WASHINGTON-The five-year, $25 million industry-funded research program on potential cancer risks from pocket telephones will come to a screeching halt unless wireless carriers and manufacturers agree to indemnify scientists named in several pending lawsuits, according to the project director.
“This is a serious issue for all involved,” said Dr. George Carlo, head of Wireless Technology Research L.L.C. “Certainly, the lawsuits have had a chilling effect on the entire scientific data,” he stated.
The indemnification snafu further complicates a research program that began with great promise in 1993, after a highly publicized Florida lawsuit claimed a woman’s fatal brain cancer was caused by her cellular phone, but has since been beset with legal, funding and administrative problems.
Carlo, though, said he remained optimistic about the indemnification issue being resolved soon, and predicted “significant results” when the program concludes in a year and a half.
Some lawsuits involve health-related claims, one alleges an industry coverup of potential health risks from cellular phones and another deals with privacy of cellular billing and medical records for a WTR epidemiology study.
There have been no legal judgments against the wireless industry to date related to cancer claims.
WTR, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and wireless carriers and manufacturers are defendants in one or more of the lawsuits.
Thomas Wheeler, president of CTIA, said wireless firms are not ready to sign a blank check to indemnify WTR researchers. Wheeler expressed disappointment about the delay caused by “strike lawyers” at arguably the most critical stage of the program-dosing rats with radio frequency radiation. He said the deadlock between researchers and the wireless industry over indemnification must be broken, but was far more cautious than Carlo about when that might happen.
Yet, even if industry agrees to cover legal costs and any monetary judgments against the scientists as a result of the lawsuits, Carlo acknowledged the program-now in its fourth year-will fall short of the objectives outlined in WTR’s August 1994 research agenda because of money shortfalls.
In that document, WTR sketched out a comprehensive research plan for dosimetry, epidemiology, toxicology and animal RF exposure studies.
But at a symposium last Monday in which WTR issued final recommendations for curbing pocket phone interference with cardiac pacemakers, Carlo confirmed what many have speculated for months: Short-term (90-day) rather than lifetime (2-year) rat RF exposure studies will be conducted.
Carlo said it was necessary to dose rats over three months before determining whether to subject the rodents to RF over their lifetimes.
While sub-chronic RF exposure experiments can be valuable, the results they yield are limited and cannot necessarily be extrapolated. WTR concedes as much in its 1994 research agenda.
“Any experiment designed to have the necessary sensitivity to non-heating environmental electromagnetic fields should take account of continuing biological processes that develop over the whole lifespan of the animal,” said Dr. W. Ross Adey, associate chief for research and development at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans’ Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif.
“Therefore,” said Adey, “it may be less than prudent to anticipate significant results from relatively short-term exposures.”
Adey in June completed a lifetime rat RF exposure experiment for Motorola Inc. and found that, while pocket phones did not promote cancer, a bioeffect-possibly one that would inhibit cancer-cropped up.
Short-term rat RF exposure experiments pose another dilemma: WTR and the wireless industry could be made vulnerable to claims that sub-chronic dosing was chosen to reduce the possibility of finding a negative bioeffect that a lifetime study might produce.
The RF health issue comes up often in antenna siting, but the new telecom law forbids local governments from denying tower approval based on public health concerns if the carrier complies with Federal Communications Commission safety guidelines.
