On October 28, 2018, Microwave News published a report on two research teams from UK, in which each had observed a rise in glioblastoma in England between 1995 and 2014. Glioblastomas are the most malignant brain tumours leading to death in nearly 100% of the cases shortly after detection (1).
While incidence and location of the brain tumours were comparable in both studies, the conclusions about the pathogenesis of the tumours were different. Philips et al. (2) see the cause for the rise in glioblastoma in the increasing use of mobile phones, while de Vocht (3) is of the opinion that such an assumption can be excluded with a high probability. This dispute is in some way evocative of the controversy between the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) and the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP). In the $ 30-million study, the NTP detected malignant schwannoma in the heart and glioblastoma in the brain of male rats after exposure to mobile phone radiation for a period of two years. ICNIRP, a non-governmental organization under the undisclosed control of the telecommunication industry, which is responsible for the establishment of safety limits for non-ionizing radiation in Europe and beyond, tried to play down the significance of the NTP findings by casting doubts on their reliability. While ICNIRP has totally ignored any progress of research since the turn of the century (4), de Vocht based his findings on what he calls “synthetic counterfactuals”, which sounds – rightly or wrongly – more like “alternative facts”.
The full report can be downloaded from https://pandora-foundation.eu/2019/03/19/glioblastomas-have-doubled-in-number-in-england-since-mobile-phones-were-introduced-in-1995/
