Monday, December 07, 2009

Cancer, no Cancer, Cancer, no Cancer...huh?

I recently read an article that says there is a link between cellphone usage and brain cancer:
Study: Cell phone cancer link

This study states:
A groundbreaking, $30 million study into cell phones has found a link between long term use and brain tumors.
and
The project carried out studies in 13 countries, talking to tumor sufferers as well as healthy cell phone users, It interviewed 12,800 people.
This study was conducted by the WHO (World Health Organization) which is funded by the UN.

In another study:
No tumour link to mobile phones, says study

We see a different conclusion:
Deltour's team analysed annual incidence rates of two types of brain tumour -- glioma and meningioma -- among adults aged 20 to 79 from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden from 1974 to 2003. These countries all have good cancer registries that keep a tally of known cancer cases.
This represents about 30 years of data and 16 MILLION people, with a result of:
We did not detect any clear change in the long-term time trends in the incidence of brain tumours from 1998 to 2003 in any subgroup," Isabelle Deltour of the Danish Cancer Society and colleagues wrote.

Hmmm. So who is right? a $30 million study to ask 12,800 people or a study over 30 years with 16,000,000 million people? Which one do you think is more statistically relevant? (and this is true even if we look only at the 60,000 cancer patients, not the full population).

So, this argument has been passed back and forth, back and forth, for years...and there still is no concensus on it.
Do cellphones cause cancer? I dunno...
But many really don't think so, "Cell Phones Don't Increase Chances of Brain Cancer"...

Well, one thing I do know for sure is, anything could cause cancer in the State of California... at least, that is what the label says...

UPDATE:
I found another study, but I don't know how it fits in this little battle...
Studies Find Harm From Cellular and Wi-Fi Signals

YMMV

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