WASHINGTON-The mobile-phone industry, buoyed last week by the third study in two months that failed to link mobile phones to brain cancer and other diseases, still remains mired in mushrooming litigation.
Motorola Inc., the nation’s top mobile-phone manufacturer and a defendant in several suits, has filed court papers seeking to have the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturn a lower court ruling that dealt the industry’s pre-emption defense a devastating blow three weeks ago. Plaintiffs in the case argue that wireless firms, knowing mobile phones could pose a health risk, should have supplied headsets with phones to minimize the possibility of brain cancer and should now pay for medical monitoring going forward.
In the handful of mobile-phone-cancer lawsuits filed since the early 1990s, industry lawyers have successfully invoked the federal pre-emption doctrine to get cases dismissed. Industry lawyers argue mobile-phone-cancer claims are barred as a matter of law because the FDA has jurisdiction over radiation-emitting devices and has refrained from removing mobile phones from the market for health reasons.
At the same time, the FDA says cell phones cannot be declared safe until more research is done. The FDA is working with the wireless industry to replicate research that found genetic damage to human blood exposed to mobile-phone radiation.
In addition to the New Orleans class-action lawsuit, similar litigation is pending in Maryland, Georgia and Nevada.
In Illinois, the state supreme court late last month gave the go-ahead to a nationwide class-action suit alleging privacy invasion and a health-risk cover-up in connection with an epidemiology study funded by members of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. There are growing indications that plaintiff’s lawyers in different suits may be considering to combine forces just as the wireless industry has done in defending itself in litigation.
Despite the legal setbacks, the industry got more good news last week in the form of new Danish epidemiology study-the largest of its kind to date-that did not find an association between mobile phones and brain cancer.
The study, published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, follows on the heels of two recently published epidemiology studies that also failed to link mobile phones to brain tumors, leukemia and other cancers.
Danish researchers tracked more than 420,000 mobile-phone subscribers from 1982 to 1995. Because of the size and scope of the study, industry and some researchers have given it prominence.
“It’s big. It looked at all kinds of cancers-including brain cancer-and found none,” said Dr. John Moulder, professor of radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Moulder, often quoted in the media as saying mobile phones are safe, told RCR Wireless News he has been contacted by industry lawyers and likely will be a paid expert witness for the defense in pending phone-cancer litigation. Moulder also said he has been contacted by Wall Street investment firms about alleged mobile-phone health risks, suggesting the financial community may be getting nervous about the growing number of lawsuits.
The wireless industry greeted the Danish study as more proof that the nation’s 109 million mobile phone users are safe from any health hazard.
CTIA called the Danish study “a welcome addition to the larger body of rigorous scientific research which has examined this issue.”
The Danish study, however, is unlikely to defuse the cell-phone-cancer controversy. Other studies have found DNA breaks, genetic damage, increase cancer in lab rats, eye cancer and other bioeffects from mobile-phone radiation.
The scientist who directed a six-year, $28 million research program that found genetic damage in laboratory experiments, said the Danish research has limited value because most of the mobile-phone subscribers in the study used phones less than one or two years. Moreover, Dr. George Carlo, author of a new book on backroom politics behind the cellular industry-funded cancer research he headed, said the study failed to take into account the level of mobile-phone usage of subscribers.
“These are very dangerous reassurances that are being put out in the public domain. They are unsupportable,” said Carlo. Carlo pointed out that, aside from the last three epidemiology studies, the four epidemilogy studies that preceded them did indicate a causation between mobile phones and cancer.
