Dear Editor,
Jeff Silva wonders why all mobile-phone health suits have headed south (Opinion, RCR Wireless News, June 9). Perhaps, he suggests, the judge who threw out one major case was irked by the cost of hot dogs in the local baseball park.
Come on now. At least in the United States, legal decisions are constrained by legal criteria, such as the Federal Rules of Evidence regarding the admissibility of expert testimony. Anybody reading Judge Blake’s scathing ruling in the Newman brain tumor case would have no doubt why she threw out the case. And if her ruling is reversed, it will be for legal reasons that are invisible to readers of Silva’s column.
It is a free country, and journalists can spin the news as they wish. But RCR Wireless News owes its readers a more careful analysis of the health effects issue than it has been providing to date.
Kenneth R. Foster
University of Pennsylvania
