The Brain Cell Phone Injury Debate Goes Nowhere

Researchers  have tried  for years to prove or disprove that cell phone use damages the brain. Long term exposure to handsets, some believe, must have side effects. Those cellular communications waves cannot help but fry some portion of the human head or at least cause some form of cancer or other disease in heavy users.

JAMA has published a new study of cellphone use. It says exactly nothing. As a matter of fact, the conclusion of the work is that :

In healthy participants and compared with no exposure, 50-minute cell phone exposure was associated with increased brain glucose metabolism in the region closest to the antenna. This finding is of unknown clinical significance.

The test was small and only included 47 “healthy” participants. The results might have been different if the people had been sick.

Researchers refuse to concede that any useful human activity could have only benign effects. Steak is bad for people. So is unwashed salad and food kept in plastic containers too long. It is dangerous to live too close to electrical wires. It may even be unsafe to drive electric cars. That will probably be the result of a new survey which will help wreck the car industry again.

The cell phone test regimen has now gone on for at least 15 years from the time that the first Motorola walkie-talkie handset came out. Scientists have found nothing, because there is probably nothing to find. That;s too bad. A lot of grant money is probably at stake

Douglas A. McIntyre