WASHINGTON-As Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) examines replies due today from the Food and Drug Administration to questions on the agency’s oversight of a cellular industry-financed cancer research program that has produced no bioeffects studies after four years and $17 million, the question of the government’s role in science looms large.
Until he reviews FDA responses, Markey said he will withhold judgment on the FDA, the cellular industry and Wireless Technology Research L.L.C.
The debate over whether a cellular-cancer link exists extends well beyond U.S. borders. Europe, Australia and New Zealand are investigating the issue and plan to do RF research.
Just last week, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported that doctors at a seminar in Sydney “warned that the links between mobile phones and health dangers are conclusive and if phone companies and government don’t take action they will face legal problems.”
The Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, according to the broadcast, said there is no substantial evidence that using mobile phones is a health hazard. That is the position of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, which along with WTR and individual cellular firms, finds itself in court.
WTR-established four years ago after a highly publicized Florida lawsuit pointed to cellular phone use as the cause of a woman’s fatal brain cancer-was promised $25 million by wireless carriers and manufacturers to conduct multiple animal and cell culture radiofrequency radiation exposure experiments as well as a series of epidemiology studies over five years.
But nearing the start of the final year of the program, WTR has produced one epidemiology study whose results and methodology have come under scrutiny from scientists and lawyers.
WTR Chairman Dr. George Carlo, who has come under intensified examination by the press, Congress and industry, argues his program and its objectives have been misunderstood.
As such, Carlo is distancing himself increasingly from his 1994 research agenda that outlined and emphasized a comprehensive program of basic RF bioffects studies that WTR was to perform with an unprecedented $25 million budget.
Now, with little likelihood the program will produce much, if any, new bio-effects results and with time running out, Carlo is putting more emphasis on post-market surveillance. But he has yet to give a detailed public accounting of the $17 million donated by the industry that has been spent to date. The FDA, in a recent letter to Carlo, strongly stressed more RF bioffects research in the face of contemporary studies that signaled the possibility of biological harm from cell phone exposure.
For now, Markey is looking to the FDA for answers.
“I have to rely on the expert agency,” Markey told RCR in an interview last week.
But Markey, arguably the most influential Democratic telecommunications policymaker in the House, said he firmly believes government has a key role in ensuring that pocket telephones do not pose a health risk and that consumers are owed no less.
“The government has a responsibility to assure the public that these products are safe,” Markey stated.
The Federal Communications Commission has auctioned off $22 billion of wireless telecom licenses during the past three years. Most of that money headed for the U.S. Treasury has come from pocket telephone license sales.
“From a consumer standpoint, it would be good to have reliable scientific data on the question of health effects exposure to RF,” said Markey.
Indeed the lack of new RF research WTR was supposed to produce is having repercussions in the bustling mobile phone industry, which boasts 45 million subscribers and 40 percent growth.
Today, wireless carriers are routinely grilled about potential RF health risks when seeking antenna siting approvals from local governments. The lack of fresh research keeps the issue alive and open to wide speculation. Do phones cause brain cancer, headaches, Alzheimer’s disease, cataracts and other maladies?
The arrival of current, precise RF research was to demystify those questions.
The lackluster industry-funded RF research program, combined with a leaked 1994 Motorola Inc. memo having WTR and the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association in a media plan to discredit University of Washington findings of single- and double-strand DNA breaks in rats exposed to low-level microwave (2.45 GHz) radiation after two hours, has raised suspicion about the independence of WTR. And about the motives of the cellular industry.
Meanwhile, antenna siting delays-fueled in part by RF health risk uncertainty-dominate the wireless landscape and thwart government goals of competition and lower prices for consumers.
The failure of the wireless industry to produce research and industry’s quick denunciation of independent research that suggests pocket phones may pose a public health risk begs the question: Where does government fit into the equation?
The national spotlight is shining brightly on that question in connection with the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries today.
Liggett Group Inc., the nation’s smallest major tobacco firm, recently publicly admitted as part of a legal settlement that cigarettes are addictive, that the product causes fatal illness and that its marketing targets young adults.
Major tobacco companies, which like Liggett have their own in-house scientists, say Liggett speaks for itself.
Critics point out that three years ago tobacco executives under oath told a congressional panel that tobacco products do not cause cancer and that nicotine is not addictive.
More recently, major U.S. newspapers reported that a pharmaceutical company suppressed a university study it funded that concluded its high-priced thyroid medication is no better than less expensive generic drugs. The delay in revealing the finding is said to have cost American consumers $2 billion.
Dr. Henry Lai, part of the University of Washington research team that found RF-exposure induced DNA breaks in rats, said he believes the wireless industry and WTR conspired to quash his research findings.
Initially, the cellular industry and the FDA were to work together in a cooperative cancer research project that carriers and manufacturers would fund. But the cellular industry backed out at the last minute and handed the program over to Carlo, an epidemiologist with no previous RF background.
Congressman Markey’s focus on government’s role led him to ask the FDA what government or government-funded RF research exists today.
It turns out researchers at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, generally regarded as the site of the biggest and best equipped RF bioffects research facility in the world, submitted several RF proposals to WTR.
None of those proposals received funding from WTR.
