News Center: Short Takes Archive
UNC's David Richardson was a member of the IARC Working Group in May. He and Australia's Malcolm Sim offer insights into IARC's decision to classify RF as a possible carcinogen in an editorial that accompanies two papers from the Interphone project. For instance: The IARC panel took notice of an animal experiment —the "Guy study"— which showed a significant increase in RF-induced tumors, especially in the endocrine system. That finding was first announced back in 1984, and finally published in 1992. And now, 20 years later, it comes into play for the first time!
The working group also downplayed the Danish cohort study —often cited to show there are no tumor risks— due to its "considerable potential for exposure misclassification." Sim and Richardson close with a call for cell phone research to continue. The editorial and the two Interphone papers (both open accees) are in the September issue of Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
The NCI Cancer Bulletin calls itself “a trusted source of cancer research news.” Maybe sometimes, but not when it comes to cell phones. In the latest issue, out today, the editors mislead their readers into thinking that the new CEFALO study shows that, according to the headline, “Mobile Phone Use Does Not Raise Cancer Risk in Children and Adolescents.” The study does no such thing.
As we reported two weeks ago, CEFALO is a mess and tells us nothing of value. One leading epidemiologist wondered aloud during a recent interview, “How did that paper ever pass peer review?” Maybe, here again, no one at the Bulletin bothered to read the published paper. More likely, they are blindly following in the footsteps of those at its sister publication, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which published the CEFALO paper together with a glowing editorial. Does everyone at the NCI believe their mission is to calm public concerns?
In the end, NCI’s unwarranted denials only breed mistrust of the cancer establishment.
We have long touted the potential for medical applications of electromagnetic signals. Now comes one we would never have imagined. Take a look.
De-Kun Li's new study, published yesterday, got quite a bit of news coverage with comments from all over. One of the most surprising, at least to us, was from David Savitz, who some 25 years ago was the first to support Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper's then still controversial finding linking magnetic fields to childhood leukemia. Here's part of what Savitz told WebMD: "[EMF] has been very, very thoroughly studied, and it really questionable whether it causes any health effects at any reasonable level." We thought we had better check with Savitz to make sure he hadn't been misquoted and to see if, as one might well infer, he had repudiated his 1988 paper. "The association with power lines has not been corroborated," he replied. He summmed up his postion on whether or not there is a link this way: "It really isn't a question of what one study or another says, but rather what the body of literature as a whole says and to me it says 'probably not, but maybe something for relatively high magnetic fields and childhood leukemia'." We wonder what Nancy Wertheimer would say.
We pose two questions about the new children’s study on cell phone tumor risks, known as CEFALO:
(1) How many of the health and science reporters who filed stories actually read the paper beyond the press release and abstract? An even cursory look at the paper would have tipped them off that there was something systematically wrong with the data. Yet, practically without exception, they all bought into the idea that the study added something new. When we interviewed Martin Röösli, one of the lead researchers, he admitted that the no-risk conclusion was based on trend data from the Swedish tumor registry, not his own study.
(2) Why didn’t John Boice and Robert Tarone point out any of the problems with the data? Surely that should have been one of their most important duties as commentators. Their editorial stands in sharp contrast to the one by Rodolfo Saracci and Jonathan Samet, which accompanied the Interphone study last year. They took their job seriously and raised important questions that the Interphone team tried to push under the rug.
David Servan-Schreiber died yesterday in France. A brain tumor survivor, Servan-Schreiber was a physician, a health advocate and the best-selling author of Anti-Cancer. He was also the moving force behind an "Appeal" for precaution in the use of mobile phones, issued in France in June 2008. The following month, Ron Herberman, then at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, issued a similar advisory. While Herberman's call for caution gained national attention, it was later repudiated by the Pittsburgh institute. (For more on Servan-Schreiber's life see the obits in the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times.
The Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI) features a two-page piece on the IARC decision in its August 3 issue. Many of the usual cast of characters (Feychting, Hardell, Moskowitz, Samet, Swerdlow, Tarone) are quoted except, surprisingly, anyone from NCI. Not a word from either Peter Inskip or Martha Linet (see June 29).
And there is this in the third paragraph of the story: "The [NCI], the American Cancer Society and other organizations were at pains to update their online information and reassure worried consumers that the [IARC] action was not based on any clinically meaningful new evidence but merely on an evaluation of the existing literature. Experts repeated the familiar mantra 'more research is needed,' even as newspaper headlines warned of the potential risk."
Is it really the NCI's job to pacify the public about uncertain risks?
More mixed messages this weekend. In an interview headlined "Cell Phones and Cancer: Is There a Connection?," Nora Volkow, while acknowledging the uncertainties in Interphone and other epidemiological studies, continues to argue that precaution is the most sensible course of action. "I would feel confident saying to parents in particular that they should educate their children to avoid using cell phones close to their ears," she says. Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), made a splash earlier this year with her color brain scans showing that cell phone radiation can affect brain metabolism.
In contrast, today Siddhartha Mukherjee offers a more skeptical opinion in the Sunday New York Times. It is consistent with what he published in aTimes magazine article a few months ago. That was before the IARC decision to classify RF radiation as possibly carcinogenic —in opposition to his own outlook and, he says, that of the NCI (yet, see this item below). Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia University who won a Pulitzer prize this year, calls the difference in opinion about cell phones between IARC and other cancer agencies a semantic one because IARC's "definition of 'possibly carcinogenic' is much looser." The "split," he says, "has had the unfortunate effect of confounding the public, which now does not know which faction to believe." On that last part, we can all agree.
Danish cancer statistics do not show an elevated risk of acoustic neuroma among those who have used mobile phones for 11 years or more. That's the conclusion of a paper just posted by the American Journal of Epidemiology. Interphone acoustic neuroma results, which, sources say, does point to an increase.
The summary of the IARC's RF monograph meeting indicates that both the Interphone and Danish reports were considered by the working group.
If Martha Linet had represented NCI at the IARC RF meeting instead of Peter Inskip, she probably would not have walked out before the final vote. Linet would have likely been part of the near unanimous bloc designating cell phone radiation as a possible cause of cancer —based on an interview with Linet in the NCI Cancer Bulletin posted yesterday evening. “If one keeps in mind that possible means ‘maybe,’ that fits with the positive reports but overall inconsistent data,” she said.
One is left to wonder whether Linet, as Inskip's boss, will ask him to temper the minority opinion he is preparing for the final IARC monograph due out next year. It may be only Inskip’s viewpoint but inevitably it’ll be seen as NCI’s. (On July 6, Linet responded that she agrees with the IARC decision —see below.)
Linet also pointed out that NCI is funding four epidemiological studies on potential risk factors for meningioma, a type of brain tumor. The projects will collect information on cell phone use. That surprised Olga Naidenko of the Environmental Working Group because past studies have linked cell phones to glioma, acoustic neuroma and parotid gland tumors but not meningioma. “I am afraid that NCI does not want to find a risk,” she told us.
July 6, 2011
Martha Linet confirmed to Microwave News that she “agrees” with the IARC Working Group’s decision to classify RF radiation, including cell phone radiation, as 2B, ‘possibly carcinogenic.’ Linet, the chief of NCI’s Radiation Epidemiology Branch, added that her opinion “does not imply that NCI endorses the IARC report as [NCI is] a research institute and not a policy-making agency.”