![The Courts The Courts](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/court_64.png)
![Cellphones Cellphones](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/cellphones_64.png)
![Handhelds Handhelds](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/handheld_64.png)
![Medicine Medicine](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/medicine_64.png?refresh=now)
![Science Science](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/science_64.png)
![Your Rights Online Your Rights Online](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/yro_64.png)
Italian Supreme Court Accepts Mobile Phone-Tumor Link 190
An anonymous reader writes with a link to this Reuters story, from which he excerpts: "Italy's supreme court has upheld a ruling that said there was a link between a business executive's brain tumor and his heavy mobile phone usage, potentially opening the door to further legal claims. The court's decision flies in the face of much scientific opinion, which generally says there is not enough evidence to declare a link between mobile phone use and diseases such as cancer and some experts said the Italian ruling should not be used to draw wider conclusions about the subject. 'Great caution is needed before we jump to conclusions about mobile phones and brain tumors,' said Malcolm Sperrin, director of medical physics and clinical engineering at Britain's Royal Berkshire Hospital. The Italian case concerned company director Innocenzo Marcolini who developed a tumor in the left side of his head after using his mobile phone for 5-6 hours a day for 12 years. He normally held the phone in his left hand, while taking notes with his right hand. Marcolini developed a so-called neurinoma affecting a cranial nerve, which was apparently not cancerous but nevertheless required surgery that badly affected his quality of life."
A note for our readers - - (Score:5, Informative)
That is the country of Italy [wikipedia.org] (southern Europe, part of the EU), not Italy, Texas [wikipedia.org]. We return you now to the regularly scheduled posts.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How egotistic would USA readers be, for this clarification to be necessary?
Re:A note for our readers - - (Score:4, Insightful)
You are missing the context. Texas has many times come up with similarly hair brained declarations.
Re: (Score:3)
Do...do you really have to ask?
Re: (Score:2)
This demands a, 0, Whoosh, moderation :)
Re:A note for our readers - - (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:A note for our readers - - (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
They are smart, not sentient...
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
True, but they make great pasta & nice clothes.
Re:A note for our readers - - (Score:4, Informative)
The decision was made on the balance of probabilities. The claimant was able to show that there was at least a 50.00000001% chance that using a mobile phone for 6-7 hours a day for 12 years could damage human tissue.
The court is not saying that mobile phones cause cancer. Studies have shown that while the various types of radiated energy from a phone are not zero (obviously, how else would it communicate) they are not high enough to harm a human being under normal circumstances. These are not normal circumstances and the evidence needed to be re-evaluated to reach a decision. Even that decision is not absolute, merely a judgement that given the evidence (including the fact that the damage was right next to where he held the phone) it is more likely than not that there is a causal link.
For fucks sake Slashdot, stop modding up these retards who don't RTFA and jump on the anti-luddite bandwagon.
Re: (Score:2)
The ruling basically states that there is a risk and that phones are not totally safe. Use them excessively from a very young age and you are taking a risk. For certain types of cancer at certain locations, it should be a simple an automatic win for the victim and the mobile phone companies need to set up a scheme to pay for those victims. Some people are always more vulnerable to certain affects than other people, more vulnerable to cancer and the range of artificial sources that can cause cancer. Greed j
The Real Danger (Score:3, Insightful)
The real danger is that some jackass judge from the northeastern states or more likely in LalaLand California, who believes that it is appropriate and necessary to consider FOREIGN laws and precedence when deliberating American laws and precedence, will open the litigation floodgates here in the U.S.
Re: (Score:2)
The real danger is that some jackass judge from the northeastern states or more likely in LalaLand California, who believes that it is appropriate and necessary to consider FOREIGN laws and precedence when deliberating American laws and precedence, will open the litigation floodgates here in the U.S.
Why not, USA considers American laws valid in FOREIGN lands.
i.e. McKinnon (UK), Kadr (Canada / Afghanistan), Kim Dotcom (NZ), etc. ad nauseam.
Scientific proof (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, Italy hardly stands alone. Here in the United States, idiot judges and legislators have been doing whack-ass stuff like declaring women pregnant two weeks before conception (by law). Other legislators have passed resolutions effectively banning global warming research, or attempting to legislate how said research is conducted so as to prevent certain conclusions from being reached. All around us, worldwide, science is under attack from the idiocracy.
Science is dangerous because is allows people like
Re: (Score:3)
Knowledge is power, and science as an institution makes no bones about who gets it. That's why the Dark Ages happened, and why we're just one major disaster or war away from it happening again.
Sorry, but no. The Dark Ages happened as a result of the fall of Rome and the invasions of barbarians, and the Muslim conquests.
Mohammed & Charlemagne Revisited: The Epilogue [newenglishreview.org]
The Truth about Islamic Crusades and Imperialism [americanthinker.com]
The Church Educates Europe [catholicbible101.com]
Pharmaceuticals spend billions developing new versions of dick hardening pills, while research into HIV, cancer, and other serious quality of life diseases languish.
Languish at their current high levels of research funding [plosone.org]? HIV and cancer research seem to do especially well.
Curing a patient means denying yourself all that profit from name-brand life-saving drugs. I could come up with a hundred more examples from every industry in every country worldwide -- but you get the point.
I think the point is that you have an exaggerated sense of what is possible - the "Man on the moon syndrome [reuters.com]", maybe? Modern medicine offers wond
Re: (Score:2)
Rather slanted articles you posted. They're an interesting mixture of facts and propaganda, but I do think they're right in their assertion that the Catholic Church was far from being the cause of the Dark Ages. Their impedance of learning didn't start until centuries later. But they were also extremely intolerant of anything that flew in the face of Catholic theology. Usually this was some competing theology, such as that of the Muslims, the Cathars and later the Protestants, none of which are scientifi
Re: (Score:3)
Pharmaceuticals spend billions developing new versions of dick hardening pills, while research into HIV, cancer, and other serious quality of life diseases languish.
Bullshit.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Scientific proof (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually it was supposed to be a cure for Hypertension (high blood pressure) and Angina Pectoris (cardiac chest pain) And in fact it is still used to treat Pulmonary Hypertension (high blood pressure in the blood vessel from the heart to the lungs) Considering that heart disease is the number one cause of death in North America, I would consider this to be quite "useful" research. And despite it's recreational uses, the drug is used to treat serious medical conditions even now, so it's hardly an example of something developed frivolously.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Interesting case in point, here in The Netherlands our government banned The Pirate Bay. Now a scientific study was conducted, and the conclusions were that banning TPB did not decrease the amount of downloading going on in the Netherlands. BREIN (the Dutch RIAA) of course is angry about this and calls the conclusions 'irresponsible. [www.nu.nl]' Of course they don't explain themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Pharmaceuticals spend billions developing new versions of dick hardening pills, while research into HIV, cancer, and other serious quality of life diseases languish.
Have you actually looked at such research? There are vast amounts spent on HIV, cancer, etc. These are in no way "languishing". As to "dick hardening", a decline in enjoyment of sex is an obvious quality of life issue for many older men and women (these drugs can help both sexes, not just men). What would the point be of extending life span without a corresponding effort to improve the quality of that extra lifespan?
all because we tolerate allowing people to become too rich and powerful, and invariably they turn into sociopaths and destroy us
Well, it wasn't a problem for the past few centuries. The wealthiest and most powerful just
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How much money have cellphone operators spent on studies showing that mobile phones are completely harmless? And how much was spent by independent organizations? Which figure do you think is higher?
Irrelevant horseshit.
There is not only no evidence supporting a link between cellphones and cancer, there is no plausible theoretical basis for it besides "OMGZORZ RADIATORS R TEH BAD!!!!!1" The frequencies involved are too low to be ionizing. Dielectric heating could be a problem, but not at the power levels involved. That leaves what? The tumor gremlins who live in every Samsung handset?
Re:Scientific proof (Score:5, Informative)
The frequencies involved are too low to be ionizing. Dielectric heating could be a problem, but not at the power levels involved. That leaves what? The tumor gremlins who live in every Samsung handset?
You are correct about ionizing, but since cancer mechanism are not only based on molecular bonds breaking down, this is not definitive. That's one of the reasons the WHO has classified cell phone radiation as "possibly carcinogenic" http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf [www.iarc.fr]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Scientific proof (Score:4, Insightful)
More doctors smoke Camels.
In another 20 years or so, scientists will have done a lot more research on the human brain which could have a major effect on our perception of how the brain is affected by radio waves. But you seem to have omniscience. Everything is already known to you. During the Manhatten Project, Edward Teller raised the speculative possibility that an atomic bomb might "ignite" the atmosphere because of a hypothetical fusion reaction of nitrogen nuclei. It's a shame you hadn't been there, because you could have laughed in his face and shouted: "That can't happen. It's so OBVIOUS! Why are you so dumb?".
Socrates said "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.". Come back and post again once you figure out what he was talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
That leaves what? The tumor gremlins who live in every Samsung handset?
It leaves millions of people who did what he did without developing a tumor, and one person who did.
A tumor? OMG!!! It must be true!! Cellphones are the Satan.
Re: (Score:3)
I've long been curious about people who have such strident views on this subject.
I mean, are you really a qualified medical doctor? No, I doubt it.
Since everything in biology and chemistry is based on statistical probabilities, I wonder why you cannot imagine cellphone radiation (the heating and directional microwave radiation on wavelengths the same size as some biological structures) as once in a while enhancing the probability of cancer that is already perhaps elevated by other circumstances.
IANA Doctor
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Scientific proof (Score:5, Informative)
Because of the 1/r^2 power scaling with distance, its easy to show all the RF power you are exposed to is from your own phone by a massive margin.
Re: (Score:3)
Why don't we encourage people to take thalidomide and smoke cigarettes - after all, there are hundreds of studies stating that they are completely safe.
And hundreds more showing that they are harmful. Thanks for the strawman - it kept me warm as I burned it.
Re: (Score:3)
That's because there's no such thing.
I'd explain why but I'm busy disproving a cosine.
Re: (Score:3)
That's because there's no such thing.
I'd explain why but I'm busy disproving a cosine.
At least not off on a tangent.
Re: (Score:2)
>> That's because there's no such thing.
>> I'd explain why but I'm busy disproving a cosine.
> At least not off on a tangent.
That's perfectly normal.
Re:Scientific proof (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no scientific proof that dihydrogen oxide is safe either but people continue to use the stuff.
What we actually have going on here is that you are being terminally stupid, a crime given the couple of million years of evolution that went into the underused mechanism that is your brain. You see you have fallen for the current propoaganda war of the extremely wealthy who are manipulating you and the rest of the zombies.
Everything we do now and everything we have ever done has been risky, from falling off a horse and breaking your leg to holding your arm up to your head for 5 hours a day for 12 years and developing a fault in your nervous system, everything carries a risk. The thing is that a lot of the risks we face in the present are infintesimaly smaller than the ones we used to face and determining the causality is a lot harder than root causing my broken leg to falling ten feet onto a rock from my horse. So its harder to associate cause with effect today and guess what, people with an agenda have noticed this and are using it to manipulate the way you think, using it to make you do what they want you to do. If I had a ton of money and liked the way things worked I would be very keen to stop any scientifically driven popularist nonsense like reducing my income by spending my investment profits on stupid shit like the environment, health care for the slave class or god forbid mitigating climate change. So lets spend a couple of hundred mil a year with some like minded friends on a concerted campaign to discredit scientific opinion in the minds of the plebs so that we can put our views in their heads instead. It worked like a treat for tobacco for decades so it should be a pushover.
And it is a pushover, you all bleat the same storyline that the propaganda machine has fed you, there are two sides to the story, science is pretty sure about something but there are a few paid shills who scream at the top of their expense account funded voices that all the rest of them, the rest of the scientific establishment are conspiritorial liers with a funded agenda to fool the public - follow the money they shout, follow the money! With good reason of course because they have to disguise their own immorality somehow.
So now we have a story with two sides, ninety eight percent of the academic world using the scientific methodology of testing a hypothesis with available evidence belive on the balance of probabilities that a hypothesis is correct, and a few mavericks and funded shills say something else. All of a sudden the 2% view becomes weighted at 50% in the media and a few schills and a couple of nutters can persuade the whole world that black might be white that water may flow uphill and that you might prefer permanant slavery to being a free citizen.
Well good luck to you and the rest of the zombies, I hope you enjoy your continued slavery and the rotting environment you have chosen to live in. Its not too late to wake up of course, I'm rather hoping that it happens before something serious like arbitary loss making wars to ensure the profitability of oil companies happens though. Ooops it already did, wonder what awefullness is comming next.
Oh and as for the mobile phone thing, if it bothers you then I suggest you dont use one for five hours a day for twelve years, for one thing your body is likely to end up lopsided.
Re: (Score:2)
And with good reason, too, since it's impossible to prove something is completely safe. Can't be done. So when someone says such and such a thing hasn't been proven safe, it's like saying the sky is blue or that 1 = 1. Of course it hasn't been proven safe.
You can prove something is unsafe. A little less definitively, you can show a correlation between a device or substance and disease. But neither of those have been done in this ca
Re: (Score:2)
You can prove something safe if you define "safe" as "not likely enough to cause harm to be worth worrying about", as long as you also agree on an upper limit. I live in a mostly-car-free part of town, and going to the convenience store is "safe". Sure, there's a non-zero probability a car with a drunk driver will hit me, there's a non-zero probability I'll be mugged, there
Re: (Score:2)
How did this garbage moderated to +5 insightful when it's a collection of lies and deceiving half-truths?
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno. There are billions of people using cell phones, and even if only left-handers hold them to the left side of the head, that's still a lot of rolls of the dice before someone happens to get a tumor in just the right spot.
First I'd want to know what the chance of getting a tumor in a particular spot is, how we're defining "a particular spot," etc - Is our definition such that 1/10 head-tumors would fit it? Or 1/10e6? Does it look like 1/10e6, but actually define 10e5 particular spots that would cou
From TFA: (Score:5, Interesting)
"The evidence was based on studies conducted between 2005-2009 by a group led by Lennart Hardell, a cancer specialist at the University Hospital in Orebro in Sweden. The court said the research was independent and “unlike some others, was not co-financed by the same companies that produce mobile telephones.”
I suppose this marks a turning point in public opinion. Not as a time that correlation between cell phones and cancer was proven, but for the time people started distrusting researches concluding that "no link has been found". I can only think this is a good thing. We've been down this road before with cigarettes.
Re: (Score:3)
The court said the research was independent and “unlike some others, was not co-financed by the same companies that produce mobile telephones.”
Some implies a minority. Single study < a minority < the majority. Which implies that the majority of the research "not co-financed by the same companies that produce mobile telephones" says no
Re: (Score:2)
So a study funded by a cancer researcher isn't biased, whereas a study co-funded by cellphone companies is?
Re: (Score:2)
In God we trust, the rest of you show me the data. Data from these studies are typically poor and often just very very sloppy analysis has been done. Often straight out incorrect statistics has been done or the stats doesn't support the claims.
In this particular instance (cell phones and cancer), we have the problem that if there is such an
Re: (Score:2)
Why can't people understand that the world they live in is not the same as the world everybody else lives in.
Re: (Score:2)
Hands free? (Score:2)
The whole point is that for years and years now I've been hearing that there are conflicting studies and you really should be using a hands-free if you use the cell phone a lot, you know, just in case. And the recommendation goes on to avoiding wired hands-free as Bluetooth should probably be safer. My 70 year old mother has heard of this and uses Bluetooth, since she is on her phone a lot (but of course not 5-6 hours/day), I am sure an executive would have heard this. So, did he take the advice or just ris
Re: (Score:2)
You're going to use a microwave radio that you stick in your ear to protect yourself from a microwave radio that you would hold next to your ear?
Re: (Score:2)
You are going to use a 1mW (or 2.5mW for class 2) microwave radio next to your ear (the in-ear part is not the transmitter), to avoid using a 1W transmitter next to your ear. For reference, going up another 1000x in power brings us to 1kW which is the average microwave oven. Are you suggesting a phone is not safer than a microwave oven?
So, if 1/1000th of the cell phone power was still quite dangerous, people would have been dropping like flies from cell phone usage (just think about the early US analog syst
Re: (Score:2)
But higher up you wrote: "And the recommendation goes on to avoiding wired hands-free as Bluetooth should probably be safer."
Wired don't transmit at all, so how can something that does (even very weakly) be safer?
Re: (Score:2)
"Wired don't transmit at all"?? You do realize we are talking about a conductor connected to a to a transceiver (phone), right? (Some phones even use the hands free explicitly as an FM antenna).
In any case, the wired hands free reduces exposure levels significantly in most cases, but certainly not by a factor of 1000, mostly because hands-free sets are not designed for this purpose specifically (having good insulation etc). In fact there were studies that showed that in certain configurations (e.g. when the
Re: (Score:2)
"The evidence was based on studies conducted between 2005-2009 by a group led by Lennart Hardell, a cancer specialist at the University Hospital in Orebro in Sweden. The court said the research was independent and “unlike some others, was not co-financed by the same companies that produce mobile telephones.”
I suppose this marks a turning point in public opinion. Not as a time that correlation between cell phones and cancer was proven, but for the time people started distrusting researches concluding that "no link has been found". I can only think this is a good thing. We've been down this road before with cigarettes.
No link being found is the a priori expected result in most studies, because most possible causes and effects are unrelated. For instance, I would expect there to be no positive link found between use of Gillette shaving cream and diabetes because there is no obvious reason to think that choice of shaving cream brand should affect diabetes or vice-versa. However, when studying two things with an obvious physiological or chemical link, such as sugar ingestion and diabetes, one would expect a correlation to
It's so strange (Score:4, Insightful)
The funny part is, those corporate researchers that I've met -- and it would be dozens over the years -- all use cell phones, and buy them for their spouses and children. What cold-hearted bastards! Or ignorant fools! Or both!
And the corporate cell phone designers that I've met -- and it would be hundreds over the years -- all use cell phones and, despite their decades of work on improving the size, weight, battery life, and range of their devices, never once realized that it would be to their competitive advantage to minimize any radiation absorbed by the body, since that represents wasted energy that could have been used to reach the cell tower instead. Idiots!
But the managerial genius of the corporations! They can stay in the business for twenty years or more, and each hire hundreds of EM researchers and tens of thousands of engineers, without one of them cracking and letting the Great Corporate Secret -- those Top Secret studies that show how dangerous cell phones are -- out to the public. The maintained secrecy would impress the NSA and NRO, while the control of their people would impress Kim Jong-un. Masterful!
Re:It's so strange (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny part is, those corporate researchers that I've met -- and it would be dozens over the years -- all use cell phones, and buy them for their spouses and children. What cold-hearted bastards! Or ignorant fools! Or both!
Or the researchers understand that even if their studies are correct, virtually all of them indicate the increased risk is SMALL, and usually consistent with zero increased risk. If the increased risk from the cell phone is comparable (or smaller) to other increased risks we expose ourselves to (crossing in the middle of the street, not washing our hands before eating, or just driving across town in a car) than it is probably not worth changing our behaviour in that instance.
Re: (Score:2)
never once realized that it would be to their competitive advantage to minimize any radiation absorbed by the body, since that represents wasted energy that could have been used to reach the cell tower instead.
"""
IIRC (this is mid-90s) that technology was patented by Hagenuk. Hagenuk were not large enough to serious sit around the bargaining table with the GSM mafia (Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola), and were basically driven out of the market. The mafia never got their hands on the patent rights, so that tech
Controls? (Score:3, Insightful)
Heck, I'd probably get a tumor too if I held a rock against ear 5-6 hours a day for 12 years.
Re: (Score:3)
Is this a uranium rock?
Some people would say ... (Score:2)
Maybe he was holding it wrong [engadget.com]
Apple already foresaw this and avoided it altogether in their phones.
Too bad other companies cant use this solution since Apple obviously hold the patent.
um hands free? (Score:3)
Re:um hands free? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought all Italians used headsets. Otherwise they wouldn't be able to wave their arms about while talking.
tumour due to mobile phone usage (Score:5, Interesting)
i've met someone who also had a tumour develop behind his ear - the same one where he was using a phone. over 15 years ago he was a sales executive, on the road a lot, and he had one of those "brick" mobile phones. they had to be powerful because the number of cell towers was less than it is now. again, he was holding the device up to his ear for over 6 hours a day.
the problem was that it took 13 years for the tumour to develop to the point where it became painful enough for him to notice something was wrong. by the time he noticed it, the tumour was one centimetre diameter. he's retired, now, having had surgery.
Re:tumour due to mobile phone usage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I once knew someone who developed a brain tumor in his head
Ach, now, if he had a brain tumor anywhere but his head, this would have been an interesting story...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
DHMO itself is a minimizing name disguising the caustic nature of Hydric Acid, a solvent powerful enough to eat through steel, and which is found in many industrial cleaning products.
Re: (Score:2)
Yet another name by the water-industrial complex to cover up the danger of hydrogen hydroxide. I'm pretty sure the hydrogen is related to that found in nuclear weapons, but the man will never let you know that.
Re: (Score:2)
Hydroxonium hydroxide is indeed a pest, being involved in a large number of chemical spills and a major cause of the Fukushima nuclear incident.
Re: (Score:2)
Fuck that, did you know that water is poisonous? It recently killed a young girl that just happened to drink too much.
Terrible carcinogenic poison, that water.
(For clueless: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_poisoning [wikipedia.org])
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe the public concern should be with real science instead of anecdotal evidence of something that is only correlation with no proof of causation?
Not surprising (Score:2)
In France in the 90s I remember that a judge decided to grant compensation to people who got multiple sclerosis who claimed that it was linked to hepatitis B vaccine. Of course the scientific community completely debunked that link. The only reason some people who got it after vaccination was that tons of people got that vaccination at the same time, so coincidences were very very likely to happen.
Anyway, it is good thing for "equality of chances". If you sucked at school, you can become a judge.
Physicist here. (Score:5, Informative)
There are essentially 2 main groups of effects related to electromagnetic radiation in the frequency range in questions:
a) direct: Influencing cell chemistry, ion channels, reactions, and disturbing neuronal functions by electromagnetic fields/absorbiont of energy quanta. They are unproven at best, and some of them are unklikely since the quanta are too low energy for most transitions of molecules in the body, yet the fluctuation is to fast to influence the pseudo-static potentials in the cells. This needs to be checked very carefully, since complex systems may have rectifying effects on fast timescales, but the last time i looked for studies there was no indication of a problematic effect.
b) indirect: the energy is absorbed by and translated to vibrational excitations (heat), heating the tissue like a chicken in the microwave oven. This effect is well known, and, even if seemingly weak, problematic on a long timescale. Studies have shown that a non-negligible temperatue increase may/will occur, which in turn may have all kinds of bad effects. The order of magnitude for this is easy to caclulate on a paper napkin. And since it is well known it was already mentioned *in the manual of my mobile phone 7 years ago* that one should not use it contineously without a headset and keep a minumum distance (i am unsure about the manual from my phone in 2003, but i believe in may have been included). It was well known to anybody paying attention to what he uses that such an extreme use will cause harm.
So yes, all this boils down to: ignore well known facts (or even the manual) about the things you use, and get medical problems. Yes, for sure you can wait until warnings have to be placed on coke bottles that drinking 3 liters per day, every day are bad. But its no excuse to not listening the 6 years befor to a proven fact with the excuse that the manufacturer does not state that using it far outside the normal use may affect you negatively - maybe he even did so on the bottom of page one of the quickstart, but you found reading unnecessary. Every thing manufactured has a an avergage use. Is you are so far outside of this that you are in a small percentile of users only, you are somewhat on your on own.
Re: (Score:2)
Second, who really reads manuals? Executives??? You're assuming that he had a manual, what if it was a company phone given with no manual? You know what happens when you ass-u-me things right?
BTW, what you're saying is basically equivalent to: That slut got what she deserved, did you see all the slutty clothes she was wearing. You dress like that and you're just asking to be rape
Re: (Score:2)
No that was not what i was saying. I was not judging the guy, but the question if the producer of the phone should be held liable.
I think that the phone itself is a tool which radiates withou judging to reach the next cell tower. It has a well defined range of use, and there were warnings about exactly this, namely using the phone for long times, uninterruped, close to your ear.
Yes, sure, you can ignoe warnings, but its your choice. Sure, maybe you dont read manuals, but its your choice. Yes, maybe the comp
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Could you link to some of these "well known" studies about heating? Because the last one I saw completely failed in it's scientific method by not using any controls for increased activity due to listening to a conversation, or differentiating between real and placebo effects.
If there are other better studies I'm genuinely curious.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Luckily this queston is easy to answer. The maximum SAR value ranges typically from 0.4-1W/kg, which, according to the standard in EU must ne measured in a model which reproduces the shape of a typical head and its electromagnetif proerties. The 10g with the highes exposure are determined and compared to the limit of 2W/kg. so that means that we expose a few square cm to less than 20mW.
Rought estimation:
assumign a typical heat dissipation by convection ~5W/Km^2 and an inner conduction on the order of ~.5W/K
Re: (Score:2)
Your calculations completely ignore the fact that blood is flowing through the area. If the area is warmer than the blood, heat will be absorbed by the blood and carried throughout the body (which is quite good at eliminating excess heat).
More obviously; if a temperature increase of 1-2 degrees was enough to cause harm, everyone who ever had a fever would be permanently damaged and we'd all be avoiding sunlight as if we were vampires.
Re: (Score:2)
a) Looking up one more time: No, the value, as a mean value is roughly right (ranging from 7W/Km^2 ... 50W/m^2).
b) Having fever for one day is ok. Having it for one week is ok. Going into the sun, your body immediatly regulating your sweating, is ok. Unless you get some heat stroke, which is not uncommon. The question is: you body will not regulte the temperature so local and you are doing that every day. Even the briefest looking using you favourite method of searching would have told you that you immun
Re: (Score:2)
so... no actual peer reviewed scientific study then?
Re: (Score:2)
In the case of 'a', there have been a few studies that have shown that there can be a real effect. You have not looked enough.
One problem is that radiation in different frequency band can have different effects, or none. The science that has been done has been done on 1G and 2G frequencies, while most people that use a mobile phone a lot are using 3G, or even 4G these days.
In Other News (Score:5, Insightful)
Six billion cell phone subscriptions [huffingtonpost.com]
22,910 new brain tumor cases in USA in 2012 [cancer.gov] out of 300M people or 0.008% of the population.
So practically everybody on the planet old enough to use one has a cellphone, but practically nobody on the planet gets a brain tumor.
Re:In Other News (Score:4, Insightful)
Someone could claim there is a time lag for tumor development, but these sporadic cases of supposedly cell-phone-linked tumors have been popping up for years and years now, while the overall tumor rate has stayed mysteriously constant.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And this is yet another thing all the "OMG cell phones cause cancer" people keep failing to account for... actual cancer statistics.
Do you have any stats on brain tumours pre-cell phone? or that have been attributed to other causes?
For that matter, cell phone use has been growing exponentially for years, so it should be easy to see the same exponential growth of brain tumours right? Of course not... but let's not let science get in the way of our panic.
I am protected from all cancer causing EM fields (Score:2)
Say what? (Score:2)
Italy’s supreme court rejected an INAIL appeal against that ruling on October 12 though its decision was only reported on Friday.
INAIL - I'm Not An Italian Lawyer ???
Re: (Score:2)
INAIL - Istituto Nazionale per l'Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro, that is "National institute for work accidents insurance".
It handles (mandatory) insurance for any type of work contract, IIRC.
Science and Italian judges? (Score:5, Informative)
Considering it wasn't too long ago that Italy put geologists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake, [scientificamerican.com] it's a bit difficult to give this latest development anything more than "there they go again...."
Re: (Score:2)
Considering it wasn't too long ago that Italy put geologists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake, [scientificamerican.com] it's a bit difficult to give this latest development anything more than "there they go again...."
Italy needs to get some clean water or something, they are seriously retarded. Probably has to do with having the Pope in their country.
People want to blame bad stuff happening on everything but the truth. Bad shit happens. That dude got a tumor. Would he have a tumor if there was no cell phones? Most likely. Would he blame something else? Definitely. Probably on a mp3 player because he wears it when he works out or something stupid like that.
Sure, there are people who get sick because they
Repost, really? (Score:2, Informative)
I've been reading slashdot at least once a day for the last few days, and I see this story for the first time.
But regardless - I would like to amend your "Can ppl stop..." to also stop claiming the story is a repost but NOT GIVE A LINK to the story of which this is supposed to be a repost? It's the equivalent of footnotes to back up claims, and it's what the Web (HTML) was actually MADE FOR.
Thank you.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Everybody understands that scientists have to make a living, but what happens when the result of their sponsored studies are not in their employer's favor?
Indeed. This doesnt even have to be scientists cooking the books. With this type of science the conclusions are statistical in nature, which means if you run enough studies you will sooner or later get the results you want.
So all the sponsors of the studies have to do is bury the results that they dont like, and trumpet the results that they do like. All this while the science itself remain completely neutral. Now add in the fact that the scientists may in fact be cooking the books too, and trust in the
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
This study was done by a cancer researcher, who would have an incentive to say that cellphones cause cancer because then his field gets more funding. It is just as bad as the cellphone companies co-funding research as far as bias goes.
The only way we can actually prevent studies being buried is to require studies to be 'registered' with the journal before they are started in order to be published. Once the are registered they have to be published, no matter the result.
Re: (Score:2)
My, my, you seem to have no idea how science works.
Re: (Score:2)
If a cancer researcher does a study, what diseases do you think he might find cellphones cause? Tuberculosis? Clearly that is a bias, and if you want to claim that the cellphone companies are biased you can't ignore the cancer researcher's bias otherwise you have a double standard.
Re:Cue the storm of posts ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Chimps may have cancer at a lower rate because they die younger from non-cancer causes.
Also, your characterization of the data is not consistent with what the article's authors said,
"It should be noted that there is no pattern of human-specific selection in these genes. The high number of nonsynonymous mutations in these genes is approximately evenly distributed between the human and the chimpanzee lineage (results not shown)."
In other words, both human and chimpanzee lineages tended to have a preponderance of positive selection in genes related to tumor suppression, apoptosis and tumor progression.
One likely explanation for this is that both humans and chimpanzees are relatively long-lived species, so both species would be expected to have strong se
Re: (Score:3)