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Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

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Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#111
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh great, now those damn people with CDMA phones are going to be even more smug. :P

I was always more comfortable with CDMA than GSM, partly because the speakers near a GSM phone can pick up on the GSM transmission code, what code is being sent, the duration sent, and the time in between transmissions. It was literally like hearing the morse code. I immediately correlated the electromagnetic feelings in my body to this signal. And never trusted GSM phones again.

> electromagnetic feelings

What do you mean by this? And also, I'm sure I won't be the only one to point out the lack of a link between correlation and causation.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#112
post #83

It's important to note that according to official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer. I've heard my own concerns about non-ionising radiation dismissed (even belittled) so many times that I've lost count. Most often this comes from educated people who think that their education constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is nothing left to be discovered. But one should und…

"official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer." I doubt that you can find a scientist doing research on radiations effect on the body that dogmatically has said that "non-ionising radiation _can not_ cause cancer". I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically. So if you "doubt" the dogma by saying "non-ionising radiation _can_ cause cancer"…

> I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits of doing science scientifically.

Feynman did in 1974: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

In light of these things, my working hypothesis is scientists can dogmatically claim things too.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#113

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

Conjecture:

There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions.

Another way to think about this is with an analogy: "non-lethal weapons"... but then see https://mic.com/articles/123410/nonlethal-weapons-are-much-m.... It would seem smarter to start thinking about things as "less" and "more" of something, rather than "non".

If you find some wavelength in the middle that seems to be safe, perhaps it is safe in the near term, but when put in terms of "less ionizing than we can notice" it doesn't sound like something I want to hold next to my brain for the next 15 years.

Also note, it's already known that Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky[1], letting more chemicals into your brain.

Edit: apparently, this Bluetooth / WiFi point is moot.

1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#114

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

> But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced.

We certainly seem to understand many of the processes by which cell mutations are produced, but that's not the same as all of them, and, perhaps more importantly, what we do understand about how cancer is produced is that there are lots of factors besides cell mutation involved, and those of them that we do understand in general terms aren't understood in detail, and aren't sufficient to explain the entire process.

> But the probability of this study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA.

That seems more like a statement of subjective plausibility than a supportable statement of quantitative probability, and, moreover, in order to be relevant to the result seems also to falsely assume that it is necessary to "produce changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA" to alter the incidence of cancer. We already know that even when a potentially-cancer-inducing genetic mutation exists, various other non-genetic factors in the body (including qualities of the extracellular matrix around the cells which have the mutation) play significant roles in whether cancer actually develops. Its quite possible that if there is a cellphone-to-cancer link, that the mechanism doesn't involve changes in the frequency of genetic mutation at all, but affects on the body that affect the whether cancer manifests when a potentially-cancer-inducing mutation has arisen through other means.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#116

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

Conjecture: There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions. Another way to think…

If a photon doesn't have enough energy to knock an electron out of it's orbital, then it won't. This is not a probabilistic thing.

Do you have a source for the blood-brain barrier thing?

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#117

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

Conjecture: There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions. Another way to think…

It's been a while since I took chemistry and physics so I could be wrong, but I think you may be incorrect due to quantum effects. Specifically, the quantum in quantum mechanics refers to various phenomena which are quantized, a very common example of which is an electron moving to a different energy level. It's entirely discrete what energy levels an electron may orbit an atomic nucleus at, it's not a continuum, and for an electron to receive enough energy to be free of the nucleus (causing the atom to become an ion) requires some minimum energy level. Energy is directly proportional to wavelength in the case of em radiation, so there in fact is some minimum energy required for something to be "ionizing".

It is possible that other mechanisms cause cancer, but your conjecture is almost certainly false. Someone who does this for a living please let me know if there's clarification needed.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#118

Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently cancer, and produced. We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this study hav…

Conjecture: There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions. Another way to think…

> Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky, letting more chemicals into your brain.

Can you recommend a good source on this? It seems like 10-100x more "leaky" BBB would have some pretty serious consequences.

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conjecture: There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions. Another way to think…

If a photon doesn't have enough energy to knock an electron out of it's orbital, then it won't. This is not a probabilistic thing. Do you have a source for the blood-brain barrier thing?

See update (added footnote).

Re: Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conjecture: There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those distinctions. Another way to think…

> Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky, letting more chemicals into your brain. Can you recommend a good source on this? It seems like 10-100x more "leaky" BBB would have some pretty serious consequences.

See update (added footnote).
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