When mobile phones started to become popular 20 or so years ago there were many stories of brain tumours being attributed to mobile phone usage . FFWd to today and the issue is never really mentioned so did medical science get it wrong , was it just scaremongering or is it still a thing but it just doesn't get reported these days ?
Who knows what the latency is....?
But yes, even if the latency was 30 years, you'd have thought that an upsurge in illness would have started to manifest itself by now.
did medical science get it wrong , was it just scaremongering
I think medical science, or at least the respectable side of it, was at the time simply saying 'We don't know', because we wouldn't know for 20 years. Scientists not being able to rule out problems was interpreted as something more sinister in the press.
There was plenty of not particularly respectable science predicting phonemageddon based on microwaving some rats, or somesuch.
so did medical science get it wrong
No, medical science did not get involved really, but the scaremongering media did.
Also, Starling populations seem to be remaining constant, despite regularly roosting on masts and antennas.
Everyone's dead.
Was there actual medical science or just theories?
I think design has changed a lot and other factors may have been adopted early on but not much was ever proven
FAKE NEWS! Rats should definitely stay off their mobiles.
medical equipment evolved to resist interference from them (didn't it?), maybe we did too?
When mobile phones started to become popular 20 or so years ago there were many stories of brain tumours being attributed to mobile phone usage.
The Daily Mail ‘health’ pages certainly made a big thing about it...
There was an interesting article in The Grauniad recently (last 2-3 weeks) on this very topic. Essentially accusing Big Tel of copying the tactics / methods of big tobacco in the 40s, 50s and 60s in order to kill the story (aggressive denunciations, funding of 'independent' research, buying political influence etc). Made compelling reading though no way of knowing if journo in question had particular axe to grind. I'll try and dig out the link.
Apropos of nothing, ex colleague recently had hip replacement at age of 53, only right hip needed doing. Apparently surgeon asked him which pocket he kept his phone in (the right one) and said that over the last 5-6 years he'd seen loads of cases where the hip bone had deteriorated on one side, which was always the same side the phone was on.
Needless to say I now swap the phone from side to side. And wear lead underpants..
Apropos of nothing, ex colleague recently had hip replacement at age of 53, only right hip needed doing. Apparently surgeon asked him which pocket he kept his phone in (the right one) and said that over the last 5-6 years he’d seen loads of cases where the hip bone had deteriorated on one side, which was always the same side the phone was on.
Right handed? Right foot first? The leg and therefore hip that takes the most impact as you move and stop?
Or maybe it's the one closest to the ley lines
Was there not some sort of ear shield back in the day that you could buy to stick on your phone that was meant to stop you growing a second head or something bonkers?
Read this the other day...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2174540-no-mobile-phones-still-wont-give-you-brain-cancer/
Apropos of nothing, ex colleague recently had hip replacement at age of 53, only right hip needed doing. Apparently surgeon asked him which pocket he kept his phone in (the right one) and said that over the last 5-6 years he’d seen loads of cases where the hip bone had deteriorated on one side, which was always the same side the phone was on.
Out of all the hips I wonder what the chances of if being on the same side were.
Its something referred to as 'Grains of Rice'.
Something like a Brain Tumour is a very rare occurrence. When it happens people naturally look around for something about the person ( or their activities, or environment) as a likely cause. People feel like a rare condition somehow needs more to cause it than a common one.
The grain of rice thing comes about when seemingly rare occurrences seem to happen in clusters - 3 people in the same village get a Brain Tumour over a period of time. Theres immidealy a presumption because the event is 'rare' but it happens a few times in the same place then that is significant then something is causing it. People looking for evidence make the link to the the new phone mast in the village - because all three tumours occurred after it had been built - and all three people have been known to use a phone. (they conveniently forget any occasion where anyone got a tumour in the decades and centuries prior to to the mast being built)
Believing this to be meaningful someone has the bright idea of mapping all the places in the country where people have had the same kind of tumour - they notice there are similar 'clusters' and when they compare that to a map of phone transmitters they also notice that for every cluster theres often a phone mast nearby - cue panic.
But - any random distribution is full of clusters. If you got a handful of grains of rice and threw them across a map - some of the those grains of rice would be close together, and those clusters would be close to something. But you know that the map hasn't had any influence on where the grains fell.
The problem is - looking a map- instances of a tumour can only happen in places where people live. only 10% of the UK has been built on - 90% of the map will never get a pin in it - so immediately those random events appear focused into clusters on the map. And phone masts? Well companies only tend to build them where theres a population for them to serve. You could make the same conclusion about postboxes.
Mobile phone cancer belongs in the big list of things that have murdered us all to death many times over:
Aids
Nuclear war with the USSR
BSE
Global cooling
Ebola
Watching the Tellytubbies
Etc
Etc
Out of all the hips I wonder what the chances of if being on the same side were.
Shocking stuff. 🙂
Of course, even if there was a correlation, you might expect an orthopaedic surgeon to apply Occam's and wonder about whether your natural inclination to pop your phone into a particular side might reflect some other imbalance in the way you sit or use your arms/hips over time.
The transmission power of wireless devices is limited and fairly tightly regulated, especially in the USA. Any wireless device that is within 20cm of your head when in use has to use licensed kit or be tested.
Whether this makes any difference or is unnecessary is unknown.
you might expect an orthopaedic surgeon to apply Occam’s
I work with Doctors, consultants, surgeons all day long, and many of them are some of the smartest people I know...within their chosen field...It's a significant caveat. Many of these folk have done nothing but study eyes or bones, or the bio-chemistry of sexually transmitted diseases. Ask them to carry out a normal everyday function, say a self-checkout, and you realise pretty quickly that these people would starve if left alone...
One of my best Cataract surgeons, was telling me of the joys of motor-cyling without a helmet the other day...He is Greek though, so I guess it's to be expected.
It is abundantly clear that the effect is very very small at worst, since there is no epidemic of related cancers following from a huge increase in prevalence of mobile phones. There's also no plausible mechanism for a significant effect.
All these young people with phablets poking out of the back of their rear jeans pocket, there's going to be a serious surge in arse cancer in a few years time.
here's the guardian story
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/14/mobile-phones-cancer-inconvenient-truths
and a follow up...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/21/mobile-phones-are-not-a-health-hazard
thecaptain
Everyone’s [b]brain[/b] dead.
FTFY
I work with Doctors, consultants, surgeons all day long, and many of them are some of the smartest people I know…within their chosen field…It’s a significant caveat.
Yup, I often drink with a consultant orthopaedic surgeon.
Clever guy - but he can barely even work his phone, never mind tell you about the impact of the electromagnetic radiation it produces.
So, in conclusion I think we can say that all Greek motorcyclists are invincible.
Also, Starling populations seem to be remaining constant, despite regularly roosting on masts and antennas.
<span class="ILfuVd yZ8quc NA6bn">Starling population crashes across Europe. With its cheeky nature and chirpy, chattering song, the starling is one of our most recognisable birds, but figures show that <b>40 million</b> starlings have disappeared from the European Union, including the UK, since 1980.</span>
🤔
Yup, I often drink with a consultant orthopaedic surgeon.
I think it was the ortho guys in Adelaide who were refusing to move to the new hospital unless all their demands were met, (6 parking spaces, first choice of office etc) they were offered hard hats as the old one was being demolished - couldn't put 2 and 2 together, just overpaid carpenters really
There was also a study about sperm counts wasn't there? Although the media reported it as phones will make you sterile the actual conclusions was that even if the phone halved it, it was still potent enough and the reduction required for it to actually result in a reduction in the chances of conceiving is several orders of magnitude?
After reading that one I did make a point of always putting my phone on the desk at work, or laptop/man bag when out and about.
I suspect that with the uptake of skype, facetime and just handsfree along with texting, watsapp etc, and that a lot of those services use VoIP that the actual amount of time a phone spends pressed against your head emitting microwaves has reduced a lot from the early days.
Ask them to carry out a normal everyday function, say a self-checkout, and you realise pretty quickly that these people would starve if left alone…
Yea what has all that intelligence got them at the end of the day? Other than lifetime earnings in the millions and an Ocado account so they don't have to deal with unexpected items in the bagging area.
Yea what has all that intelligence got them at the end of the day? Other than lifetime earnings in the millions and an Ocado account so they don’t have to deal with unexpected items in the bagging area.
A golden pension pot.
There was an interesting article in The Grauniad recently (last 2-3 weeks) on this very topic.
That Guardian article was pretty poor. A lot of speculation with no meaningful evidence to support the ideas about possible problems that were being proposed.
