It seems basically absurd to me. He says it takes 10 years for the cancer to show. Haven’t we already been using cell phones for over 10 years? And hasn’t much of that use been with analog phones that had much higher radiation than modern digital cell phones? We should already have a substantial statistically significant increase in brain cancer or tumors by now - where’s that data?

[Musicat]

From electromagnetic field (EMF), electromagnetic radiation - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com :

There is also a strong contingent of folks hell-bent on proving this link [cancer/EMF], so it is likely that studies will continue to be done that support a contrary viewpoint. For example, a research team in Sweden found an increased risk for brain tumors in people who used cellular or cordless phones. The study was a small one and assessed exposure by self-administered questionnaires. On the other hand, a large Danish study (420,000 mobile phone users) found neither long nor short-term mobile phone use to be associated with an increased risk of cancer. The Danish study did not use the memories of the subjects to assess exposure; they analyzed data from mobile phone company records. Another small Swedish study found no increased risk of acoustic neuroma related to short-term mobile phone use. The researchers thought that their data suggest an increased risk of acoustic neuroma associated with mobile phone use of at least 10 years duration. They don’t say how they measured exposure, but they note that “detailed information about mobile phone use and other environmental exposures was collected.” Other studies on laboratory animals have found effects from microwave exposure. Some studies have collected data suggestive of possible harmful effects from cell phone microwave exposure, but they are too small to have ruled out chance or other causal agents or they have not been tested on in vivo cells.

There are links to the references in the sourced Skepdic article.

[CurtC]

The issue of cancer from cell phones lacks a plausible mechanism. RF signals at those frequencies can only cause damage by heating tissue up - each photon doesn’t have the energy to break any chemical bonds and thus cause changes directly. Since no one’s cell phone has enough power to actually heat up tissue to any significant degree, it’s just not very plausible that cell phones could cause cancer.

When you’re going to make an assertion that there’s a connection, you need either a plausible mechanism or some statistics that show correlation. We don’t have a plausible mechanism, the statistics don’t show it, it seems like all there is is this doctor’s gut feel that there is a connection. That’s not enough for me.

[Musicat]

Here’s an article that shows how irresponsible the media can be. The title is “Beware of the Mobile Phone! It Can Kill You Faster than Smoking”, but that’s not what the study showed. Some news articles are saying, “A new study suggests…Cell Phone Use Could Double Risk of Brain Cancer”, but this is not a new study at all, but a rehash of specially-selected old studies of dubious quality. And there’s that weasel word, “suggests”.

The Mobile Operators Association, last week, rejected Dr. Khurana’s study as “a selective discussion of scientific literature by one individual.” It “does not present a balanced analysis” of the published science, and “reaches opposite conclusions to the World Health Organization and more than 30 other independent expert scientific reviews.”

That’s not what the headline “suggests,” is it?

[Thing_Fish]

Don’t have anything to add directly to the OP… but what I learned in my med school statistics classes is that, contrary to skepdic.com, meta-analysis is not a “dubious practice” but the gold standard of evidence-based medicine. If you have a bunch of well-designed studies that all attempt to measure the same phenomenon, it is quite possible that all of them may have too small a sample size to show any effect…but if you add the data from all of them together, you may reach statistical significance. Of course, that is assuming that the studies are in fact well-designed and measuring the same thing, which can’t be assumed but needs to be rigorously demonstrated. The study discussed in this thread may or may not be a good one, but the statistical technique of meta-analysis is universally accepted as valid when properly done.

[Musicat]

@Thing Fish

Of course, that is assuming that the studies are in fact well-designed and measuring the same thing, which can’t be assumed but needs to be rigorously demonstrated.

Aye, that’s the rub!

Also, the good doc (or perhaps the media) seems to be unaware of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.

[Napier]

Thing Fish is right to say that metaanalysis isn’t a dubious practice and that in the right circumstances it can reach a statistically significant conclusion using nothing but studies that failed to reach statistically significant conclusions. The math involved in this leap is very simple.

Musicat, do you have some evidence saying that all the studies in this metaanalysis are flawed, or even that many of them are?

FWIW I doubt cell phones cause cancer because as CurtC points out the photons are so weak, and because I haven’t happened to hear of a study that found evidence.

[Musicat]

@Napier

Musicat, do you have some evidence saying that all the studies in this metaanalysis are flawed, or even that many of them are?

Good question. No, I do not have links to specific studies at my fingertips, but read (above) what WHO says about current research. From here:

While that claim may sound alarming, a local neuro-oncologist at Allegheny General Hospital said it’s important to look at the science behind the claim.

Dr. Matthew Quigley said he does not believe cell phone users need to worry, at least not just yet.

He looked at this latest study and said, “It represented nothing new in terms of any scientific work being done.”

Link to all google news articles on this subject.

From here:

Dire warnings that mobile phone use may be more harmful than smoking or asbestos exposure have been dismissed by the federal radiation regulator.

The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency said the Mobile Phones and Brain Tumours report was an “anecdotal repeat” of earlier findings and ruled out amending its regulation of mobile phone use.

From here:

In the mean time we’ll keep holding on to the 2005 study from the European Institute of Cancer Research that showed no cancer link among the 4,000 people who participated…

The tone of many news articles, blatantly misrepresenting stuff and scaremongering thru large headlines, is a red flag for this kind of material. We’ve seen it all before.

Here’s one that is NOT of that ilk, but a fair headline and proper reporting. Compare with other articles. (bolding mine):

Media reports exaggerate cell phone cancer risk

More than 100 news sources ran the story about Dr. Khurana although his findings are under peer review and not yet published in any scientific journal. Some reports and headlines called cell phone more hazardous than smoking, claiming that “New research has revealed that mobile phones are more injurious to people’s health than smoking.”

Even if Dr. Khurana is correct about the increase in brain tumor rates, these claims overstate the danger…

I don’t want to quote the whole thing, since it is short, but please read the link.

[CurtC]

@Thing Fish

Don’t have anything to add directly to the OP… but what I learned in my med school statistics classes is that, contrary to skepdic.com, meta-analysis is not a “dubious practice” but the gold standard of evidence-based medicine.

In the real world, it’s usually a dubious practice.

Of course, that is assuming that the studies are in fact well-designed and measuring the same thing

Which is the problem, because a very small subset of meta-analyses I’ve seen actually use comparable studies. And even when they do, you get one other major confounding factor: publication bias - studies showing an effect tend to be published at a higher rate than those that don’t, so taking only those into your meta-analysis pretty much guarantees skewed results.

The “gold standard” in epidemiology is still the large scale, placebo controlled, randomized double-blind study.

[gonzomax]

Yes
no
yes
no
Quit reading studies. I see the headline and think here goes another one. Then put it away. Salt causes high blood pressure. Salt does not. Coffeee is bad for you . Coffee is good for you. If you have to read them ,just don’t accept them as the final answer. Just another interesting tidbit.

[RaftPeople]

@CurtC

The issue of cancer from cell phones lacks a plausible mechanism. RF signals at those frequencies can only cause damage by heating tissue up - each photon doesn’t have the energy to break any chemical bonds and thus cause changes directly.

I figured I would check up on this statement by doing a little googling. The first link, top of the page, was for research into 50hz EMF which, as I googled further is about power line frequency, and many sites said the same thing you did but regarding power line EMF. Anyway, here’s a quote and a link:

“…However, exposure of AFC cells to EMF of different intensities and for different exposure times showed no statistically significant differences when compared with controls. These results demonstrate that different human cell types respond differently to EMF. Dose-dependent induction of apoptosis and genotoxic effects, resulting in increased micronucleus formation, could be demonstrated in the transformed cell line, whereas the nontransformed cell line did not show statistically significant effects. These findings suggest that EMF could be a promotor but not an initiator of carcinogenic effects”

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/34155/ABSTRACT
This is one example, and I saw many more like it, that implies it’s more complex than your post states (acting as a promotor vs initiator). Just because we don’t know the mechanism doesn’t mean it can’t be a problem. I assume cell phones are at a different frequency so it’s possible the situation is different, but it appears the same arguments are being made in both cases.