One thing I love about TV in Korea: Larry King Live is on CNN Asia when I get home from work. I have to suffer through CNN Asia’s shitty and repetitive and self-promoting commercials, but I get to watch a decent talk show I’d never bother with otherwise.
Today on Larry I’m learning that I and many other people have been paranoid about for five or more years is probably true: cell phones are killing us.
The peeps at good ol’ Pitt are talking with Larry about studies that contradict the latest one out by the IARC.
My layman’s summary of what the four people on Larry are saying:
The antenna of a cell phone OR a cordless phone should be kept away from your body. Talking with it next to your head, carrying it in your breast pocket, and holding it in your lap while driving-which is distracting anyway-are all BAD IDEAS.
A study of teenagers who used cell phones daily and often showed that they were FOUR TIMES (yes, a 400% increase in probability) as likely to get a brain tumor. Of course my generation was the first one to get ”cellys” as gifts for Christmas in high school. I still remember getting our first “car phone” in mom’s explorer as a kid, and getting my first cell phone freshman year of high school. Ashley and I were the first in our grade (only now do I realize how spoiled everyone must have thought we were)…she got a red Nokia and I got a silver LG, I believe. Our dads were worried about keeping track of their babies. We were both boy-crazy and in a million after-school activities. Can you blame them?
But now I am regretting all those long calls home from the quad at Colgate and on the road to and from here, there, and everywhere. On the one-mile journeys to and from the Columbia Heights metro. Every day after school to coordinate plans with John.
They showed a model of the effects of radio waves on a child’s brain and on an adult’s brain. The child’s brain was almost entirely bright blue, where the blue represented ill effects from radio waves. It was creepy.
Larry’s scientist guests also pointed out that the study only looked at two types of tumors. It did NOT track cheek cancers or cancers of the auditory canal or nerves.
So the point is not that the study is wrong or mal-intented. But just taking the “results” without digesting the method by which they were achieved would be…misleading.
Meg, I’ve never had a better reason to not answer my phone.
Well how about answering text messages? xx
Don’t mind that a bit.
I regret to inform you that Larry King is possibly misleading. Now I am not a scientist, so possibly my conclusions are incorrect, but I have skimmed the paper that has caused this hullabaloo along with numerous accounts of it, and I feel inclined to point out that the conclusions drawn by certain media outlets has been almost fear-mongering (At least, from the American news they show here in Portugal, the Portuguese have not heard about or cared about said study, it seems, judging from their news shows):
1) the methodology was questionable at best- they asked people to try and remember how often they’ve been on the phone in the past X years. This is already going to be inaccurate- I don’t remember the last year of cell phone use, let alone past that, and I doubt many others do either.
2) There was no statistical significance, which means that the cancers (or absence there of) were distributed over cell phone users and non-users (controls) with no preference for either group.
3) Even if there were any statistical significance, the trend, though negligible, is actually downward: “Data from the IARC study showed that overall, mobile telephone users in fact had a lower risk of brain cancer than people who had never used one”
There we go… the scientists in the study claim the methodology was flawed, and I agree, but certainly this study shows if there is any danger it is minuscule. Tell those TV scientists to shove it!
NOTE: I am in support of further research about cell phones, but I am opposed vehemently to TV personalities spouting FUD (like they did with that awful cyber-security “test” on the US a few months ago).
Cheers, Xand. Thanks for quelling my fears!
It’s what I’m here for! If you act quickly, you can go be outraged with Slef at Texas’ new textbook amendments- he and I are still grumping old-man style about it.
I remember riding to school with you and your mom in the white explorer and she would receive phone calls from her boss on that massive car phone.
good times.
P.S. I’m working on those sour patch kids…actually, I just keep forgetting…but I’m still working on it
Love you!