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November 5, 2013

Cell phones can kill you and your baby

The Canadian Charger

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As researchers are increasingly finding that radiation from cell phones causes cancer, the cell phone industry is counterattacking with threats of lawsuits and paying researchers to write papers - that can easily get into medical journals - with the message that radiation is harmless to human health.

Considering that the cell phone industry is a multi-billion dollar industry, with highly connected lobbyists, it's no surprise that the program “Cell Phones and Child Brains: Casualty Catastrophe was broadcast on the Russian TV Network RT – not an American network - on a program called Truthseeker.

After Prof. Dariusz Leszcynski of the University of Helsinki, a researcher for Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, published groundbreaking research on the biological harm of cell phones, neurologists like Keith Black, of the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles have begun issuing warnings about cell phone use, which Dr. Black characterizes as “cooking the brain.”

Prof. Leszcynski's said the cell phone industry lobbied to block his funding.

Meanwhile, using a radiation detector, program host Daniel Bushell recorded radiation levels of 800 microvolts for microwave ovens and WiFi routers, 2,000 microvolts when watching a movie on a PC tablet and 40,000 microvolts for a Samsung 3 Smartphone. This is over a thousand times the normal background radiation of 30 microvolts.

Brent Bocook, a former Olympic champion rowing crew member, who had part of his brain removed because of a tumour on the area where he used his cell phone, has launched a class action lawsuit against the cell phone industry because he believes that – like the tobacco industry – it's the only way to hold cell phone makers responsible for the harm their products are doing.

Mr. Bocook noted that children are more at risk because their skulls are thinner and the radiation per volume is much higher than in the case of adults as their brain size is small. He added that brain tumours associated with cell phone use have replaced leukemia as the number one killer of children.

Studies show young men who keep cell phones in their pockets have much lower chance of producing offspring. A 21 year old woman interviewed on the program has breast cancer where she stored her phone and, unfortunately, she's not alone. Subsequently, Mr. Bushell showed video clips of commercials promoting cell phones for babies.

In part because the use of cell phones and other wireless technologies is being called the next 'casualty catastrophe,' after tobacco and asbestos, smart phones now all contain a legal disclaimer page with fine print, which cannot be enlarged and which is relatively difficult to locate within the phone's navigation. It discloses the dangers of radiation exposure from cell phones and advises users to keep the device at least 10mm from the body.

Because independent scientists overwhelmingly find significant damage from human DNA altered, to three times lower sperm counts, 290 per cent more brain tumours, autism, and birth defects, the cell phone industry had felt the need to fight back.

Using studies paid for by the cell phone industry, Thomas Wheeler, a lobbyist for CTIA – an international non-profit trade association representing the wireless communications industry – said radio waves from cell phones are safe.

However, former White House advisor and leading epidemiologist Dr. Devra Davis told a US Senate committee that anytime there was independent research the cell phone industry would attack the scientists who'd done the studies.

“They would try to get them fired. They try to get their funding taken away. When that didn't work, they would hire other scientists, who knew nothing about the field, to do studies that looked like they were replicating the other studies. But they really weren't and, when all of those things failed, they wrote a memo in which they said the cellular phone industry has done its job.”

Meanwhile, journalist Anthony Gucciardi said cell companies are already saying in their manuals that cell phones cause brain tumours, but once the public becomes aware it will be even worse than tobacco. Tellingly, insurance companies have stopped insuring for health problems related to cell phone use.

In late October 2013, the Senate unanimously confirmed Thomas Wheeler to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, overseeing the nation’s telephone, wireless, broadband and video industries. Mr. Wheeler is an investor and former wireless communications industry lobbyist.

“Thomas Wheeler will be a strong advocate for consumers and the public interest at a time when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is facing decisions that will shape the future of the nation's telephone network, and the wireless broadband and video industries,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller.

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M. Elmasry