Cell Phones and Brain Tumors

To begin this post, I must give a disclaimer: I am not a cancer researcher, so my observations on this matter are at best cursory.

Today, at the Huffington Post, I stumbled across this article: No Cell Phone-Brain Tumor Link, Latest Study Finds. The study was conducted in Denmark, finding no real link between the two things, as opposed to a recent classification by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that cell phones do cause cancer.

This is dangerous science: it is a battle of misinformation and I think the press has a duty to prevent premature story-breaking. We haven't had the technology of mobile phones long enough to link the use to brain cancer. What is harder is to compare usage over a population that doesn't use the devices (of many different makes, shapes, and sizes) uniformly.

A bombastic and sensational headline is not informative and causes reactions that are exaggerated (like throwing a cancer-phone into the river).

I have a mild suggestion: Let's wait a few more years (or 5 or 10) before we start pointing the finger at cell phones. Just think--we might not need to put it next to our ears in the future with Bluetooth or headsets.