Mobile Cancer: Perpetuating The Myth

Study Finds Strong Correlation of Mobile Phones to Cancer 

Last month whilst travelling I picked up a free newspaper, which is commonly distributed amongst public transport in the UK: The Metro. Whilst flicking through this I saw an intriguing article on how cancer has been linked to mobile phones, again. I personally thought this argument was solved about 15 years ago. I remember there being a lot about it in this news and I even remember a TV drama created about a man who got tumours from using a cell phone. Either way, I had forgotten about it. Last week, a guy next to me was reading my good old favourite newspaper (if only for a laugh), ‘The Daily mail’. I looked over to see what racist view they were spouting and to my surprise, I found the headline ‘MOBILE PHONES LINKED TO CANCER SAYS STUDY’. I sighed and shuddered at the thought and continued to play, on my mobile:- what can I say, I’m a risk taker.

I found the article itself online, with the full title of ‘Mobile phones ARE linked to cancer, study claims: Long-term use ‘is associated with Alzheimer, Parkinson’s, headaches and skin irritations’. Yes, the ARE is written in capitals, nothing like alarming people. 

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The Claim and The Article

So, lets assume that’s real, that that is actually happening and we are having this array of disease due to the use of mobile phones and tablets with their radioactive properties. When you reach the second point of the summery of this article, you get:

“Scientist claim radiation causes oxidative stress in the body- a damaging process thought to be closely linked to degenerative disease”

As with most papers, and most ‘scientific journalists’ commenting on things they know nothing about, we have to look hard for this paper so it can be reviewed. Luckily, this was actually quite easy to find. The study itself was published in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine and was a review article, not a study, entitled “Oxidative mechanisms of biological activity of low intensity radiofrequency radiation”. As I said, this is a review article, which means that the data that is presented in this paper is not new data. No study has been conducted, no subjects have been used, no data has been generated. A review is a cohort of studies banded together to create a better view of the overall data that we have on a given subject. However, one has to take care when reviewing this information, like any other articles, these are open to bias, more specifically ‘citation bias’. This is the act of only really choosing scientific articles that back up your claim and support your viewpoint, making the paper itself ridiculously obsolete.

The author of this article is a man called Igor Yakymenko, who has previously published biased information about how radiation from phones cause oxidative stress (PDF of one of his papers is here). In his current published review, he claims that the published evidence (including his own studies) conform to say that low intensity radio frequency causes oxidative stress, causing an increase in risk of disease such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s.  The pathology and origin as to why Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s occur in the human body is actually still relatively unknown, if he had found credible evidence to suggest a cause, surely this story would have been taken up more than by the worlds worst newspaper. 

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The Literature

There are ample studies out there that dispelled this myth years ago, when the suggestion was first made. There is no evidence, at least convincing evidence, that there is a link for disease and mobile phones. In 1012, a systematic review published in the Journal of Bioelectromagnetics found that of all the evidence that is currently available, there is no statistically significant risk from mobile phones and that there was certainly no statistically significant relationship between in vivo studies and the exposure of radio-frequency fields causing tumours.

Again last year, we have a study out of Epidemiology looking at the long-term mobile use and acoustic neuroma risk. They concluded that there was no link found between long-term mobile phone use and increased risk of neuroma. These are again, systematic reviews in which both of these studies correlate studies that have been conducted over the course of 20 years. Both of which look at studies, which state there is a link between disease and the studies that don’t have a link, not one or the other to prove a point, hence, there is no bias. In fact, as mobile phones are becoming evermore prominent in this technologically growing world, there hasn’t been an increase at all in brain tumours over the previous thirty years.  As people are using them more and more, if they caused tumours, then surely that number would have increased dramatically.

Fundamentally, the radiation used is non-ionising; this basically means that there is not enough energy in the radiation to alter our cells in any way. The main end of the article states that this fact, combined with the ‘unstable evidence’ is not enough to ‘rule out the risk’ of mobiles causing cancer. They also state last year that another ‘study’ had published its results saying that people who use their phones more than 15 hours each month appear to have higher risks of developing certain types of brain cancer. Where is this study? Another case of the media frivolously saying what it likes without backing up with any evidence.

Conclusion

The Daily Mail isn’t the only one to blame here. It’s just where I saw it again, and where I chose to base this off. Every major newspaper website had a headline sensation about how it was revealed that mobile phones cause cancer, from what I had noticed, not of them had bothered to actually see that it was a review rather than a study and that it was fundamentally incorrect.

Journalists should be weary of this type of misinformation. There is a trend that is noticed in the Skeptic community and should be noted in the general population. This claim has been around since mobile phones have been around. When researchers find information 20 years later that are diametrically opposite to scientific consensus, why is this not questioned? You need to look at the person who is communicating this study (if it is indeed, a study) and looking at why and how. Checking out their other work for conflicts of interest should also become second nature.

The only solace here is that most people, from what I have gathered, aren’t buying into this newsbreak. On the comment section of many of the paper articles online there are people who are rightly saying that this is ridiculously incorrect and like me ‘thought this was put to bed years ago’. And then there’s the odd one:

“Cue all those who are addicted to their phones saying this research is wrong. Never mind. What could possibly go wrong when you put a device that releases radiation, capable of disrupting the DNA in your cells, next to your brain for many hours per day for decades?” – D. Andre

I think we all know what that D is short for. Sometimes, the stupid is too much for even me to continue reading.