Rick Jostes at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has announced his picks for the members of the committee that will review the current state of cell phone health research and identify future needs. Frank Barnes of the University of Colorado, Boulder, will chair the panel. Of the other six members, three are with ICNIRP: Finland’s Maila Hietanen, Germany's Rüdiger Matthes and France’s Bernard Veyret. The other members are Om Gandhi of the University of Utah, Leeka Kheifets of UCLA and EPRI and David McCormick of IITRI in Chicago. Kheifets, who serves on ICNIRP's epidemiology panel, used to be Mike Repacholi’s sidekick at the WHO EMF project in Geneva. McCormick is planning some large-scale RF-animal experiments for the National Toxicology Program. The FDA requested these studies back in 1999.
The FDA requested that the NAS take up this project earlier this spring (see our March 30 post). It's being paid for by the wireless industry trade association, CTIA. Jostes has scheduled a planning meeting for July 9-10 and a workshop for August 7-9. Both will be held in Washington.
The NAS is inviting public comments on Jostes’s selections. (We bet the FDA and the CTIA are pleased.) The appointments are provisional, for the next 17 days, until the membership is finalized.
