The Microwave Factor

Microwave - and other forms of electromagnetic - radiation are major (but conveniently disregarded, ignored, and overlooked) factors in many modern unexplained disease states. Insomnia, anxiety, vision problems, swollen lymph, headaches, extreme thirst, night sweats, fatigue, memory and concentration problems, muscle pain, weakened immunity, allergies, heart problems, and intestinal disturbances are all symptoms found in a disease process the Russians described in the 70's as Microwave Sickness.

Wednesday, December 03, 2014

No Cancer Risk from Power Lines, Says the New York Times: Big Score for Industry Scientists

No Cancer Risk from Power Lines, Says the New York Times

Big Score for Industry Scientists

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December 1, 2014

Last updated

December 3, 2014

Still worried about power lines and cancer? That’s so retro, says the New York Times. You’re just stuck in the 1980’s.

This is what the “newspaper of record” wants you to know about the risk of childhood leukemia from power lines: A “fairly broad consensus among researchers holds that no significant threat to public health has materialized.”

The full message is told in a new 7+ minute video, produced by the Times’ RetroReport, which boasts a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors, led by Kyra Darnton. The video even credits a fact checker. What’s missing is the common sense to do some digging when reporting on a controversial issue.

If Darnton's crew had done its homework, they would have realized that their view is based on two industry-friendly researchers, David Savitz and John Moulder. Savitz, now VP for research at Brown University, has come a long way since he first reported that power lines are linked to childhood leukemia back in 1986. Power line EMFs have been very, very good for Savitz’s career. He parlayed that study into a multimillion contract from the electric power industry to study cancer risks among electric utility workers. He found a link to brain tumors. A couple of years later, he paid the industry back by renouncing his own work and that of many others. Now he’s done it again with his original power line study in the new Times video.

As for Moulder, everybody in the EMF community knows that he has pocketed bundles of money testifying for companies denying that power lines or cell phones present any risk. We long ago detailed Moulder’s work for industry.

Those who make the effort to read the scientific literature can see that a number of different groups have pooled the results of the many epidemiological studies on EMFs and childhood cancer and each has reaffirmed the link —as both Savitz and Moulder are well aware. (Here are details on the two best known meta-analyses.) The pooled analyses prompted the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to classify power line EMFs as a possible human carcinogen back in 2001. The advice still stands. Indeed, the evidence is stronger today than it was back then.

The video also cites a National Academy of Sciences report: This too was mishandled. At the time, in 1996, the New York Times stated that the Academy found “no conclusive and consistent evidence” linking EMFs to cancer. (When you see language like that you know the fix is in: How often does evidence meet such a strict burden of proof?) Left unsaid was that the Academy confirmed that children living near power lines had higher rates of leukemia. Savitz knows this too, he was the vice chair of the Academy panel.

Ottawa moves to strip power from top public health scientist

Demoting Canada’s chief public health officer is more about politics than promoting health.

PATRICK DOYLE / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Judith Bosse, assistant deputy minister at the Public Health Agency of Canada, Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, Health Minister Rona Ambrose and Dr. Gregory Taylor, Canada's chief public health officer, watch as nurse Adina Popalyar demonstrates how to remove protective clothing after treating a hypothetical Ebola patient on Nov. 27, 2014.

Buried in the current omnibus budget bill being studied by Parliament last week is a plan to demote the chief public health officer of Canada. He will no longer hold a deputy minister rank, he will have no direct line to the federal minister of health, he will be subservient to a bureaucratic agency president and he will have no secure public funding.

Dr. Gregory Taylor, the new chief public health officer, has said he is in favour of this plan, as shrugging off managerial oversight for the Public Health Agency will free him to provide scientific advice. That may be so, but will anybody be listening? Will he even be allowed to speak?

We seem to have forgotten the harsh lessons of SARS. It was just 11 years ago when the World Health Organization slapped Toronto with a travel advisory, costing the city $2 billion and 28,000 jobs. This was not because of the number of SARS cases (similar in number to Singapore, which had no such advisory), but because Ottawa did not have a public health leader who could effectively co-ordinate with the provinces and communicate the outbreak’s status to other countries.

SARS shone a light on the enormous hurdles that Canada’s version of federalism — with provinces largely in charge of their own health dollars and direction — poses to effective countrywide pandemic responses. Significant change was needed and proposed, including the establishment of the chief public health officer and the Public Health Agency of Canada. The idea was that new structures and an empowered chief public health officer could forge a new vision for Canadian public health, ensuring collaboration and co-operation across provinces and territories.

The key was building trust: provinces and their public health departments needed a guarantee that the federal government’s public health pronouncements were based on scientific principles rather than political talking points.

Despite reforms, results have been patchy. Auditor general reports year after year have raised concerns that we have not yet achieved satisfactory progress on many measures, including information sharing across the country. Interestingly, it is the auditor general who has shone a light on these concerns and not the chief public health officer. Why is that the case?

Science has never actually been allowed to trump government politicking; the chief public health officer was made an officer of government instead of an officer of Parliament, thereby preventing him from exercising full independence like our auditor general, the official languages commissioner and the privacy commissioner. That was a mistake. But at least he was given some independent powers to speak to Canadians and a mandate to engage in public activities and citizen dialogue. Even these limited powers, unfortunately, are slated for removal in the proposed legislation.

Demotion and politicization of the chief public health officer is a wrong-headed move. It seems to be linked more to the public gagging of our government scientists than about promoting health or the public good. With an Ebola outbreak raging in West Africa, this is not the right time to be weakening our national public health infrastructure. This change makes us far less prepared for Ebola and other diseases like it.

More than likely the omnibus budget bill will go ahead and we will be left to regret its folly in the wake of another harsh public health lesson, which may play out on the international stage as in the case of SARS. After some hand-wringing — and undoubtedly several commissions and reports — we will return to this inevitable conclusion: the chief public health officer of Canada needs to be independent of federal and provincial governments.

Someone needs to speak public health truth to power on behalf of all Canadians. We are all less safe without it.

Colleen M. Flood is a Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa and an expert advisor with EvidenceNetwork.ca. Steven J. Hoffman is an Assistant Professor of Law and Director of the Global Strategy Lab at the University of Ottawa and a Visiting Assistant Professor of Global Health at Harvard University.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2014/11/27/ottawa_moves_to_strip_power_from_top_public_health_scientist.html

Baby monitor health warning

An Australian author has stirred up debate on whether or not baby monitors are safe, claiming they emit dangerous radiation.

They are designed to keep baby safe while mum and dad are away from the nursery, but Donna Fisher believes wireless monitors could be doing more harm than good.

Baby monitors 'harming children' says Australian researcher

In a new book, she claims the electromagnetic field they emit can contribute to health problems, like chronic fatigue, nausea and cancer.

She is also concerned the exposure can increase the risk of SIDS and autism.

So concerned by the health impacts, she is calling for a nationwide ban on wireless monitors and wants them removed from the shelves.

"Experts have likened having a wireless baby monitor in the bedroom like having a mobile phone antenna station in the bedroom; It's the same radiation," Mrs Fisher said.

The monitors use Wi-Fi to communicate but the electromagnetic levels are lower than Australian standards.

Dr Mark Gregory, RMIT senior technology lecturer, said: "Australia has very conservative guidelines on the emissions that can occur from mobile devices or Wi-Fi and for this reason, we should not be concerned about dangerous side effects."

The government agency for radiation protection says there is no clear evidence on whether exposure to magnetic fields is a hazard, but a large number of scientific studies have not found a health risk.

The best way to reduce any risk is to move the monitor a safe distance away from the crib.

How to sync your baby with your iPhone

A new Bluetooth-enabled dummy constantly records your baby's temperature and alerts you if they start to get ill, and will even sound an alarm if they wander away from you

By Matthew Sparkes, Deputy Head of Technology

11:36AM GMT 28 Nov 2014

6 Comments

The Internet of Things has seen everything from our watches, heating thermostats and smoke alarms connected to our smartphones via Bluetooth. But a Surrey-based company now wants to connect your baby, too.

The Pacifi is a Bluetooth-enabled dummy which can record your baby's temperature throughout the day via a sensor in the teat and beam the data back to your smartphone. From a special app you can then monitor for warning signs that they are getting ill.

You can even set up automatic alerts to warn you if the temperature rises above a certain point, and share all of that data with your doctor at the tap of a button.

Pacifi also features an in-built proximity sensor that allows parents to track the pacifier’s location. Within the app users can set alarms which are triggered when a child breaches a certain distance, which can range up to 50 metres.

The pacifier also features a buzzer alarm than can be activated via a smartphone when it has been lost or misplaced.

Mother of three Kirstin Hancock, who is also co-founder of the company behind the device, Blue Maestro, said: “I know first-hand the difficulty in taking a sick baby’s temperature. It is easy to lose track of readings and the timings of medication, so it becomes harder to determine whether the medication is working.

"Pacifi makes this easier, tracking the temperature and effect of the medication so parents can feel more at ease during this worrying time.”

Pacifi comes in a range of colours and is dishwasher-proof. Smartphone apps for both iOS and Android are available free.

The device goes on sale on December 1 and can be purchased on the Blue Maestro website for £25.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11260079/How-to-sync-your-baby-with-your-iPhone.html

Multifocal Breast Cancer in Young Women with Prolonged Contact between Their Breasts and Their Cellular Phones

Case Reports in Medicine

Volume 2013 (2013), Article
ID 354682, 5 pages

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/354682

Case Report

Multifocal Breast Cancer in Young Women with
Prolonged Contact between Their Breasts and Their Cellular Phones

John
G. West,1 Nimmi S. Kapoor,1 Shu-Yuan Liao,2 June W. Chen,3 Lisa Bailey,4 and Robert A. Nagourney5

1Breastlink, Department of Surgery, 230 S.
Main Street, Suite 100, Orange, CA 92868, USA

2Department of Pathology, St. Joseph Hospital,
University of California Irvine, 1100 West Stewart Drive, Orange, CA
92868-5600, USA

3Breastlink, Department of Radiology, 230 S.
Main Street, Suite 100, Orange, CA 92868, USA

4Bay Area Breast Surgeons, Inc., Department of
Surgery, 3300 Webster Street, Suite 212, Oakland, CA 94609, USA

5Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Rational Therapeutics, University of California Irvine, Long Beach, CA, USA

Received 30 July 2013; Accepted 19 August 2013

Academic Editor: Hans-Joachim Mentzel

Copyright © 2013 John G. West et al. This is an
open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Breast cancer occurring in women under the age of
40 is uncommon in the absence of family history or genetic predisposition, and
prompts the exploration of other possible exposures or environmental risks. We
report a case series of four young women—ages from 21 to 39—with multifocal
invasive breast cancer that raises the concern of a possible association with
nonionizing radiation of electromagnetic field exposures from cellular phones.
All patients regularly carried their smartphones directly against their breasts
in their brassieres for up to 10 hours a day, for several years, and developed
tumors in areas of their breasts immediately underlying the phones. All
patients had no family history of breast cancer, tested negative for BRCA1 and
BRCA2, and had no other known breast cancer risks. Their breast imaging is
reviewed, showing clustering of multiple tumor foci in the breast directly
under the area of phone contact. Pathology of all four cases shows striking
similarity; all tumors are hormone-positive, low-intermediate grade, having an
extensive intraductal component, and all tumors have near identical morphology.
These cases raise awareness to the lack of safety data of prolonged direct
contact with cellular phones.

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/crim/2013/354682/