GBM: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

Thyroid cancer among women is skyrocketing all over the world. Incidence is growing faster than for any other cancer. This has been going on for a long time, and the reasons why remain elusive.

The prevailing view is that there’s been an “epidemic of diagnosis” —that is, overdiagnosis— particularly following a screening program. The tumors have always been there, the argument goes, but new and better detection tools (ultrasound, for example) have made it easier to spot small ones, many of which would likely never present a real threat. In any case, thyroid cancer is not one of the bad ones; 98-99 percent of those diagnosed survive at least five years, the highest for all cancers. Watchful waiting is often the best prescription.

The only recognized cause for thyroid cancer is ionizing radiation.

GBM is going up in Denmark. The steady rise is very similar to what has been seen in England.

New government data, released in May by a member of the Danish Parliament, show a near doubling of this fatal brain tumor, glioblastoma multiforme, since the year 2000. You can see the trend by following the orange line in the histogram …

It has been nearly eight years since an expert panel of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. Since then, neither the World Health Organization (WHO) nor the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) has recommended precautionary policies to limit potential health risks.

No U.S. health agency has yet advised the public to reduce RF exposures.

Even after two large animal studies —by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and Italy’s Ramazzini Institute— presented clear evidence of a cancer link last year, the WHO has remained silent; ICNIRP responded by calling both animal studies unconvincing.

Now comes the Annual Review of Public Health, which on January 11 posted a paper by five leading epidemiologists who posit that, after a systematic review of all the human studies, they don’t see an elevated cancer risk. The takeaway is that the IARC classification was a mistake.

A U.K. epidemiologist has confirmed that glioblastoma (GBM), the most aggressive type of brain tumor, is on the rise in England. In a new paper, Frank de Vocht of the University of Bristol reports that he sees a significant and consistent increase in GBM in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain over the last 20-30 years.

Alasdair Philips, an independent researcher based in Scotland, and three colleagues first documented the increase last March. It was not due to improved diagnosis, they said, but they could not pinpoint which “environmental or lifestyle factor” was responsible. There was one obvious possibility: cell phones.

The incidence of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the deadliest type of brain tumor, more than doubled in England between 1995 and 2015, according to a new analysis of national statistics. During that time, the number of cases of GBM rose from 983 to 2,531.

“We found a sustained and highly significant increase in GBM throughout the 21 years and across all ages,” said Alasdair Philips, the lead author of the study, which has just been released online by the peer-reviewed, open access, Journal of Environmental and Public Health.

“The incidence rate of GBM, the most aggressive and quickly fatal brain tumor, is rising dramatically in England while the rates for lower grade tumors have decreased, masking this dramatic trend in the overall data,” Philips told Microwave News from his home in Beeswing in southern Scotland, not far from the English border.