Friday, 22 December 2000
1. CELL PHONES AND CANCER: DOES THIS STORY SOUND FAMILIAR?
It
should, it features many of the same players who brought you the
power line controversy. It began on Jan 23, 1993; a guest on
Larry King Live, whose wife had died of brain cancer, was suing
the cell-phone industry, claiming her cancer was caused by a cell
phone: "She held it against her head, and she talked on it all
the time," he said
(WN 29 Jan 93).
With such "evidence," story
after story in the media focused on the cancer question. At that
time, people still thought power lines caused cancer. The power
line controversy was not put to rest until the National Cancer
Institute released a definitive epidemiological study of the
connection between childhood cancer and residential EMF exposure.
Any link, the study concluded, is too weak to detect or to be
concerned about. This week, two major studies of cell phone use
and cancer were published, one by an industry group and one by
the National Cancer Institute. Both concluded that cell phone
users are no more likely than anyone else to have brain cancer.
2. STILL NOT REASSURED? YOU MAY NEED "THE BIOCHIP."
Back when
people still thought they could get cancer from sitting in front
of their computer, Ted Litovitz, a Catholic University physicist,
thought the problem must be the coherent EMF from the computer.
So he began marketing a keyboard that added noise to the emitted EMF
(WN 27 May 94).
If cell phones are now causing cancer, it
must be those pesky sine waves again. Solution? The BioChip, a
tiny device inserted in the batteries. It emits noise to prevent
your body from picking up the regular rhythm of the phone signal.
3. NEED MORE REASSURANCE? HOW ABOUT THE "BIOELECTRIC SHIELD"?
It's an attractive pendant made of crystals designed to balance
and strengthen your natural energy field
(WN 24 Jul 98).
It not only shields you from the EMF emanating from electrical devices,
it protects you from the energy fields of the people around you.
4. DOE: "CRISIS" REPORT CALLS FOR RESTRUCTURING.
A high-level
panel chaired by Robert C. Richardson, Cornell Vice Provost for
Research and a physics Nobel laureate, notes that "problems in
the DOE weapons and environmental programs have given the overall
agency a negative image that, in practice, has proved damaging to
all of DOE, including its missions in science and energy." The
eleven-member panel collectively embodies decades of experience
in setting science research policy. In a brief report stamped
"CRISIS," issued this week, the panel proposes to correct this
problem by restructuring DOE. This would involve either breaking
the department up and combining its science and energy research
roles with NIST and NOAA to form a "21st Century Department of
Commerce," or elevating the Director of the DOE Office of Science
to the rank of "Under Secretary for Science and Energy with
additional responsibilities as Science Advisor to the Secretary."
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