
Cellphone-Cancer Link Found in Government Study - mijustin
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cellphone-cancer-link-found-in-government-study-1464324146
======
djmdjm
Does anyone have a link to the actual paper? As usual, it's impossible to get
any useful information from a sensational mainstream science article.

The article states that they studied rats and mice at 9 hrs/day exposure (at
what RF power?) but aren't reporting results for mice at this stage.

Of the rats (how many?), they found the "cancer association appeared in male
rats" but no effect size or confidence interval is reported. No mention of
dose sensitivity is mentioned.

So they report some cancer association (how much? we don't know. how
confident? we don't know) in a small subset of their study population
(excluding female rats and all mice) at some unknown RF power and at an
exposure time considerably larger than what most humans would receive.

I'm sure the science behind the study is much more rigorous than this, but wow
- the reporting sucks.

~~~
joshvm
Mother Jones posted this link:
[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

Key points:

\- The rats were exposed in utero and throughout their lifetimes

\- They did pilot studies to find what radiation level did not cause a body
temperature rise to remove that as a confusing factor

\- 900MHz CDMA and GSM signals

\- SAR of 0, 1.5, 3, 6 W/kg. For comparison the FCC limit is 1.2 W/kg in 1
gram of tissue. In the UK/EU it's 2 W/kg.

\- 18 hour cycle each day, 10 minutes off, 10 minutes on (i.e. a 9 hour 50%
duty cycle)

\- 90 rats per gender per group (I think 1260 total)

\- 106 week study

\- Litter weights were slightly lower in exposed groups (~10%), but over time
there was no significant weight difference between the exposed and control
groups

\- For the things they studied, the exposed rats had a defect rate of a few
percent compared to control values of zero. Historic control values were (in
my opinion) comparable to the exposed group and it seems to be barely
statistically significant. The exception seems to be heart schwannomas which
were as high as 7%.

\- More will be published this and next year.

Here's a fun statement:

At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of
males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR. Survival
was also slightly lower in control females than in females exposed to 1.5 or 6
W/kg GSM-modulated RFR. In rats exposed to CDMA-modulated RFR, survival was
higher in all groups of exposed males and in the 6 W/kg females compared to
controls.

~~~
taneq
Oh great, now those damn people with CDMA phones are going to be _even more_
smug. :P

~~~
p1mrx
Pretty much everyone uses CDMA these days. 3G/UMTS and 4G/LTE are both based
on CDMA, which transmits continuously, unlike 2G/GSM/EDGE, which transmits in
pulses and makes the dit-dit-dit-bzzz sound in nearby speakers.

Edit: actually LTE uses OFDM, which is mathematically distinct from CDMA, but
a naive receiver is unlikely to notice the difference.

~~~
mkehrt
"CDMA" means something different than "code division multiple access"
multiplexing when contrasted with GSM.

Instead it refers to the CDMA2000 family of telephony protocols
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDMA2000)),
which are a series of whole stack (radio modulation all the way up to text
encoding schemes) protocols. Calling it "CDMA" is a branding thing than rather
than having anything to do with multiplexing.

------
retrogradeorbit
It's important to note that according to official dogma, non-ionising
radiation can not cause cancer. I've heard my own concerns about non-ionising
radiation dismissed (even belittled) so many times that I've lost count. Most
often this comes from educated people who think that their education
constitutes the whole of all knowledge about the universe and that there is
nothing left to be discovered. But one should understand that if this dogma
was correct, there should be no link found at all.

I did a physics degree at uni, and then spent many years working in genomics.
And I've never (even before the biology work) assumed the "non-ionising
radiation can not cause cancer" to be a true statement. You can only come to
that conclusion if you assume that ionisation effects are the _only_ pathways
that can cause cancer.

After working with biologists for many years I've come to the understanding
that biology is extremely complex, we have an extremely limited understanding
of it, and there could be any number of as yet undiscovered effects of non-
ionising radiation on cellular biology.

I would hope that as more of these studies are done (this is not the first and
probably wont be the last) that we would hear less of this dogma spouted by
supposedly smart people, but I doubt this will happen. It doesn't matter what
you do, intelligence and education often go hand in hand with ego and a
feeling of infallibility. And the dismissive "non-ionising radiation can not
cause cancer" people never miss an opportunity to tell you that doubting this
"proven fact" makes you stupid.

~~~
mnsc
"official dogma, non-ionising radiation can not cause cancer."

I doubt that you can find a scientist doing research on radiations effect on
the body that dogmatically has said that "non-ionising radiation _can not_
cause cancer". I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on
the merits of doing science scientifically.

So if you "doubt" the dogma by saying "non-ionising radiation _can_ cause
cancer" every scientist, and me, can go "F __k yeah, thats a working
hypothesis, go prove that and bring society forward ".

But if you would say that "non-ionising radiation _causes_ cancer" you are
"stupid" in the way that you don't base that sentence on the current state of
science and you are just making things up because you have been "working with
biologists for many years" and you are a proud user of Common Sense™.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
> I will personally call this scientist up and lecture him/her on the merits
> of doing science scientifically.

Feynman did in 1974:
[http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm](http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

In light of these things, my working hypothesis is scientists can dogmatically
claim things too.

------
mikekij
Medical Physicist here. The position isn't "non-ionizing radiation can't cause
cancer". It's "There is no known mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation can
cause cancer." Maybe we'll discover a mechanism one day to explain this. But
we seem to understand the processes by which cell mutations, and subsequently
cancer, and produced.

We should certainly research this area further. But the probability of this
study having failed to control for some other variable is higher than the
probability of an as of yet unknown process allowing microwaves to produce
changes in the chemical bonds holding together DNA.

~~~
mangeletti
Conjecture:

There is no such thing as "non-ionizing" radiation. There is just a continuum
that ranges from "barely a chance for this to ionize a molecule" to "this will
ionize something in the first nanometer". I mean, what's the point of
understanding EMR as a continuum of wavelength, if we're going to create
arbitrary distinctions therein and presume to know everything about those
distinctions.

Another way to think about this is with an analogy: "non-lethal weapons"...
but then see [https://mic.com/articles/123410/nonlethal-weapons-are-
much-m...](https://mic.com/articles/123410/nonlethal-weapons-are-much-more-
lethal-than-police-want-you-to-think). It would seem smarter to start thinking
about things as "less" and "more" of something, rather than "non".

If you find some wavelength in the middle that seems to be safe, perhaps it is
safe in the near term, but when put in terms of "less ionizing than we can
notice" it doesn't sound like something I want to hold next to my brain for
the next 15 years.

Also note, it's already known that Bluetooth and WiFi cause the blood brain
barrier to become 10-100x more biologically leaky[1], letting more chemicals
into your brain.

Edit: apparently, this Bluetooth / WiFi point is moot.

1\.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8012056)

~~~
myblake
It's been a while since I took chemistry and physics so I could be wrong, but
I think you may be incorrect due to quantum effects. Specifically, the quantum
in quantum mechanics refers to various phenomena which are quantized, a very
common example of which is an electron moving to a different energy level.
It's entirely discrete what energy levels an electron may orbit an atomic
nucleus at, it's not a continuum, and for an electron to receive enough energy
to be free of the nucleus (causing the atom to become an ion) requires some
minimum energy level. Energy is directly proportional to wavelength in the
case of em radiation, so there in fact is some minimum energy required for
something to be "ionizing".

It is possible that other mechanisms cause cancer, but your conjecture is
almost certainly false. Someone who does this for a living please let me know
if there's clarification needed.

~~~
tiplus
You are somewhat correct. In principle the system is quantized but due to the
sheer number of degrees of freedom (or quantum states) the spectra may still
appear continuous.

Take for example a single water molecule in vacuum: If you calculate the QM
vibrational (motion of the nuclei) and electronic frequencies you would
conclude that there is no way that microwave radiation can excite a water
molecule. This is because the nuclei interact with three discrete (quantized)
frequencies in the infrared (IR light), whereas the electronic degrees of
freedom only interact with much higher energy photons (UV and above).

However, if you now move into the bulk, you will notice that there are is also
an interaction energy between the water molecules which causes rapid changes
in the water conformation at room temperature. From the quantum mechanical
perspective, you now get an explosion of possible states including states
which excite the hydrogen bond network between the water molecules. You can
now induce translation and rotation of water with respect to each other. This
is why water absorbs across a large spectrum of frequencies including
radiation in the microwave region.

For DNA, the situation is similar. You will also find a continuous broadening
of states. BUT how well you absorb energy at a given frequency still varies.
Cell phone bands do not carry enough energy to break electronic bonds directly
(unlike UV light). Instead, you can only induce thermal motions of the nuclei
(heat). Luckily, our DNA transfers excess heat very rapidly (~picoseconds) to
its environment, so no danger of local heating to the point of bond breaking
if you don't climb up a massive cell phone tower.

In the end, its very unlikely that cell phone radiation alters chemical bonds
in our DNA. However, beware of the sun while talking on the phone! I would
guess that outdoor usage of cell phone significantly increases the dangers of
cell phone usage. ;-)

------
hayitsbacon
"I suspect that this experiment is substantially underpowered and that the few
positive results found reflect false positive findings." \- Dr. Michael S
Lauer, Director of Cardiovascular Sciences at NHLBI. Peer Review in Appendix G
starting on page 36 of the study.

[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

~~~
cozzyd
Indeed, I did not find their response to this reviewer to address the
statistics criticisms satisfactory. Also, although they try to adjust for
this, I'm not sure if their rate correction fully corrects for longevity.

------
takluyver
These are partial results from a larger study:

"This report presents partial findings from these studies. The occurrences of
two tumor types in male Harlan Sprague Dawley rats exposed to RFR, malignant
gliomas in the brain and schwannomas of the heart, were considered of
particular interest"

So a key question should be: how many variables was the study looking at? If
they were testing 40 different things, you'd expect two 'significant' results
by chance.

The discussion also mentions that pooling other studies in the program, the
rate of gliomas in male controls is 11/550, rather than the 0/90 from this
study. The incidence in the test group (pooling all dose levels) is 11/540,
which is indistinguishable from that larger control group.

The numbers for heart schwannomas are a bit more compelling, but that's now
just one variable, so the question of how many things the experiment is
looking at is crucial.

------
tim333
From the paper a sample of 90 control rats had no cancer found while the
groups (90 in each) of rats exposed to radiation had between 0 and 3 instances
of cancer being found. I would have though the odds of it coming out like that
by chance would be fairly high.

I also note the control rats seemed to have survived less well "At the end of
the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of males than in all
2 groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR" which shows these things
are a bit random and would probably not justify saying cell radiation makes
you live longer.

~~~
wmeredith
The subtleness if the differences between the groups seems to undermine their
hypothesis. How are they saying this is statistically significant?

~~~
tim333
I'm not sure. Also from an NYT article:

>Also it was unusual that the control group had zero tumors. In previous
studies at the National Toxicology Program, an average of 2 percent of rats in
control groups developed gliomas. Had that happened in this study, there would
have been virtually no difference between the exposed rats and the controls.

------
BinaryIdiot
At the moment the wsj article doesn't correctly link to the abstract so I put
it in my post [1] (which also includes the full PDF link to the study [2]).

Considering there are an absolute _ton_ of studies showing there isn't a link
this is highly interesting. I'm not a telecom engineer so I don't entirely
understand the methodology but part of their pilot study was to test various
field strengths that do not raise the mouse or rat's body temperature (does
this mean they are not using the same field strength as our towers?). They
were also put into custom reverberation chambers; wouldn't that amplify or at
least repeat the signal? Or is that not an issue and if so, why?

Also this section has me confused (maybe I'm reading it incorrectly?):

 _" At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of
males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR. Survival
was also slightly lower in control females than in females exposed to 1.5 or 6
W/kg GSM-modulated RFR. In rats exposed to CDMA-modulated RFR, survival was
higher in all groups of exposed males and in the 6 W/kg females compared to
controls."_

This makes it sound like the ones exposed to RF lived _longer_ than those in
the control. Am I reading that right?

[1]
[http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699](http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699)

[2]
[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

------
lucaspiller
Ok this is the first study that says there is a link, but let's assume for a
moment that what it says is correct and it has the same effect in humans:
Would the same also be true for wifi?

According to Wikipedia the average cell phone TX power is 500 mW vs 200 mW for
802.11n [0]. Cell phones usually operate at lower frequency than wifi, however
wifi (at 2.4Ghz) is at the same frequency as microwave ovens.

In the study the rats were exposed for 10 minutes on - 10 minutes off for 18
hours a day (at an unknown TX power), if you work in an office you are going
to be exposed continuously (apart from coffee / lunch) for 9+ hours a day, and
even more if you then go home and use a wifi device.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm)

~~~
svantana
I think the reason why people worry about cell phones and not other radio
equipment is that they are transmitting very close to the body. Remember, EM
intensity falls off as 1/r^2 so proximity makes a big difference.

~~~
ptaipale
And a particularly stupid way to react to cell phone radiation fears is to
insist that cell network base stations should be moved away from schools and
there should be no wifi base stations. Think of our children!

What that means is, of course, increased exposure. The kids are not going to
give a way their phones, they'll continue using them. When there is no wifi,
they will be using the LTE or 3G or 2G networks. When the base station is
further away,the phone will transmit at higher power. The phone itself is by
far the dominant source of RF power to people's bodies.

Thus, ignorant parents want to decrease radiation, and the very proposals they
make would increase it. Whether that really has any impact, we don't know,
there's no proof, or a good theory about possible mechanisms, just
speculation, mostly based on fear and suspicion.

~~~
derptacious
Indeed, increasing and improving technology and reducing exposure can go hand-
in-hand, and it seems that many people don't understand this. More antennas;
less power.

------
oskansavli
Similar article but no subscription required:
[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-
study...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/05/federal-study-links-
cell-phone-radiation-cancer)

------
mijustin
I'm especially interested in hearing how this study is different than this one
in 2011:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3141594)

------
yc-kraln
Study proves cell phone radiation makes you live longer!

What about the huge, decades long study run by various governments with
hundreds of thousands of people showing no association?

~~~
LoSboccacc
yeah. one would say that even before study, this

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_othe...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/brain_other_cns_incidence.jpg)

and this

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_i...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/leukemia_incidence.jpg)

would show at least some acceleration

the only thing that really moved the average:

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/all_sites_combined_incidence.jpg)

was this, I think related to HIV:

[http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sar...](http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/images/cancer_2020/kaposi_sarcoma_incidence.jpg)

------
tedsanders
A take from one of my favorite medical bloggers:

>Where to begin? I didn’t see any sample size calculation, nor any discussion
of what they expected to see. One of the reviewers did a power calculation for
them (page 37) and found that based on 90 rats per group, the power was about
14%. This means that false positives are very likely. The cancer difference
was only seen in females, not males. The incidence of brain cancer in the
exposed groups was well within the historical range. There’s no clear dose
response. Why schwannomas? Schwannomas in other locations than the heart were
not significantly different. These are rats. I don’t know how this compares to
real world exposure. And one more thing – the survival of male rats in the
control group was relatively low, and if these tumors developed later in life,
this could be the whole reason for the difference.

>Cell phones are UBIQUITOUS in the United States. If they were causing cancer,
we would expect to see rates of [brain] cancer going up, right? That’s not
what we’re seeing. They’ve been decreasing since the late 1980’s. At least
when we talk about vaccines and autism, the rates of the latter went up as we
increased the former. With cell phones, there’s an inverse relationship.
What’s going on?

I suggest reading the whole post.

Personally, I am unconcerned by this single study of rats, in groups of only
90, that found barely significant correlations out of many possible
correlations looked for.

[http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-
can-...](http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/none-of-you-can-troll-me-
like-austin-can-also-cell-phones-and-cancer-again/)

------
franky303
Well ... 900 MHz. GSM. CDMA. - Sounds like outdated to me. What about what we
are using daily e.g. 2.6 GHz LTE and 3G signals.

~~~
agumonkey
What about wifi ? Since I, we, are sitting next to routers all day long, which
I guess are sending more EMW energy through us than 3G towers.

~~~
maxerickson
The exposure from towers and base stations will be tiny compared to the
exposure from devices. Inverse square law and all that.

~~~
Gnarl
With regard to cell-towers: the inverse-square law will underestimate your
radiation exposure from a cell-tower, because they are directional and the
inv.sq.law relates only to to perfectly isotropic radiators. In other words:
you need to factor the cell-tower antenna gain (typically between 7-10dB) into
your calculation.

------
mr_sturd
This paper was linked, on a MotherJones article, found via the "web" link.

[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

------
bikamonki
[http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

------
fyhhvvfddhv
If cellphones and WiFi caused cancer you'd think we would see the cancer rates
explode over the past 20 years. Have they?

~~~
tfm
Cancer is a very broad church. There have been a lot of lifestyle changes over
the last twenty years, very difficult to specify control groups ....

~~~
bkmartin
You could possibly use the Amish as a control group. They are probably exposed
less than almost any other group to these types of radiation due to their
distance in proximity. They, of course, do come into contact with it in minor
ways when interacting in public, but far far less than the general population.

~~~
dragonwriter
That's actually a bad control group; you want some group whose lifestyle,
including lifestyle changes, matches pretty well the rest of society _but for_
exposure to the kind of radiating devices at issue, to isolate changes due to
the effects of the devices at issue from the effects of other lifestyle
changes.

Since the Amish lifestyle and lifestyle changes over the time period of
interest don't match the general public in ways _other_ than cellphone/wifi
exposure, they aren't really a good control.

------
Keyframe
I'm too much of an idiot here. What frequencies, range, power? How about other
ubiquitous signals like Wi-Fi?

~~~
aortega
Wifi exposure using a computer should be hundreds of times lower than a
cellphone that is emitting radio at full power next to your head.

If you are talking about Wifi in your phone, its' basically the same
effect/power as GSM/CDMA.

~~~
Keyframe
Ah yes, sorry, wifi in phone! Thanks.

------
rrggrr
Sanity check: This was 9 hours per day exposure equivalency for their entire
lifetime. Consume or use almost anything at the same cycle over your lifetime
and one can expect blow back.

------
ChartsNGraffs
"The tumors were gliomas, which are in the glial cells of the brain, and
schwannomas of the heart."

I know these are real words, but you gotta admit they sound strikingly
fictitious.

------
Confusion
One in 20 studies will find that, with 95% certainty, there is a link. You can
easily find 19 others that found that, with 95% certainty, there is no link.

~~~
kome
To be fair, a meta-analysis is already done, and it proves there is a link:
[http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/](http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/)

~~~
takluyver
That article does not describe a meta-analysis (or at least it's not clear
that it does), and it certainly doesn't 'prove' a link. They classified it as
'possibly carcinogenic' because there is some evidence indicating that it
increases the risk of cancer. The evidence is inconsistent, and applying the
precautionary principle doesn't 'prove' something.

------
elchief
Does this same paper come out every five years, or is it just me?

------
arrty88
ok, now lets check wifi a/b/g/n

------
Zelmor
Paywall

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Click the "web" link below the title.

~~~
__david__
I feel like I'm missing something. Here's what I see:
[http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/GAGo2y5.jpg)

What should I click on?

~~~
adrianN
Look at the top of the HN page. Under the article's title that links to its
website, there is a "web" link.

------
colordrops
In a similar vein, don't even think of questioning GMOs. You even just hint
that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will be torn limb from
limb, even if you admit to trusting them and eating them yourself.

~~~
epistasis
That's because there already have been many many studies, and regulations
require that each new food GMO be studied as well. If you don't mention all
those, I'm guess the "tearing limb from limb" is actually annoyance at your
ignorance.

~~~
colordrops
You and others proved my point. I wasn't even criticizing GMOs myself, only
talking about the dialogue about them, and still downvoted immediately and
responded to negatively. There is no other tech on this planet with the same
rabidly fervent support as GMOs that disallows even discussion about
discussion.

~~~
epistasis
Well I didn't downvote you, but if you refuse to even acknowledge that "torn
limb from limb" is just annoyance with your inability to acknowledge the
existing information, then perhaps the fault is with you and not others.

One might also say that there is no tech with as rabidly fervent detractors as
GMO. I don't really care about the technology much, and for some reason you
think I'm a fervent supporter! Ridiculous.

~~~
colordrops
I'm not really just speaking about you. It is near impossible to speak about
GMOs in anything but glowing terms pretty much anywhere on the internet.

I have no idea what you are speaking about regarding ignoring existing
information by the way. I didn't even mention any specifics.

~~~
epistasis
Another area besides GMOs where you're going to experience a visceral reaction
for offhanded skepticism is evolution. Saying, "I think we need more studies
on evolution" has implicit in it the assumption that we don't know much about
it. While of course we have a lot left to discover on evolution, making that
statement without acknowledging that we do know a lot about evolution and its
status is not in doubt, will put you in the nutter category that denies that
evolution is a fact.

Similarly, if somebody tells me "I think we need to study climate change more
before we can tell if humans are causing it," then I'm going to challenge them
to actually tell me what they know, and why they ignore the science.

If you've never encountered somebody that's spreading similar FUD around the
science around GMOs, then great. But anybody who's informed about the actual
science of GMOs is going to be somewhat put off by uninformed skepticism of
the science that is endemic in the general population.

There's a huge body of evidence that GMOs are safe, over decades, that
rigorously assessed safety of many types of GMOs (each one of course is unique
and presents its own unique potential risks). Despite this huge amount of
study, no safety concerns for food have been found. Yet I still get regular
emails about, say, the impacts on monarch butterflies, when in fact that
early-stage study was followed up upon in a conclusive manner, and the early-
stage concerns were not found to be significant.

Any reasonable discussion of GMOs must acknowledge what we already know about
GMOs. I don't know who you're talking to where you get shut down form talking
about it, but in my experience that feeling comes from those who refuse to lok
at the data that's out there that may not support their presuppositions.

~~~
colordrops
You see though, you don't even know the details of my thoughts and you build a
strawman that doesn't resemble them.

To be clear, by your analogy, I do believe that GMOs exist.

Jokes aside, GMOs are not a binary proposition, like the question on global
warming or evolution, which is whether the theories are true or not. The
question is two fold - whether individual GMO crops are safe or not, and
whether it is possible that harmful GMOs are possible at all. The answer to
the first question seems to be that existing crops are safe, based on several
studies. The answer to the second is easy - yes, harmful GMOs are obviously
possible - it doesn't seem all that difficult for instance to insert a gene
from a toxic organism into a food plant. Not that anyone would do that, but
it's physically possible. People conflate these two questions, which is where
the crazy internet arguments come from.

Considering that it is indeed possible to create a harmful GMO, and
considering that we barely understand how regular old nonmodified genes
operates in relation to the entire organism, it is neither unscientific nor
absurd to question whether subtle problems could arise from transgenetic
modification. Current safety testing involves statistical studies across time
and subjects, looking for correlations between the crop and harmful effects.
It is impossible to simulate from first principals and predict all effects to
an organism and its ecosystem due to the countless parameters involved.
Science doesn't prove anything - it only posits theories and strengthens them
with evidence, which could always be overturned with future data. To claim
otherwise is the true anti-science stance.

~~~
epistasis
Let's go back to your original statement, that baited me into responding:

>You even just hint that you wanna see more studies on their safety you will
be torn limb from limb

So what more studies do you want to see on their safety that hasn't yet been
performed, or would not be required by law for a new GMO?

You started with persecuted hyperbole, but now it seems to have come to this:

>Considering that it is indeed possible to create a harmful GMO, and
considering that we barely understand how regular old nonmodified genes
operates in relation to the entire organism, it is neither unscientific nor
absurd to question whether subtle problems could arise from transgenetic
modification

which is essentially "we don't know everything about gene regulation,
therefore anything could happen." This is somewhat fallacious.

Well, really, nearly anything could happen. But it's all about chances of bad
things happening. Maybe due to random quantum fluctuations, my fingernail
turns into a blackhole. The risk of that is extremely small.

We spent many many decades bombarding plants with ionizing radiation in order
to mutate them into better species, a roll of the dice every time. Most of
these mutations were not desirable, but a very small few were desirable. Now
we can be more focussed rather than just rolling the dice billions of times.

We base risk on the amount of experience we have with things, certain
behaviors become less and less likely. Introducing non-native species to
control some part of the ecosystem has proven to be exceptionally risky, for
example. Randomly mutating plants with lots of radiation has not proven to be
very risky. So far, genetically modifying them has not proven to be risky
either.

If there's some potential risk that you can specifically determine that should
be tested for, but is not currently, please publish your findings. But in all
these paragraphs you've said nothing that would not be considered in the first
five minutes by a thoughtful scientist, so I doubt that you have any deep
insight here. I'm officially putting you into the nutter category. Consider
this me wanting to tear your metaphorical limbs off ;) You have been
vindicated in that sense...

~~~
colordrops
> I'm officially putting you into the nutter category.

Insults and invective make you come off as immature and are explicitly
disallowed on HN. You should be able to stand by the strength of your
argument. If you feel it is too weak so that you must resort to epithets, then
maybe you should keep your comments to yourself. I said nothing that I haven't
tried to reason out, and am totally open to discussion, but you don't seem to
be interested in having a discussion in good faith. if an expert in
programming was discussing with a beginner making wildly wrong assertions, do
you think calling that beginner a "nutter" would be in order? You seem to
think you have a strong grasp of the subject, and I am clueless, so educate
rather than insult.

I do have a response to your comment here, but I will only continue if you
agree to discuss in good faith. I am not so hard headed as to be closed to new
ideas, but I will not just throw everything out the window before thinking
critically about the facts and understanding the merits and flaws in both my
and your argument.

~~~
epistasis
I apologize for insulting you.

However, I don't think that either of us see any incentive for continuing this
off topic discussion.

------
Vanit
Eck, worth mentioning that science is done by consensus. Individual studies
might be interesting, but it means nothing until it's shown in the context of
an aggregated review.

~~~
makach
So this is the one report people will refer to when they will justify their
views on mobile use

------
Frompo
So anyone know if the WSJ has accepted climate change and apologised for
denying it for decades? Or are they still to be considered unreliable handlers
of science findings?

------
homero
I don't think this applies anymore due to no one using phones as phones
anymore and when they do it's hands free. No more antenna to head.

Also modern phones transmit at the bottom of the device. Lastly radio power is
much lower now due to much smaller cells.

------
kome
Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are like cigarettes in the '50s. A huge lobby
pretend they are just fine, people are in denial because they love them and we
lack of longitudinal data about their effects on health.

But thanks to further research, and time, we are starting to understand better
the effects of cellphone radiation on health. The World Health Organization
already had a rapport in 2011 about cellphones possible dangers:
[http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/](http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/)

Meanwhile, people should learn to use cellphones in a healthy way, and not
living 24/24h with them (during sleep, for example). And at home would be
better using cables instead of Wi-Fi...

~~~
tim333
Cellphones or Wi-Fi today are unlike cigarettes in the '50s in that if you run
the numbers cigarettes cause loads of deaths (maybe 10 years off lifespan)
while the effects of Cellphones and Wi-Fi if they cause any harm are so small
as to be pretty much undetectable (see eg [http://bigthink.com/laurie-
vazquez/your-cellphone-absolutely...](http://bigthink.com/laurie-vazquez/your-
cellphone-absolutely-will-not-give-you-brain-cancer)).

If there's a modern equivalent to cigarettes it's probably air pollution which
can probably knock about a decade off your life in the worst places. ("Life
expectancy is 5.5 years lower in northern China than in the south because of
heavy air pollution, a new study examining 20 years of data has
determined."...). Or maybe sugary food.

~~~
tedsanders
Don't put faith in that Chinese pollution study. Their "statistically
significant" discontinuity in life expectancy only happened because they chose
to fit the data with a strange third order polynomial plus step function. Take
a look at the data behind that China pollution study and see if you would draw
the same fit line: [http://andrewgelman.com/2013/08/05/evidence-on-the-impact-
of...](http://andrewgelman.com/2013/08/05/evidence-on-the-impact-of-sustained-
use-of-polynomial-regression-on-causal-inference-a-claim-that-coal-heating-is-
reducing-lifespan-by-5-years-for-half-a-billion-people/)

There's so much bad science in the world. :(

------
voltagex_
Sigh, this isn't going to help the (mentally ill?) people who believe
cellphones / wifi are making them sick. I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it
needs some careful reading to determine actual risk.

And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop using
them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> I wish this study wasn't paywalled, it needs some careful reading to
> determine actual risk.

It's not paywalled. It's linked in the article as well as in other articles.
Take a look here:
[http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.f...](http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/05/26/055699.full.pdf)

> And then, if phones are causing cancer? Do you think everyone will stop
> using them? Do you think Apple will go bankrupt?

Everything comes with a risk. If phones _really do_ cause cancer we need to
figure out the possibility and weigh it. It's likely very small if it exists
whereas every person in the United States, over an average life time, has an
almost 2% chance of dying in a car (which is insanely high when you think
about it) and yet we're still using cars, non-stop.

~~~
voltagex_
Thanks.

