Recent research: The Adelaide mice study

In late April 1997, the results of an extremely important Australian research study into the biological effects of radiation from digital cellular phones were released. The study's findings have aroused great interest around the world - but were hardly reported in Australia's own news media. Here's a rundown on what the study found and why it's important, plus some insight into the way it's been quietly swept under the media carpet

·By Stewart Fist

Many years back, before my conscience began to bother me, I spent a few years as a public relations consultant with the world's second largest PR company. In the process, I learned how easy it is to manipulate the media - we did it on a daily basis.

One whole sub-section of public relations is devoted to what they now call Crisis or Risk Management. And, in America if your company faces substantial health or environmental problems, you can hire specialist crisis-management corporations with a 'scientific-research' front, which often promote themselves as "Risk Analysts'. These people will take over the scientific tasks of independently proving your product/service to be safe, and they usually save a lot of time and avoid confusion by writing the research conclusions first.

To a very large degree, research into the safety of cellular phones in most of the worked has been conducted in this way for many years. In fact, it has earned the reputation of being 'tobacco science'. There are some truly independent researchers working in the field, on both sides of the debate - bit also a lot of charlatans and fundamentalists. There are also activists and their scientific supporters, who oppose cell phones (in particular towers), in a sort-of aesthetics-health-environment-religous way.

However the ones with the money are PR and mercenary-science companies, and they are now highly skilled in various ways of defusing issues - mainly the judicial and selective release of information to selected parts of the media.

Late in April, either deliberately or accidentally, this was done with some very disturbing news about Australian research conducted over four years, into cellular phones and their potential to cause or promote tumours.

Telstra executives were running around in a semi-panic all week, and they hastily organised, with the help of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, a video-conference bringing in Dr Michael Repacholi from Geneva to officially announce the report and explain why it was insignificant.

Journalists who have been keenly awaiting the release, and writing about cell-phone and health issues for a few years, were not invited to the video conference. None of the most prominent Australian research scientists working in this area were present, nor were the scientist who conducted the research, or even oncologists from the hospital itself.

Then on the Monday morning (28th April), on the anniversary of the Port Arthur Massacre, details of the report were leaked to the Hobart Mercury, two days before the official release. This ploy effectively killed the interest of the national newspapers in the story, so it received scant treatment.

The full details of this most important piece of research are:

Four years ago, Telstra agreed to fund a research program to investigate claimed links between cellular phones and cancer. The funding was organised by physicist Dr Michael Repacholi, who has been working through the Australian Radiation Research Laboratories and Royal Adelaide Hospital, and had long been a vocal spokesman for the position that 'cell phones have no real or potential adverse health effects'.

Repacholi involved Professor Tony Basten, Executive Director of the Centenary Institute of Cancer Medicine and Cell Biology at the University of Sydney; Dr Alan Harris, a cancer biologist from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Melbourne; and statistician Val Gebski of the NHMRC. Repacholi them left early in the program, to take up a job with the World Health Organisation in Geneva.

Since the funding had some from Telstra, the scientists insisted that the research protocols should be established and supervised through the independent National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC), to ensure that Telstra had no influence over the results. It took nearly six months to formulate acceptable protocols with Telstra and to obtain 200 specially-sensitive transgenic mice. These mice were bred to be highly sensitive to external impacts on the T-cells of their immune system.

The mice were divided into two groups of 100 each, housed in absolutely identical conditions, and subject to the same amount and type of handling. The match extended even to having a sham antenna hanging over the control group.

The only difference was that one group had an active antenna, and the other group had none. Half the mice were subject to GSM-type pulsed microwaves, at a power-density roughly equal to a cell-phone transmitting for two half-hour periods each day.

The experiment was conducted as a blind trial. Dr Harris, who conducted the autopsies, was never made aware of to which group each mouse belonged, in order to ensure that his prejudices couldn't influence results. Yet over the 18 months, the exposed mice had 2.4-times the tumour rate of the unexposed mice. This was later adjusted down to a more confident 2-times claim to remove some unrelated kidney problems experienced by some mice, and correct for other possible influences.

Tumours began to show up at about nine months, and the rate increased steadily for another nine months, until the last mice were killed for autopsy. This seems to suggest that the effects are cumulative and dose-related over time.

This was one of the most carefully controlled and extensive studies of its kind done anywhere in the world, and it has turned up probably the most significant and obvious links between adverse health effects and cellular phones yet.

The team finished their evaluation work in the middle of 1995, and yet the published report of their research in the international journal Radiation Research was only released two years later. This was always going to be a political hot-potato.

According to Dr Harris, these findings are very important, and statistician Val Gebski says they are 'highly significant' (well above the 1% significant level). So this research takes a giant step towards answering long-standing questions about the biomedical effects of radio waves.

A new clue to the mechanisms has also been found. The research showed a very significant increase in a form of B-cell lymphoma. The importance of the B-cell (rather than the normal T-cell) here is that B-cell effects are implicated in roughly 85 per cent of all cancers. As one prominent biomedical researcher explained:

B-cells are very important in immune responses. They produce antibodies against bacteria, foreign substances, etc, and also (provide) surveillance against the appearance of cancer cells in the body. One would be more prone to infection if these cells are affected, as in the case of B-cell lymphomas.

In a carefully worded statement to the press, Professor Basten suggested that the correlation between animal studies and humans is complex, and that "more focused research needs to be done to resolve that issue".

This is a common fire-extinguishing approach, with the idea of hosing-down media sensationalism. The 'Men aren't Rodents' claim is both obviously correct, while at the same time discounting 150 years of medical and pharmaceutical research. Our recent Nobel Prize winner, Professor Peter Doherty, was awarded it for his work in the immune system using mice.

As one of the other Adelaide scientists pointed out, they were not researching mice, they were looking for DNA changes in sells. At the level of disruption of normal cell-growth processes (which are fundamental to cancers), animal and human sells act pretty much alike.

Another popular claim is that the study used specially bred trans-genic mice, genetically modified to be susceptible to tumours. This confuses 'susceptibility' with 'sensitivity' - the system noise, with the signal.

Mice have a life span of only two years, so it's hard to test the effects of 50 or 80 years of cell-phone exposure on rodents unless the incubation period is shorted. Brain cancers, for instance, take about 10 years to reveal themselves in humans.

The mice are simply detectors - and the more sensitive the detector, the better. These were 'low-susceptible' mice, injected with a gene which made them sensitive to assaults on their DNA - and most cancers arise from changes at this cell level.

It is also a common mistake to criticise this research for what it doesn't prove, rather than what it does. It set out to establish whether non-ionising radiation CAN have a direct effect on cells at the DNA level - and CAN either cause cancer, or promote it. That's all.

But that's more than enough, because this possibility has been vigorously denied by the radio industry for close on a century.

It is not the absolute numbers of tumours that are at issue here; it is a highly-significant doubling of tumour rates in the exposed group. I don't remember any research of a similar sort in the past few years that has shown increases of this order.

The increased rate of tumour growth began at about nine months, and continued to the end of the research. This graph was continuing to rise, which suggests that the effects of exposure are cumulative over time.

We aren't dealing with a crisis like an air-crash; our concern must be with the use of cell-phones over a lifetime. Teenagers now have their own cell-phones, so they could be exposed for 80 years or more.

And we aren't dealing with any certainty of disease; obviously some people (like some mice) are specially susceptible, while others never need worry. But it would be nice to know how to distinguish these two groups.

Critics are also commenting on the size of the mice, because of its relationship to the wavelength. But this assumes the old theory - now soundly discredited - that the only adverse effect of non-ionising radiation exposure is localised heating (or full body heating in the mice). Heating requires absorption, and in tissue this occurs most at resonant frequencies.

But although the brain and body are reasonably good electrical conductors, they are by no means simple electrical devices. Scientists are now detecting layered-resonance effects (basically capacitance in body tissue) and stochastic resonance (the eye and the brain seem to be able to operate under threshold power levels using system noise amplification), so none of these old full-body resonant claims make sense are more.

Mice are roughly about the size of a full wave at cell-phone frequencies - and the human head (transversely) is a couple of times the wavelength of PCS. Mice also wander around, sometimes facing the source, sometimes side on. Brains are of variable size (the foolishness of this controversy makes this obvious!), and eyes are of another size, as are ears. Who can say which animal-part would be closer to the resonant frequency for any sell phone emission?

And does it matter anyway? The whole point of this experiment was to establish beyond doubt that non-thermal molecular-cell effects occurred through exposure to radio waves. The level of exposure to radio waves. The level of exposure used here would not raise body temperature by a fraction of a percent of 1 degree Celsius (less than 10 seconds in the sun) - yet the cancer rate doubled.

Yet this is the basis for all radio exposure standards. The danger point was assumed to be exposures that raised tissue temperatures by 1 degree C - now we know that it is unrelated to temperature.

How trustworthy?

What makes this study especially significant is that the honesty and validity of both the procedures and the scientists are beyond dispute. If your inclination in such matters is towards corporate conspiracy theories, it must be pointed out that the findings were in no way advantageous to Telstra. There can be no question that they influenced the research in any way once the protocols were in place.

However Telstra did have a confidentiality clause inserted in the contract which prevented the scientists from revealing their findings for a number of years. I find this most disturbing, since both the scientists and Telstra are publicly funded.

Also, under the terms of their contract, Telstra had a three month preview of the report before publication in which to train and activate its fire-fighters - and it turned them out in force, In fact, hosing down the results probably cost Telstra more than establishing them.

Vodafone stole some of the thunder form Telstra by pre-announcing the findings of the Adelaide research some months earlier. They published a booklet quoting the Adelaide Research as finding 'there is no substantial research which indicated the level of emissions from mobile phone base stations could lead to adverse health effects' - without mentioning handsets.

This mouse exposure was pulsed transmission as from a GSM (digital) handset (ie, matched power densities), not the steady transmission of a cell-phone tower ­ and most of us (but few of the public) have heard about the Inverse Square Law.

The American CTIA (Cellular Telephone Industry Association) followed this line of public confusion in an 'advisory' to their members on how to counter press questions. They suggested the statement: 'The mice were exposed to radiation that was more than 1000 times higher than average exposure in the service area covered by a typical cell site'.

More to the point would have been an objection based on GSM's pulsed nature. The Americans still remain staunchly in the AMPS analog camp, with very little intrusion of time-division digital phones. But GSM in Australia is on a rapid rise, because AMPS is being forced out - and GSM pulses its power in a stroboscopic fashion, at 217 times a second.

Many scientists believe it is the 217 Hz low frequency component of the signal that is the problem - in fact, one study about to be released in America suggests analog RF may be a tumour inhibitor. So some beneficial knowledge may cone out of all this yet.

The conduct of the Adelaide experiment actually also raised questions more about the potential for cell-phone hand-set radiation to effect people nearby (passive exposures) than just the user him/herself. The experiment was conducted in the 'far field', at distances of about 36cm, which is greater from the mice than the cell-phone is normally held from the head. They obviously had troubled strapping cell-phones onto the mice heads, so had to make to with a more general exposure...

Near-field biological effects in EMF effects are thought to be substantially different from far-field, although the biomedical implications are not clear. Also, in close proximity, most of the energy transfers from the handset to the head by induction rather than just radiation, and this can actually raise the energy transfer by a factor of four.

The study therefore under-rates the potential power effects on the handset user from the ELF component, while possibly over-rating those from RF for people nearby.

But this is par for the course. No single study is ever definitive, and every experimental design, other than concentration camps and human autopsies, raises questions of methodology and relevance.

There's been evidence accumulating over many years that the long-term effects of radio frequency exposures may have serious consequences for a small percent of the population, but this has been ignored by the industry and by governments alike.

So nothing done in the last few years has more obviously established that cell-phone safety has not yet been proved - or so clearly, that the standard-setting process is wrong - than the Adelaide research.

Prof. Tony Basten concluded his release with the statement "For the time being, at least, I see no scientific reason to stop using my own mobile phone". But this is largely irrelevant. At his age and in his occupation, the potential dangers from increased phone use are probably minimal.

The question is, would he buy his teenage child one?

The common sense approach at present is surely 'prudent avoidance'.

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Of Mice and Men

by Stewart Fist

The Adelaide report follows two other fierce brush-fires in the cell-phone industry. The first was generated last year when Dr Henry Lai and Dr Singh at Washington State University in the USA reported enormous increases in double-strand DNA breaks in rat-brain tissue following microwave exposures of only two hours. The industry has tried to ignore these findings, claiming that the frequencies used were not identical to cell-phones; but this is only one of a series of experiments conducted over many years which show similar findings.

However, few scientists are independently funded like Drs Lai and Singh. Most need to go cap in hand to the Wireless Technology Research (WRT) group in the USA, which is funded by the cell-phone industry through an 'escrow account' (arms-length third-party) rum by a very well known opponent of environmental health groups, Dr George Carlo.

Dr Carlo is a very experienced epidemiologist and 'Public Issues Manager' who has worked for companies ranging from those in the nuclear industry with environmental spills and still-birth problems, to dioxins (through the Chlorine Institute), to pesticides, herbicides, Agent Orange, and more recently, Breast Implants. He owns a large number of research and 'think tank' organisations which act for companies or industries having problems, and he currently runs all 'independent' research on behalf of the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA).

Recently, as reported in a number of US papers and magazines. the WTR has become embroiled in a number of scandals and questions are currently being asked in the US House of Representatives as to where US$25 million in research funding has been spent, and why there are no results.

The WTR was promoted to the public and to the US Government as being an 'independent' and 'arms-length' body controlling all research funding. But documents leaked to Microwave News and Radio Communications Report (RCR) show that it has been under the direct control of the industry association (CTIA). It has long operated as a PR front and provider of funding to controlled research-often carefully designed to guarantee nil results. In the last four years it has spent US $17 million "without wetting a test tube", according to Microwave News editor Louis Slessin.

Radio Communications Report (March 3, 1997) claimed that following the tobacco industry's problems, WRT scientists went on strike for nearly a year, refusing to perform their contracted work until they were adequately covered for indemnity against law suits. Last week, CTIA finally paid up US$938,000 to fund coverage.

As one prominent American scientist explained to me in an e-mail: I am also puzzled by WTR process. I simply don't know what they mean by "indemnifying scientist against law suits". Why would they anticipate any problem? Thousands of scientists in the US are doing research without 'law suit' insurance.

RCR has done a good job in reporting the conditions of RF research and industry involvement in the US. Other countries in the world, such as EU and Australia, are gearing up to do research and we are basically grounded here in the US.

It is a shame, Motorola is now the only source for funding of on-going research. But they hand-picked their investigators without going through usual peer review process and have tight control of their researchers on what they can say and report.

The WTR scientists' sensitivity to this issue follows the filling of 38 cases which are now before the courts over past tobacco-safety studies. Both the tobacco company lawyers and the scientists they funded have been charged as co-conspirators with the Tobacco institute and the cigarette companies, in suppressing evidence and manipulating research results.