Editor:
Your article "Cell Study: Hazards Are Real" (June 21) demonstrates the problem of a journalist reporting on the trees but missing the forest.
The article's primary source, industry-funded researcher Dr. George Carlo, is naively described by reporter Chris Oakes as a "vocal public health advocate," now that Carlo espouses that cell phone technology may be dangerous after all.
Since May, a "born-again" Carlo has been running around the media claiming new research may indicate that cell phone technology may be a health risk.
Had Oakes made an effort to investigate Carlo's claims, he would have learned that Joshua Muscat, the principal investigator behind the new research, says that Carlo has distorted the study's results. "To say that I have positive findings is not really correct. When George Carlo says that I have positive findings, it really is in terms of a couple of isolated ways of analyzing the data. I would not say it is indicative of what we found," says Muscat.
So what's up with Carlo?
Louis Slesin, the publisher of a leading newsletter that promotes cell phone concerns, observed "Just as [the industry stops funding him], Carlo has started to say there might be something to cell phone worries after all. Pardon our cynicism, but we've wondered if the two might be connected."
Equally egregious, is Oakes' omission of the recent conclusions of an expert scientific panel of the Royal Society of Canada about the safety of cell phone technology. The May 17 report was sponsored by Health Canada -- not industry -- and is a comprehensive review of what is known about the potential health risks of mobile phone use.
The report specifically concludes that existing safety standards adequately protect the public from thermal (heating) effects under normal conditions of use, existing scientific studies do not show that non-thermal radiofrequency (RF) fields impair the health of humans or animals, and "exposures of the public to RF fields emitted from wireless telecommunication base station transmitters is of sufficiently low intensity that biological or adverse health effects are not anticipated."
May I suggest a new headline for Oakes' article: "Slipshod Reporting: Hazards Are Real."
Steven J. Milloy
www.junkscience.com
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