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Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#101

Post by dghughes »

I'd also be interested to see how many more people just text or IM not talk compared to ten or twenty years ago. If there is a risk from cellphone EM radiation so it must also depend on phone usage and also modern phones emit less EM radiation?

For me my main concern is I use my phone as an alarm clock and it's 30cm (1 foot) from my head all night. I also leave it there since it's my main phone so I keep it close to me. Hopefully the inverse square law is on my side.

I'd be curious to see if any studies showed butt cancer was a thing. I'm sure many people keep their phones in their pockets and seems it would exposure people more EM radiation for longer compared to holding the phone and talking into it.

I'd also be curious if different countries which use different frequencies would be a factor in the ability of the EM radiation to penetrate deeper into skin.

I'm not convinced but I'm not anti-science so I'm OK with continual studies as long as they are conducted in a professional way.

By the way I recall in the late 80s early 90s there was talk about EM radiation from cordless shavers. Close to the jaw bone, powerful motor in a small space used daily.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#102

Post by dghughes »

graeme wrote: post #71
pbnjay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, in a country that grew by approximately 10 Million people in the same span.

Probably got older too - are brain tumours linked with age? If this chart is accurate, 3.5 years older: https://www.statista.com/statistics/275394/median-age-of-the... They really should have looked at rates by a given age.

Not just age but like the Baby Boomers a very large group close to the same age (20 year range?).

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#103

Post by ams6110 »

mfoy_ wrote: post #46
taneq wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we're talking about 1-in-17,600 chances to begin with, I think outliers are relevant.

I suppose you are more likely to die from exercise than from brain cancer... but I think it's also true that you're much more likely to die from lack of exercise than from exercising.

You're going to die either way.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#104

Post by chesimov »

mediocrejoker wrote: post #99
INTPenis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still though, I always have and always will prefer to use my headset when talking on the mobile.

A wired headset, I presume?

Depending on the class of Bluetooth, the signal strength is around 100 times less than a cellphone.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#105

Post by ajross »

jacquesm wrote: post #92
dbatten wrote: post #16

"They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000." ~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances. I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocol…

It's a lot worse than the prediction regarding the VW scandal and that continues to make headlines today. http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...

The VW scandal is notable because there is human malice involved. Those people, however small their cohort may be, are going to die because some engineers cheated. That's news, just as individual crimes are news.

If this was a story about brain tumors going undetected because of deliberate misdiagnosis, it would get a ton more press still.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#106

Post by gnode »

eli wrote: post #67
dbatten wrote: post #16

"They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000." ~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances. I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocol…

You also expect the number of identified cases to increase as we improve detection methods and find tumors earlier.

Is this actually likely to have a notable impact on the statistics? My understanding is that cases diagnosed later or discovered in autopsy will contribute just as much as cases diagnosed early. Assuming that such tumours aren't routinely missed in autopsies. I imagine improvements in early detection may result in a temporary increase due to the shifting phase of detection, but this wouldn't account for a doubling over twenty years.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#107

Post by krageon »

pacaro wrote: post #89
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

53 million is also not necessarily a population 100% seeking healthcare either, so if more people are getting access healthcare, more tumors will be found.

While it’s not perfect, it’s a reasonable assumption in the U.K. that everyone has access to healthcare. TBH it’s a reasonable assumption in every developed country except one.

I would posit that if not everyone has access to healthcare, it's not a developed country.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#108

Post by carbocation »

eli wrote: post #67
dbatten wrote: post #16

"They analysed 79,241 malignant brain tumours over 21 years, finding that cases of GBM in England have increased from around 1,250 a year in 1995 to just under 3,000." ~2000 new cases per year in a country with 53 million people? I'll take my chances. I'm fascinated how people obsess over the unproven and ultimately minuscule health risks associated with using a cell phone or drinking a glass of wine or eating chocol…

You also expect the number of identified cases to increase as we improve detection methods and find tumors earlier.

> You also expect the number of identified cases to increase as we improve detection methods and find tumors earlier.

If this is true (and I think you're likely to be right) then we should see longer survival with GBM thanks to lead-time bias.

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#109

Post by ghufran_syed »

pacaro wrote: post #89
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

53 million is also not necessarily a population 100% seeking healthcare either, so if more people are getting access healthcare, more tumors will be found.

While it’s not perfect, it’s a reasonable assumption in the U.K. that everyone has access to healthcare. TBH it’s a reasonable assumption in every developed country except one.

Except access to a doctor is not the same as access to the key test, usually a CT in this case. In the NHS, the general practitioners are explicitly set up to be “gatekeepers” for expensive testing or referral to specialists. So it’s not hard to imagine older patients with symptoms having ct’s delayed in the past for some period of time - and some proportion of these patients, usually older patients, will die of something else before their GBM is discovered. But as people die less of other things, it could uncover more gbm’s

Having worked in the UK and in the US health systems, in general in the UK you have more of a risk of something that could be done, not being done (to save the government money).

Meanwhile, in the US, if you have good insurance, you are more at risk of over-testing and over-treatment (because it reduces the doctor’s perceived legal and complaint risk, and sometimes makes the doctor or hospital more money)

Re: Mobile phone cancer warning as malignant brain tumours double

#110

Post by jacquesm »

ajross wrote: post #105
jacquesm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot worse than the prediction regarding the VW scandal and that continues to make headlines today. http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deat...

The VW scandal is notable because there is human malice involved. Those people, however small their cohort may be, are going to die because some engineers cheated. That's news, just as individual crimes are news. If this was a story about brain tumors going undetected because of deliberate misdiagnosis, it would get a ton more press still.

There have been many people saying that cell phones can cause tumors and they have been shouted down by industry experts on many occasions. Now, I wouldn't know the truth about this either way but (1) electromagnetic radiation is something we can measure and quantify and (2) almost anything in excess has the ability to cause cancer because it interferes with certain cell mechanisms. To categorically reject something like that to me seems to be the wrong approach, reduction to absurdity would indicate that there is always going to be some effect, even if it is extremely small and the question then becomes how close to '0' is the effect.

So even if this isn't a story about brain tumors going undetected because of deliberate mis-diagnosis there has been a large effort to make it seem as though there is no effect at all. And that effort was also quite deliberate.

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