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July 2008

Debate over mobile phones and cancer

By Raman Jokhakar, Tarunkumar Singhal, Chartered Accountants
Reading Time 2 mins
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47 Debate over mobile phones and cancer



Three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry
King that they did not hold cell-phones next to their ears. “I think that the
safe practice ,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre
in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away
from your brain.”


Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery of
the Australian National University who is outspoken critic of cellphones, said
“I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s
chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory
University Hospital said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.

Along with senator Edward Kennedy’s recent diagnosis of a
glioma, a type of tumour that critics have long associated with cellphone use,
the doctors’ remarks have helped reignite a long-simmering debate about cell
phones and cancer.

That supposed link has been largely dismissed by many
experts, including the American Cancer Society. The theory that cellphones cause
brain tumours “defies credulity”, said Eugene Flamm, chairman of neurosurgery at
Montefiore Medical Centre.

(Source : The Times of India, 4-6-2008)

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