Cellphones and Brain Cancer: A Doctor Weighs In
From the New York Times David Pogue
Cellphones and Brain Cancer: A Doctor Weighs In
From today’s mailbag, another response to Pogue’s Imponderables. I’m sure some readers still won’t be convinced–that’s why it’s an imponderable–but the two medical studies cited here are pretty darned convincing to me. (p.s… The excerpts from the studies are filled with medical jargon; I added the boldface formatting.)
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One of Pogue’s imponderables was, “Do cell phones cause brain cancer?”
As a physician who has followed the published medical literature on this, I can tell you that the answer is no.
One problem is that as humans, when something bad happens to us, we blame something. So, if I get brain cancer — a very rare event indeed — I will blame using a cell phone. However, the reality is that I would have gotten brain cancer had I not used cell phones, if I in fact got brain cancer. The studies confirming that cell phones do not cause brain cancer examine the rate of brain cancer among a population of cell phone users and compare the rates to a population of non-users. Technically, a case-control study is often done.
Here are abstracts from 2 good scientific studies looking at the very question you posed.
You can read the abstracts by jumping to Pogues Blog
Cellphones and Brain Cancer: A Doctor Weighs In
From today’s mailbag, another response to Pogue’s Imponderables. I’m sure some readers still won’t be convinced–that’s why it’s an imponderable–but the two medical studies cited here are pretty darned convincing to me. (p.s… The excerpts from the studies are filled with medical jargon; I added the boldface formatting.)
—————–
One of Pogue’s imponderables was, “Do cell phones cause brain cancer?”
As a physician who has followed the published medical literature on this, I can tell you that the answer is no.
One problem is that as humans, when something bad happens to us, we blame something. So, if I get brain cancer — a very rare event indeed — I will blame using a cell phone. However, the reality is that I would have gotten brain cancer had I not used cell phones, if I in fact got brain cancer. The studies confirming that cell phones do not cause brain cancer examine the rate of brain cancer among a population of cell phone users and compare the rates to a population of non-users. Technically, a case-control study is often done.
Here are abstracts from 2 good scientific studies looking at the very question you posed.
You can read the abstracts by jumping to Pogues Blog
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