A government cover-up bigger than tobacco and asbestos? Your mobile phone...

"The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug—that is, grudgingly and suspiciously,...like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes." George Orwell.



Though the scientific debate is heated and far from resolved, there are multiple reports, mostly out of Europe's premier research institutions, of cell-phone and PDA use being linked to "brain aging," brain damage, early-onset Alz­heimer's, senility, DNA damage, and even sperm die-offs (many men, after all, keep their cell phones in their pants pockets or attached at the hip).

In contrast, any research that connects cell phones to increased cancer rates is not widely reported in the U.S., which reminds one of the non-disclosure tactics once used in tobacco, asbestos, and Agent Orange research. Even if there’s no real danger here, the above recent article (click on the image) by GQ shines light on things you probably didn’t know about cell phones.

Recent Findings:
- Interphone researchers reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell-phone use, the chance of getting a brain tumor—specifically on the side of the head where you use the phone—goes up as much as 40 percent for adults. (Study sponsored by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in Lyon, France. Scientists from thirteen countries took part in the study, the United States conspicuously not among them.)
- In the summer of 2006, a super-Wi-Fi system known as WiMAX was tested in rural Sweden. Bombarded with signals, the residents of the village of Götene—who had no knowledge that the transmitter had come online—were overcome by headaches, difficulty breathing, and blurred vision, according to a Swedish news report. Two residents reported to the hospital with heart arrhythmias, similar to those that, more than thirty years ago, a US neuro-scientist Allen Frey, induced similar frequency micowaves in frog hearts. This happened only hours after the system was turned on, and as soon as it was powered down, the symptoms disappeared.
- In a study by researchers associated with the venerable Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, which hands out the Nobel Prize for medicine, the massive expansion of mobile phones in Sweden during 1997 was found to have coincided with a marked but subtle decline in the overall health of the population. Might it be, the Karolinska researchers asked, that Swedes fell victim to the march of the first big microwave mobile phone systems? The number of Swedish workers on sick leave, after declining for years, began to rise abruptly in late 1997, according to the study, doubling during the next five years.

Where is all this going for big business? There are massive vested telecoms and digital infrastructure interests at stake in all developed and developing countries. Military-industrial complexes are built upon such platforms. Government communication strategies are also starting to deploy digital platforms. With the relentless march of mobile telephony and wi-fi networks, instances of urban living with huge mobile antennae perched on the tops of buildings, a walk down the street to your local super-market, entering public buses and descending down to mass transit trains will inevitably subject you to this constant "low-level" barrage of microwaves. Is modern society starting to be dumbed-down overall? Education authorities increasingly report instances of short attention spans for today's youngsters perhaps due to the prevalence of personal video games. Perhaps we should look no further than across our living rooms to that humble mobile phone and the Wi-Fi modem which is silently emitting non-stop microwave signals.

Back to the neuro-scientist, Allen Frey, "It just so happens that the frequencies and modulations of our cell phones seem to be the frequencies that humans are particularly sensitive to. If we had looked into it a little more, if we had done the real science, we could have allocated spectrums that the body can't feel. The public should know if they are taking a risk with cell phones. What we're doing is a grand world experiment without informed consent."

I'm reminded of the closing scenes from The Terminator (1984)movie.
Sarah Connor asks the gas attendant: "What did he just say?"
Gas Station Attendant: "He said there's a storm coming in."
Sarah Connor: [sighs] "I know."