Didn't Ralph Nader first make a name for himself when he exposed the research cover-ups of General Motors Corvair back in the 70's?

The car was known to be unsafe but insurance actuaries figured it was cheaper to let people die and compensate their families rather than recall and fix the cars.

Some people insist that DDT is safe and beneficial and want it reintroduced.

I guess that money talks.

Wobbles, you wrote “there was research done that proved that the RF generated by Mobile phones when they were "polling" (ie getting signal strength readings from adjacent cells - that di-dit-di-dit sound you sometimes pick up on the radio sometimes) - caused genetic damage.” Now unless the meaning of the word ‘proved’ has changed while I wasn’t looking, it rather looks like you were saying it was proof.

Then you came up with some story about how the researchers leaked the information to a newspaper because the scientists wanted indemnification. This smacks of conspiracy theories and is not how science works.

I merely pointed out that research in the area had indeed been published, its context and why it might not bear much relationship to human health.

Research occurs to test hypotheses. Questions have been raised about the safety of mobile phones, so research is conducted to determine whether these safety issues have any validity. Even if all future research on mobile phones finds no risk to safety, some research will still occur, because there will always be some unanswered questions.

Just dealing with individual studies can sometimes be unhelpful. http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1667/RR1507.1 This is why the Scandinavian study has some utility. If 'genetic damage' was occurring and inducing brain cancers, it is highly likely to have been observed in a long term analysis of brain cancer rates. A conclusion from this could be that if mobile phones are inducing brain tumours they are doing so at such minor rates that the incidence is hidden by the noise in the data. Or it takes more than a couple of decades of mobile phone use for the effect to turn up.

Bronwyn,

You post is a prime example. The links are to a small lab conducting experiments with the prime objective to reach a particular conclusion. What a surprise, their conclusions align with their objectives.

Anyone with even the most basic physics understands

1 The large amount of energy required to heat water.
2 That modern mobiles emit a fraction of a watt, most of which radiates away or reflects off the skull, and only a few milliwatts penetrate.
2 That the water molecule resonant frequency is about 2.45GHz and mobiles use 0.9 to 1.8GHz which while it will heat water, will do it inefficiently.
3 The blood supply to the brain is not only for oxygen, but for cooling too.
4 Localised heating is going to happen how? Microwaves cannot be focused onto a point smaller than 1cm due to their long wavelenth.

The single biggest study on millions of people over decades found no indication what so ever. I would say that this issue is pretty much dead and buried, and any argument to the contrary uses the same twisted logic that creationists use to deny evolutionary science.

As far as GM foods go there have been trillions of servings and not one credible example of any negative consequences.

etc etc.

Shadow Minister

<< The links are to a small lab conducting experiments with the prime objective to reach a particular conclusion. What a surprise, their conclusions align with their objectives. >>

The size of the lab is irrelevant. Many of the larger scale studies are sponsored by mobile phone companies and other vested interests. It's often the smaller outfits who are more truly independent.

<< Anyone with even the most basic physics understands

1. The large amount of energy required to heat water. >>

The article I linked to made the point that it's not just the heat factor, but also the risk of albumin crossing the blood-brain barrier.

<< 2. That modern mobiles emit a fraction of a watt, most of which radiates away or reflects off the skull, and only a few milliwatts penetrate. >>

As stated in the research I quoted, this in itself does not negate the risk -

"Reducing the exposure level by a factor of 10 or 100, thereby duplicating the effect of wearing a headset, moving a cell phone further from your body, or standing next to somebody else’s phone, did not appreciably change the results! Even at the lowest exposure, half the animals had a moderate to high number of damaged neurons."

<< The single biggest study on millions of people over decades found no indication what so ever. I would say that this issue is pretty much dead and buried. >>

Your blind faith in one study is touching. It's reassuring I agree, but as pointed out by Agronomist, it in no way means that questions shouldn't continue to be raised. Besides, results in a healthy Scandanavian society cannot automatically be translated to the Australian population, where awareness of health risk factors and general public health levels are much lower.

Shadow Minister,

"modern mobiles emit a fraction of a watt, most of which radiates away or reflects off the skull, and only a few milliwatts penetrate."

That's true when transmitting in a static state. Those polling pulses I alluded to above are RF bursts transmitted at maximum power.

As cell sizes shrink, especially in metropolitan areas with microcells and in the case of 3G where even the main BTS sites are no more than 1km apart, the incidence of polling increases significantly.

May be l have been in the mountains far to long GM is great well that is amazing that a person could possibly come up with that conclusion, how could growing a mono GM crops sprayed with Glyphosate and survive the ordeal then at the next stage in 20 years time what happens to insects and weeds . l know with have natural selection eventually insects will have a feast and Glyphosate will not work on weeds and farmers will all be in the hands of multinationals for more and more powerful chemicals . Then ever farmer in Australia will go broke and l am a dumb Hillbilly and top that get 3000 rats expose them to 5 hours a day of mobile phones and see the increase of brain tumors .
HILLBILLY