Can Radiation from Cell Phones Damage DNA in Our Brains?

The March issue of the University of Washington alumni magazine, Columns, features a well-deserved tribute to Henry Lai and his colleague, N.P. Singh, who have demonstrated that low-level microwave radiation can lead to an increase in DNA breaks in the brain cells of rats (available online). The headline of the piece tells the story: “Wake-Up Call: Can Radiation from Cell Phones Damage DNA in Our Brains? When a UW Researcher Found Disturbing Data, Funding Became Tight and One Industry Leader Threatened Legal Action.” The article later identifies that “industry leader” as George Carlo who ran Wireless Technology Research (WTR) on behalf of the CTIA, the trade association of the cell phone industry. Of course, most people, except those on the industry payroll, now concede that WTR was misnamed. Something like “Whatever Happens Do As Little Research As Possible and Take As Long As Possible Not To Do It” would have been far more appropriate (even though it’s hard to make an elegant acronym out of all that). One important fact is left out of the story —for reasons that will become apparent in a moment. The piece begins with Lai recollecting how, back in 1994, someone had tried to stop his DNA-microwave work by calling the National Institutes of Health and alleging that Lai was misusing his research grant by carrying out unauthorized experiments. After Lai explained what he was up to, the NIH was satisfied that nothing was amiss. Lai was allowed to go back to work, though he lacked the funds to do as much he would have liked. The snitch is not named in the article but should be revealed. It was Bill Guy, who had received three degrees from the University of Washington, including his doctorate, and then spent much of his professional life at its Department of Bioengineering. No wonder the alumni magazine was squeamish about identifying him. For more than ten years, Guy and Lai had worked together at the university’s Bioelectromagnetics Research Lab. They were coauthors on close to 20 research papers. But that did not stop Guy from trying to sabotage Lai’s research. At the time he made the call to Mike Galvin of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Guy was one of two key advisors to George Carlo, and was helping him map out the strategy for CTIA’s $25 million cell phone-health research project. Separately, he was also a consultant to the CTIA. Guy would stay on the WTR payroll for another three years. Guy is a former president of the Bioelectromagnetics Society and the recipient of the d'Arsonval Award, its highest honor. Despite a lifetime in RF research, despite the fact that he chaired the committee that wrote the 1982 ANSI RF exposure standard, despite the fact that he chaired the committee of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements that wrote the council's 1986 (and its most recent) report on RF biological effects, Guy’s first impulse on hearing about some important new experimental finding that questioned the safety of a product that would soon be responsible for exposing more than a billion people to a constant stream of RF radiation was to blow the whistle and try to impugn Lai. Does anyone still believe that the mobile phone industry ever made an honest attempt to get to the bottom of the cell phone safety question?

Cell Phone Text Message Leads Mother to Kidnapped Daughter

LUGOFF, S.C. - A text message sent by a kidnapped 14-year-old to her mother led to her rescue Saturday, when police found her in a hand-dug, booby-trapped bunker. ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Shoaf's message also led investigators to name a suspect in her Sept. 6 abduction — police were searching a wooded area where the girl was found for 37-year-old Vinson Filyaw, said Kershaw County Sheriff Steve McCaskill. Shoaf was found by deputies about a mile from her home in a 15-foot deep hole in the side of a hill that was covered with plywood. The bunker had a hand-dug privy with toilet paper, a camp stove and shelves made with cut branches and canvas. McCaskill said the girl appeared to be unharmed but was taken to Kershaw County Medical Center for evaluation. Police have not interviewed her, saying they would leave her alone until she's ready to talk. "We're just glad that she's alive and she's safe and that she will be home with us," her aunt, Geraldine Williams, told WLTX-TV in Columbia. "She's a good girl. ... We never believed that she ran away." Investigators say Filyaw may have posed as a police officer when he met Shoaf. The unemployed construction worker also is wanted on an unrelated sexual assault charge. "He dug this pit and this child was in this pit," McCaskill said. "He is linked to her disappearance and he's got to answer for that." The sheriff said the girl was walked around in the woods by her captor until she became disoriented. In the bunker, she was threatened with handmade grenades and a flare gun. The sheriff said the text message the girl sent to her mother came from Filyaw's cell phone and deputies began looking for him Friday night. Investigators used cell towers to determine a general location of the phone used to send the message. "That was the first break," McCaskill said. McCaskill said the girl cried out as searchers approached the bunker where she was found. "She was standing at the mouth of the bunker with the door open," sheriff's Capt. David Thomley told WLTX-TV in Columbia. He said Shoaf was not tied up and was very coherent. The bunker was protected by a booby-trap, the sheriff said. Police tracking hounds were brought in to aid in the search for Filyaw, and helicopters with spotlights circled overhead as night fell. A $5,000 reward was offered for information leading to his capture. Filyaw was considered armed and dangerous. Deputies have been searching for Filyaw for months on an unrelated charge of criminal sexual conduct against a 12-year-old girl, McCaskill said. Officers tried to arrest Filyaw at his home earlier this week, but he had an elaborate escape plan, involving a tunnel dug from his bedroom to a shed, the sheriff said. "When deputies came to serve the warrant, he was able to escape, going under the mattress, going under the trailer and hiding and eluding the arrest," McCaskill said. This is the second case this year in South Carolina involving an abducted teenage girl taken to an underground hideout. Kenneth Hinson of Hartsville is charged with kidnapping two 17-year-old girls March 14 and taking them to a closet-sized dungeon behind his home. Authorities said the girls freed themselves and walked to safety, and Hinson was captured after a four-day manhunt.

Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine

Vol. 25: 189-191, 2006. The authors are Örjan Hallberg and Gerd Oberfeld. You will need to access the journal to get the full copy. Letter to the Editor: Will We All Become Electrosensitive? Örjan Hallberg*1 and Gerd Oberfeld2 1Hallberg Independent Research, Trångsund, Sweden. 2Public Health Department Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria. Dear Editor, Each year an increasing number of people claim to suffer from electrosensitivity (see, e.g., compilation of references given in Table 1), also known as being electrically hypersensitive (EHS). There are also other diseases, such as fibromyalgia and burn-out syndrome, that have symptoms similar to those exhibited by people suffering from electrosensitivity. (Table 1) In Sweden, electrosensitivity is recognized as a handicap, but there is still controversy surrounding the diagnosis of the disease. The mainstream view by governmental and medical authorities is that this handicap is a psychological phenomenon with no basis in physical or medical mechanisms (Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, SNBHW, 1995), whereby perpetuating the misconception that only a small fraction of the population is concerned about electrosensitivity or the proximity of new radio transmission masts. The number of reported cases of electrosensitivity has been steadily increasing since it was first documented in 1991. Data presented here are estimates and are based on large sample inquiries where different sets of questions have been used. To determine whether the statistics indicate a sub-population of electrosensitivity or if the total population is at stake, we plotted reported prevalence estimates over time in a normal distribution diagram (Table 1 and Figure 1). Contrary to the views of mainstream medical authorities, Figure 1 shows that the group of electrosensitive people around the world, including Sweden, is not just a small fraction that deviates from the rest of the healthy population. Instead, it points at the possibility that electrosensitivity will be more widespread in the near future. The extrapolated trend indicates that 50% of the population can be expected to become electrosensitive by the year 2017. Data presented here were collected in Austria, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States.