Cell Phones: The Largest Biological Experiment Ever (except that it's no experiment)

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Cell Phones: The Largest Biological Experiment Ever (except that it's no experiment)'In 2002, Gro Harlem Brundtland, then head of the World HealthOrganization, told a Norwegian journalist that cell phones were bannedfrom her office in Geneva because she personally becomes ill if a cellphone is brought within about four meters (13 feet) of her. Mrs.Brundtland is a medical doctor and former Prime Minister of Norway.This sensational news, published March 9, 2002 in Dagbladet, wasignored by every other newspaper in the world. The following weekMichael Repacholi, her subordinate in charge of the International EMF(electromagnetic field) Project, responded with a public statementbelittling his boss¹s concerns. Five months later, for reasons thatmany suspect were related to these circumstances, Mrs. Brundtlandannounced she would step down from her leadership post at the WHO afterjust one term.' The Largest Biological Experiment Everby Arthur FirstenbergIn 2002, Gro Harlem Brundtland, then head of the World HealthOrganization, told a Norwegian journalist that cell phones were bannedfrom her office in Geneva because she personally becomes ill if a cellphone is brought within about four meters (13 feet) of her. Mrs.Brundtland is a medical doctor and former Prime Minister of Norway.This sensational news, published March 9, 2002 in Dagbladet, wasignored by every other newspaper in the world. The following weekMichael Repacholi, her subordinate in charge of the International EMF(electromagnetic field) Project, responded with a public statementbelittling his boss¹s concerns. Five months later, for reasons thatmany suspect were related to these circumstances, Mrs. Brundtlandannounced she would step down from her leadership post at the WHO afterjust one term.Nothing could better illustrate our collective schizophrenia when itcomes to thinking about electromagnetic radiation. We respond to thosewho are worried about its dangers ‹ hence the International EMF Project‹ but we ignore and marginalize those, like Mrs. Brundtland, who havealready succumbed to its effects. As a consultant on the health effects of wireless technology, I receivecalls that can be broadly divided into two main groups: those frompeople who are merely worried, whom I will call A, and those frompeople who are already sick, whom I will call B. I sometimes wish Icould arrange a large conference call and have the two groups talk toeach other ‹ there needs to be more mutual understanding so that we areall trying to solve the same problems. Caller A, worried, commonly askswhat kind of shield to buy for his cell phone or what kind of headsetto wear with it. Sometimes he wants to know what is a safe distance tolive from a cell tower. Caller B, sick, wants to know what kind ofshielding to put on her house, what kind of medical treatment to get,or, increasingly often, what part of the country she could move to toescape the radiation to save her life.The following is designed as a sort of a primer: first, to helpeverybody get more or less on the same page, and second, to clear upsome of the confusions so that we can make rational decisions toward ahealthier world.FundamentalsThe most basic fact about cell phones and cell towers is that they emitmicrowave radiation; so do Wi-Fi (wireless Internet) antennas, wirelesscomputers, cordless (portable) phones and their base units, and allother wireless devices. If it¹s a communication device and it¹s notattached to the wall by a wire, it¹s emitting radiation. Most Wi-Fisystems and some cordless phones operate at the exact same frequency asa microwave oven, while other devices use a different frequency. Wi-Fiis always on and always radiating. The base units of most cordlessphones are always radiating, even when no one is using the phone. Acell phone that is on but not in use is also radiating. And, needlessto say, cell towers are always radiating. Why is this a problem, you might ask? Scientists usually divide theelectromagnetic spectrum into ³ionizing² and ³non-ionizing.² Ionizingradiation, which includes x-rays and atomic radiation, causes cancer.Non-ionizing radiation, which includes microwave radiation, is supposedto be safe. This distinction always reminded me of the propaganda inGeorge Orwell¹s Animal Farm: ³Four legs good, two legs bad.²³Non-ionizing good, ionizing bad² is as little to be trusted. An astronomer once quipped that if Neil Armstrong had taken a cellphone to the Moon in 1969, it would have appeared to be the third mostpowerful source of microwave radiation in the universe, next only tothe Sun and the Milky Way. He was right. Life evolved with negligiblelevels of microwave radiation. An increasing number of scientistsspeculate that our own cells, in fact, use the microwave spectrum tocommunicate with one another, like children whispering in the dark, andthat cell phones, like jackhammers, interfere with their signaling. Inany case, it is a fact that we are all being bombarded, day in and dayout, whether we use a cell phone or not, by an amount of microwaveradiation that is some ten million times as strong as the averagenatural background. And it is also a fact that most of this radiationis due to technology that has been developed since the 1970s. As far as cell phones themselves are concerned, if you put one up toyour head you are damaging your brain in a number of different ways.First, think of a microwave oven. A cell phone, like a microwave ovenand unlike a hot shower, heats you from the inside out, not from theoutside in. And there are no sensory nerve endings in the brain to warnyou of a rise in temperature because we did not evolve with microwaveradiation, and this never happens in nature. Worse, the structure ofthe head and brain is so complex and non-uniform that ³hot spots² areproduced, where heating can be tens or hundreds of times what it isnearby. Hot spots can occur both close to the surface of the skull anddeep within the brain, and also on a molecular level. Cell phones are regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, andyou can find, in the packaging of most new phones, a number called theSpecific Absorption Rate, or SAR, which is supposed to indicate therate at which energy is absorbed by the brain from that particularmodel. One problem, however, is the arbitrary assumption, upon whichthe FCC¹s regulations are based, that the brain can safely dissipateadded heat at a rate of up to 1 degree C per hour. Compounding this isthe scandalous procedure used to demonstrate compliance with theselimits and give each cell phone its SAR rating. The standard way tomeasure SAR is on a ³phantom² consisting, incredibly, of a homogenousfluid encased in Plexiglas in the shape of a head. Presto, no hotspots! But in reality, people who use cell phones for hours per day arechronically heating places in their brain. The FCC¹s safety standard,by the way, was developed by electrical engineers, not doctors.The Blood-Brain BarrierThe second effect that I want to focus on, which has been proven in thelaboratory, should by itself have been enough to shut down thisindustry and should be enough to scare away anyone from ever using acell phone again. I call it the ³smoking gun² of cell phoneexperiments. Like most biological effects of microwave radiation, thishas nothing to do with heating. The brain is protected by tight junctions between adjacent cells ofcapillary walls, the so-called blood-brain barrier, which, like aborder patrol, lets nutrients pass through from the blood to the brain,but keeps toxic substances out. Since 1988, researchers in thelaboratory of a Swedish neurosurgeon, Leif Salford, have been runningvariations on this simple experiment: they expose young laboratory ratsto either a cell phone or other source of microwave radiation, andlater they sacrifice the animals and look for albumin in their braintissue. Albumin is a protein that is a normal component of blood butthat does not normally cross the blood-brain barrier. The presence ofalbumin in brain tissue is always a sign that blood vessels have beendamaged and that the brain has lost some of its protection. Here is what these researchers have found, consistently for 18 years:Microwave radiation, at doses equal to a cell phone¹s emissions, causesalbumin to be found in brain tissue. A one-time exposure to an ordinarycell phone for just two minutes causes albumin to leak into the brain.In one set of experiments, reducing the exposure level by a factor of1,000 actually increased the damage to the blood-brain barrier, showingthat this is not a dose-response effect and that reducing the powerwill not make wireless technology safer. And finally, in researchpublished in June 2003, a single two-hour exposure to a cell phone,just once during its lifetime, permanently damaged the blood-brainbarrier and, on autopsy 50 days later, was found to have damaged ordestroyed up to 2 percent of an animal¹s brain cells, including cellsin areas of the brain concerned with learning, memory and movement.1Reducing the exposure level by a factor of 10 or 100, therebyduplicating the effect of wearing a headset, moving a cell phonefurther from your body, or standing next to somebody else¹s phone, didnot appreciably change the results! Even at the lowest exposure, halfthe animals had a moderate to high number of damaged neurons. The implications for us? Two minutes on a cell phone disrupts theblood-brain barrier, two hours on a cell phone causes permanent braindamage, and secondhand radiation may be almost as bad. The blood-brainbarrier is the same in a rat and a human being. These results caused enough of a commotion in Europe that in November2003 a conference was held, sponsored by the European Union, titled³The Blood-Brain Barrier ‹ Can It Be Influenced by RF [radiofrequency]-Field Interactions?² as if to reassure the public: ³See, weare doing something about this.² But, predictably, nothing was doneabout it, as nothing has been done about it for 30 years. America¹s Allan Frey, during the 1970s, was the first of many todemonstrate that low-level microwave radiation damages the blood-brainbarrier.2 Similar mechanisms protect the eye (the blood-vitreousbarrier) and the fetus (the placental barrier), and the work of Freyand others indicates that microwave radiation damages those barriersalso.3 The implication:No pregnant woman should ever be using a cell phone. Dr. Salford is quite outspoken about his work. He has called the use ofhandheldcell phones ³the largest human biological experiment ever.² And he haspublicly warned that a whole generation of cell-phone-using teenagersmay suffer from mental deficits or Alzheimer¹s disease by the time theyreach middle age.Radio-Wave Sickness More- http://www.cloakanddagger.de/media/BACKUP%20PAGES/largest_biological_experiment.htm