Cell Phones, Etc: Industry Muzzles And
Punishes Those Who Dare Say They Are Dangerous To Health
ICHF (International Council for Health Freedom) Newsletter Vol. VI,
Nos. 3-4
October, 2003
One of the most widely publicized cases of electrosensitivity is that of
former Norwegian Prime Minister and now World Health Organization
Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland, who is also a medical doctor by
profession. Brundtland says she is electrically sensitive to cell phones and
computers and does not own a mobile phone but says that there is not yet
enough scientific evidence to prove the devices are dangerous.
An interview in March 2002 with the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet has put
the WHO Director-General on the top of the list of persons known to be
sensitive to HF EMF – low-intensity but high-frequency electromagnetic
fields – as reports accumulate that researchers who question the health
aspects of the rapidly escalating multi-billion-dollar industries in mobile
phones, computers and related technological marvels are being gagged,
muzzled and being pressured out of their jobs.
In Spain – reported the Cellular Phone Taskforce’s
information-crammed No Place to Hide newsletter for June – a judge ordered
49 cell phone antennas removed from a rooftop in downtown Valladolid, the
second time a Spanish court has ruled antennas should be removed for health
reasons.
“This time the fight was led by parents of children at Garcia Quintana
Primary School, where three children had contracted acute lymphoblastic
leukemia and one Hodgkin’s lymphoma since the antennas were installed,”
reported the newsletter.
Indeed, reported Arturo Soria y Puig, who provided information for both the
Taskforce and Spain’s influential El Mundo newspaper: “. . . (T)he popular
response to the rapid and chaotic installation of some 30.000 mobile phone
antennas in Spain has been impressive. Because of judicial rulings (in a few
cases) and because of pressure on
municipal authorities (in the majority of cases) the mobile phone providers
have had to disconnect and dismantle 2.000 already-installed antennas.”
In Switzerland, an initiative to amend the Swiss Constitution and
called “Moratorium on Mobile Telephone Antennas” would stop the construction
of antennas particularly for “mobile telephony” as long as “the harmlessness
of pulsed non-ionizing radiation, and of pulsed magnetic or electromagnetic
fields, taking into account their non-thermal effects, has not been
demonstrated.” The signature-gathering deadline is Sept. 12, 2003.
In Oregon, Dr. William Morton, a professor at Oregon Health Sciences
University (OHSU) who pioneered studies into multiple chemical sensitivities
(MCS) and their apparent relationship to porphyria and became one of a
handful of physicians with experience in diagnosing and documenting
electrical sensitivity (ES) chose to give up his medical license on Jan. 19
rather than continue to face a raft of complaints and allegations of
misdiagnosis and further investigation by the Oregon Board of Medical
Examiners. The Task Force noted that the widely respected physician and
researcher will continue teaching at OHSU School of Medicine and continue to
do research into MCS and ES.
In France, Dr. Robert Santini, a veteran researcher in
“bioelectromagnetics” said he had been forbidden by the director of the
government laboratory with which he has long been associated from speaking
to journalists, politicians and other researchers about “cellular phone and
base station bioeffects.”
On March 6 and at the request of two senators, he told the Parliamentary
Office for the Evaluation of Science and Technology Choices: “We are
witnessing today the development of pressure aimed at discrediting, within
their institutions, certain researchers and their findings. These campaigns
of moral and professional harassment are orchestrated, in particular, by
certain cell phone providers, public health bodies and elected officials.
Some scientists who work on the problem of the biological effects of cell
phones and relay stations have recently been made the object, following
these pressures, of discriminatory measures on the part of their
institutions: firing, professional change, change of research topic,
blockage of career, loss of collaborators, ban on speaking.”
He referred to three examples of noted scientists in France and the case of
Claudio Gomez Perretta MD in Valencia, Spain, who on Feb. 25 – four days
after he wrote a letter to the Valencia Medical Assn. Expressing his concern
that the Spanish equivalent of the American Medical Association had taken no
position on the matter of HF EMF problems – was notified that he must
discontinue his work on electromagnetic fields immediately.
In his letter he reminded the local medical body: “Let us remember that
there were once commissions that denied the dangers of tobacco, asbestos,
and therapeutic X-rays.”
In Sweden, a group of victims of electromagnetic sensitivity asked
the prime minister and the prestigious Karolinska Institute not to proceed
with threats to close down Karolinska’s Unit for Experimental Dermatology,
whose Prof. Olle Johansson has produced some of the most riveting scientific
questioning of the safety of cell phones and related devices.
Said the Association for the Electrically Sensitive in Orebro County,
Sweden, last Oct. 3 on hearing of a cutoff in funds for Prof. Johansson: “We
see the lack of research funding and space as an affront not only to a
scientist in whom we have great confidence but also to us and the
handicapped organization to which we belong.
In Germany, veteran medical physicist and researcher Dr. Lebrecht von
Klitzing of the Medical University of Lubeck was forbidden by the University
dean to address the German Bundestag (parliament) on the medical effects of
cell phones, claiming such a presentation would damage the university’s
reputation.
The Task Force reported that von Klitzing, forbidden to do any more research
on his own, resigned from the university in March in order to continue his
research.
In England, Dr. Gerald Hyland, University of Warwick, took early
retirement in March following high-level pressures against his research into
the biocompatibility of magnetic fields with the human organism.
In Bangkok, Thailand, the English language Nation newspaper reporting
May 24 on the near-ubiquity of mobile phones among Thai
teenagers (“many teens today are utterly devoted to their mobiles, even
to the extent that they regard them as an extra limb”) accompanied its
in-depth coverage with the following recitation of health risks known to be
associated with the omnipresent gadgets:
- A study published in the UK (in April) suggested mobile phone use may
be as addictive for teenagers as smoking.
- A recent British study reported that phone driving is more dangerous
than drunk driving. The Transport Research Laboratory found reaction times
for those driving on the phone was 30 percent slower than those driving
drunk and nearly 50 percent worse than someone sober and not using a cell
phone.
- The (Thai) Ministry of Public Health in 2001 recommended that people
under 12 should not use a mobile phone, while studies on health risks –
particularly the links to brain cancer – are underway by the World Health
Organization.
- In 2000, a study by Action on Smoking and Health in London found a
number of common traits, including the desire to rebel, prevalent among
smokers as well as young cell-phone users.
- A recent study by the Physicists Association in Japan warned of the
harm of using mobile phones in passenger trains. Researchers said
“passengers might be harmed by microwaves emitted from phones, which
reflect on the train’s metal structure and accumulate on the passengers.”
The researchers suggested there should be a ban on the use of mobile
phones in trains, busses and elevators.
In her March 9 interview. WHO Director-General Gro Harlem
Brundtland MD, a former prime minister who said she has never owned a mobile
phone herself and that there now is reason to be cautious about the
technology, told Dagbladet’s Aud Dalsegg: “In the beginning I felt a local
warmth around my ear. But the problem grew worse, and turned into a strong
discomfort and headaches every time I used a mobile phone.”
At first she tried to avoid the pain by cutting her calls short, but this
did not work. Nor was it sufficient to stop using the phones herself,
because everyone around her, including at her workplace at the WHO in
Geneva, used them. “I gradually understood that I had developed a
sensitivity to this type of radiation,” she said, “and in order not to be
suspected of being hysterical – that someone should believe that this was
only something I imagined – I have made several tests: People have been in
my office with their mobile phone hidden in their bag or pocket. Without my
knowing whether it was off or on, we have tested my reaction. I have always
reacted when the phone has been on – never when it is off. So there is no
doubt.”
As for wireless home phones, Brundtland said: “I get an instant reaction if
I touch such a phone.”
She also spoke about her reactions to computers: “If I hold a laptop in
order to read what is on the screen it feels as if I get an electric shock
up through my arms. So I must keep portable computers away from me. I have a
regular desktop computer in my office, but only the secretary uses it. I
have not noticed the same symptoms near it, but I turn it off as soon as I
come in.
The headaches she gets from mobile phone radiation subside about a half hour
to an hour after the exposure stops, she said.
Last year, the ICHF reported (ICHF V:2, 2001) on 20 years of
Western-suppressed research from the former East Bloc which suggests the
“microblitzing” of the human race by what was variously described as
low-intensity but high-frequency electromagnetic fields or radiation (HF
EMF, HF EMR) coming from cell phones, computers, television, antennas and a
wide range of electrical marvels.
Research primarily from Russia and the Ukraine connected such radiation to
immune disorders, environmental diseases, cancer, neurological impairment
and even a physically based addiction syndrome to computer use. “It can be
proposed that the current increase in electromagnetic pollution of the
environment exceeds human adaptation capacities” warned Ukrainian
researchers Nikolai Nikolaevich Kositsky, Aljona Igorevna Nizhelska and
Grigory Vasil’evich Ponezha.
Where to learn more:
(Important information in this area is available from the Cellular Phone
Taskforce, PO Box 1337, Mendocino CA 95460 – not available
through the internet. Its publication No Place to Hide is must reading.
Other resources include:
Chemical Injury Information Network, Cynthia Wilson, Director, PO Box 301,
White Sulphur Springs MT 59645.
The Electromagnetic Research Foundation, c/o Dr. Duane Dahlberg, 1317 Sixth
Ave. N., Moorhead MN 56560.
Disability Council of the White Mountains, c/o Susan Molloy, PO Box 483,
Snowflake AZ 85937.
EMR Network, Janet Newton, President, PO Box 221, Marshfield VT 05658.
Heavy Metal Bulletin: international forum focusing on immunotoxic effects of
dental fillings and related disorders, Monica Kauppi, Editor, Lilla Aspuddsv.
10, S-12649 Hagersten, Sweden.
Electromagnetic Radiation Task Force Canada, Milt Bowling, Director, 3570
Corsica Way, Vancouver BC, V5S 4J3, Canada.
Council on Wireless Technology Impact, Libby Kelley, Executive Director, PMB
206, 936-B 7th St., Novato CA 94945.