WHO: It's “Fear of the Unknown”
The RF problem is a result of our misperceptions, according to the WHO's EMF project. The WHO would have us believe that everything would be better if we would just focus on all the good things that wireless technology is bringing into our lives instead of on those trifling health risks. As Mike Repacholi told Gregor Dürrenberger of the Swiss Research Foundation on Mobile Communications: "As technology progresses, people's understanding of it is weak, causing a fear of the unknown, and, in their minds, that EMF health effects may occur from long-term low-level exposure."
That explains why the recent revision of the WHO's RF research agenda advocates a project to "quantify the health related beneficial effects of wireless communications." Unanswered questions like whether RF radiation can cause leakage through the blood-brain barrier did not make it onto the WHO's agenda.
Bernard Veyret, a member of ICNIRP and a Repacholi ally, endorses such wrong-headed priorities. In a comment which, like the Repacholi interview, appears in the Swiss foundation's recently released 2005 annual report, he writes that the need for health research is coming to an end. "By now most of the experimental research has been performed and it is time to address in depth the concerns of the public and the risk communications needs."
So, it's all in our dysfunctional minds. We just need to think more clearly. Maybe then, we too will come to appreciate the industry's view that it's time to stop RF health research, promoted so ably by those charged with protecting public health.