noodle

This is the article that prompted my thoughts, really, so I'll open with the link....

CNN: WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk

Honestly, my first thoughts were "Again? Really?" and a lot of irritation that the headline seemed more alarmist than the actual data. First off, who doesn't use a cell phone other than young children? Okay, cell use is less prevalent in so-called "Third World Countries"... but are they being studied for brain tumors? Secondly, what proportion of those who develop brain tumors have other risk or exposure factors in common? I get so frustrated at times that I actually find myself starting to ignore a lot of the health reports. There is mercury in my sushi, radiation in my Japanese spinach, e.coli in my green onions, and mad cow disease in my steak... And yet, I continue to eat them, continue to use my phone, I don't wash my hands 900,000 times a day and I'm not dead yet. I will be someday, but I still think it's more likely I'll die in a car crash or from some hospital-acquired virulent strain of some acronymed infection.

But, I'm curious... do other people take these reports seriously?
Do you change your habits based on what's in the news (local and tangible warnings excluded... I wouldn't expect anyone to eat strawberries from a local grower that tells the news they had samonella on 3 out of 4 quarts)?
Do you share this information with your loved ones, friends, or start up conversations with people about these issues?
Do the words "Studies have shown that...." grab your attention?

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dlish

considering that the WHO only last year said that there was no real increased cancer risk as a result of using mobile phones http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_jo...pdf/dyq079.pdf. i find the new study laughable.

will the new study change habits? probably not.

do i care? probably not. not until theres enough solid evidence and the WHO stops contradicting itself a year after they released the last report.

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snowy

Thanks to my wonderful college education, I possess the ability to read actual studies and make sense of them. I generally don't rely on mainstream media to provide me with health information; I find the way they write about health and science to often be full of hyperbole and overblown claims. Sometimes catching a headline will motivate me to look something up in EBSCOhost/Elsevier/etc. and find the study it came from; more than once I've wondered how the writer of the article came to the conclusion they came to.

A couple of pet peeves of mine: claims made about studies with impossibly small sample sizes, and claims made generalizing the results from animal studies to the human population.

So basically zero, but it does motivate me to read a lot of studies!

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

noodle

Exactly, Snowy... in the past two years, I've learned that you can make your results say nearly anything you want them to.

The article that scares me the most, though, was in The Daily about putting Lithium in the drinking water because someone decided that if they studied the right data, it would "prove" that medicating the masses decreases crime. This one is a hot topic on my university disscussion forums because people actually believe it's a good idea based on "research studies" and "study data".

But, I have friends that truly believe the media reports and hype and change their buying patterns, their eating habits, their daily routines because of what they read on the internet and hear on the news. It's almost bizzare sometimes.

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chinese crested

I was at an MOD apprenticeships award, and one of the lads gave a talk on 'The test of the dogs bollocks'. They had dogs walking loose near tetra masts, and they didnt kill them, they castrated them. After the results of the 'Test of the dogs bollocks' - no MOD employees were made to work in proximity - yet they put these things on top of flats etc. Me. I think some dogs donated their bollocks to tell us this - we should at least listen.

---------- Post added at 09:00 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:58 AM ----------

Noodle, if thats the case, why not just legalise the herb and let people cultivate their own. Save the taxpayers the cost of the lithium.

Lindy

And the common media tendency to equate correlation with causation. Often combined with confirmation bias.

Lindy

genuinegirly

I have fun reading them. It's fascinating to see what makes its way into mainstream journalism. Sometimes I wonder why that particular topic caught the eye of a journalist or what their editor saw in the report. I do enjoy sharing news stories on health and science topics with others, to bring about discussion and to see what kind of an interest my friends have on the subject. Sometimes I learn more by talking to my friends than I did from the article.

One thing I enjoy about the New York Times is that they cite their sources for science articles (most of the time). This makes it exceptionally easy to see the original study. Often the study and the news article don't have much in common, but other times they're right-on. Still, the study is suspect in my eyes unless the source is from a peer-reviewed high-impact journal.

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filtherton

As a rule, I don't trust anything I read about science that isn't written by a scientist with firsthand knowledge of the relevant disciplines, and even then, I don't trust too much. It's too easy to misconstrue results.

I think that the WHO makes sense in context. The context is: we don't know whether cell phones cause cancer- it isn't possible for us to know right now, however, some studies have suggested that it's possible, so, you know, check yoself. In other words, We're not sure if there's a link, we'd really have no way of knowing if there was, but we're not ready to rule it out. I'm pretty sure this is the only implication of WHO's classification.

Which makes sense to me. This is the type of causal link that, even if it did exist, would be difficult to support with data and nearly impossible to prove. Even with exposures that are pretty starkly associated with adverse outcomes, like tobacco smoke, it took decades for the link between exposure and outcome to become widely accepted.

I think that the media has been doing a good job with this story. I haven't read or heard or seen a single story on it that didn't also quote a credentialed public health scientist claiming that WHO's decision doesn't mean that cell phones cause cancer.

mixedmedia

I think, considering the prevalence of cell phones and the amount of time we have them virtually implanted in our temporal lobes, the question of its possible long-term consequences is relevant and newsworthy. I mean, the WHO is in the business of investigating and assessing health risks. That's what they do. If the peoples and their media apparatuses are so absurd that they can't be trusted with the information enough to place it in the proper perspective/context when it becomes an item...well that is neither unique nor relevant (to me).

And hell, if it motivates a bunch of dumbshits to lower their cell phone-related health risks by refraining from incessant yammering while they drive, then we all win regardless. Yay science!

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StanT

I do whatever I want, in moderation.

Is alcohol good for you or bad for you this week? I don't give a shit, if I feel like a beer, I'll have one.

Putting your head in a microwave is probably a bad idea.Moderate cell phone usage? I doubt it's a problem. I hate them, anyway; just a big f'ing electronic leash.

dippin

Just to clarify a bit of the alarmism in the news story:

The WHO has 5 labels
Carcinogenic
probably carcinogenic
possibly carcinogenic
not carcinogenic
not classifiable

In other words, it is actually the second "lowest" carcinogenic classification. And the fact is that we haven't had cell phones long enough to really understand the results.

blahblah454

In regards to this, I hardly talk on my phone so it doesn't really bother me. My last bill had a total of roughly 150 min used. I am pretty sure I will be okay.

In regards to all other health "news", be it "people only exercise an average of 10 min a month!", "People only eat 1 vegtable a week!", "The average person watches 70 hours of TV a Week!!", "The average person is obese and eats out every day!!!!". I don't care about any of that. Good for the average person if they are all lazy slobs, that has nothing to do with my own personal habits, and none of my habits reflect a single report that has yet to be released.

So I suppose I put 0 stock in health related news.

MSD

Science news is dead. Larger and longer studies have concluded that there is no increased risk. I'll withhold judgment until I can read the actual study, but unless it proposes a plausible new mechanism of action by which non-ionizing radiation increases cancer risk, the question should be "what was wrong with our study?" rather than "does cell phone radiation cause cancer?"

filtherton

This isn't a study, it's more of a summary of existing studies. Their goal isn't to evaluate plausible mechanisms, as it's entirely possible that mechanisms exist that we aren't currently aware of. WHO is basically saying that it's possible that cell phone use can cause cancer with the caveat that there does not currently exist convincing evidence that it does or does not actually cause cancer.

It's an official shrug from WHO.

Ourcrazymodern?

I take all these reports with a grain of salt & don't watch my sodium intake at all. I bring them up in conversation to find out what other people think. I'm more concerned about the disclaimers that appear in the drug commercials. Brain tumor cell phones only get on my nerves when a fellow driver is travelling under the speed limit.

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BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

chinese crested

I ask the vet all sorts - MMR vaccine. RCVS has one proven autopsied death of a dog from vaccine - caused by carrier agent.
Today I saw a lady in her eighties, pushing her daughter along. Daughter was in her 50's and was normal until she was eight - when she had MMR vaccination. Its not just death is it. One of my dogs became epilectic - because of the vaccines she had - under vet advice she doesnt have them any more - she will always be epileptic.
All things in moderation. If you fell in a brewers vat and decided to drink your way out, you would probably pickle your liver - but a couple of pints out with your mates - not even a hangover.

ASU2003

There needs to be more science done and less statistics. Report on science, let that statistic experiments stay in the journals.

If they would have come out with, EM radiation at this level will cause cancer, and this is why. That is science.

[made up] '20% of the population that uses cell phones the most could get cancer in 30 years' [/made up] is statistics.

dippin

But how do you think "science" gets done? Especially with regards to cancer. The sort of genetic degeneration that creates cancer happens over a significant amount of time so that it is essentially impossible to pinpoint precisely the specific cause of that cancer. There is no way to go "see, see, this puff of smoke is what caused this lung cancer," or "here it is, this HPV infection just created this cervical cancer." In things like that, the research has to be essentially statistics. And statistics that aren't as simple as " '20% of the population that uses cell phones the most could get cancer in 30 years." There are controls and so on.