Further Criticisms of the BMJ Danish Study
1) From Mona Nilsson with a Google translation:
Danish article in the “¯Ingenjƶren”¯:
http://ing.dk/artikel/123444-who-ekspert-kalder-dansk-kraeftstudie-af-mobilstraaling-fejlagtig
Criticism of the article in the British Medical Journal
BMJ: Use of mobile phones and risk of Brain Tumour: update of Danish cohort study
By Torben R. Simonsen, Friday 28th October 2011 pm. 07:12
In last week, Jorgen H. Olsen, head of research in Cancer, concluded that the use of mobile phones does not increase the risk of brain cancer.
The conclusion is based on the largest cohort study (observational study in which a study group followed over time) of cancers among mobile users who goes back to the 1990s when the first cell phones came out.
But the study did not include 200,000 mobile users who have had the phone made available through the work.
Instead, people ended up in the category called “non-mobile users.”
It meets international criticism.
“The exclusion of the 200,507 business users – mobile users, who presumably must be considered as heavy users – seems remarkable. Especially when users mistakenly shows up in the category of users who have not been exposed to mobile radiation, “says Robert Baan to ing.dk. He is responsible publication in WHO’s IARC working group on mobile phone radiation.
Earlier this year IARC established a working group called 2B-risk assessment of mobile phone radiation, because the working group found that among the most active mobile users had a small increased risk of developing brain cancer.
Also in the British Medical Journal’s own website where the survey from Cancer Society is published, a number of people with strong criticism of the study.
“The limitations of the study makes meaningful analysis and conclusions virtually impossible,” writes the British NGO Power Watch.
Power Watch criticizes, among other things, that the study does not take into account the many people who receive the mobile phone provided on the job, and are likely to be among the most active users, but there is also criticism that you know nothing about how much people actually used the phone.
The reason that the study did not include the 200,000 users with business phone, is that the study is based on early subscription records from mobile operators from the 1990s.
Using social security numbers has been possible to follow the early subscribers over time to see if there was an increased tendency for the later life was affected by brain cancer.
But workers with business phone is not registered with personal and therefore has not been possible to follow their development of this group.
Although they represent 30 percent of the total subscription base, is the 200,000 people in the study ended in the group of ‘non-mobile users. ”
2) From Lennart Hardell:
There are so many problems with this study so at first glance it seems just to be uniformative.
Again Feycting and Ahblom just pick up a single quote form a specific publication to try to show that we are out in the desert. They ignore our pooled results for the time period 1997-2003 showing increasing risk with latency.
Furthermore as long as the mechanism is unclear we can not disregard short latency. There mighet be a promotor effect, initiator or both.
Obviously we need to rebut in the very journal after careful evaluation of the study and the editorial.
We sent a letter to JNCI Aug 28 re. the Cefalo publication as well as about the the editorial. So long to that, that is we have heard nothing. So these journals publish rubbish data and ignore commentaries?
Kind regards,
Lennart Hardell
3) From Charlie Teo:
….after looking at the Methods and make-up of the 2 cohorts, it”™s no wonder the “non subscribers”¯ have a higher incidence of tumours…..they include more people with higher rates of usage than the “subscribers”¯ !!!!
Can”™t believe the BMJ would publish such irresponsible rubbish.
Charlie Teo AM
Conjoint Assoc. Professor UNSW
Director; Centre for Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery
POW Private Hospital
Barker Street, Randwick NSW 2022
Australia