When industry wants science to say something, how do they do it? Last Year The Nation showed us how in their special investigation, “How Big Wireless Made Us Think That Cell Phones Are Safe.” In 1993, a lawsuit alleged that cell phones caused a woman’s terminal brain cancer. As wireless stocks headed downward, the industry unleashed a five-fold response. This tactical plan can be used by any threatened industry on any issue at any time to influence science, regulators, public perception, and government policy. Citizens beware.
The government never tested the safety of cell phones prior to the cancer lawsuit. But just one week after it was launched, Tom Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA), announced that cell phones were safe. He also announced the industry would fund research that would “re-validate the findings of the existing studies.” With that, he authored the conclusions of the Wireless Research Technology (WTR) Project before it even began.
The first industry tactic is to buy the science. None are so blind as those who refuse to see, and millions of dollars can turn a blind eye. Biochemistry professor Henri Lai looked at 326 safety-related studies on cell phone use between 1990 and 2005 and found that 67 percent of independently funded studies found biological damage from cell phone radiation, but only 28 percent of industry-funded studies did. Lai himself participated in the WTR study. In an interview with Microwave News, he recounted numerous anomalies and apparent industry manipulation of the study, including an attempt to gut its discussion section.
George Carlo, an epidemiologist with a law degree, chaired the CTIA study. Behind closed doors, he told the industry’s board of directors that the fifty studies commissioned by the WTR, and those it examined, raised “serious questions” about cell phone safety. His letter on October 7, 1999 told them that brain tumours were twice as likely to occur in cell phone users—and on the side they usually used their phone.
It was time for the second and third tactics: manage the message and cast doubt. The next day, Wheeler lambasted Carlo to the media, accusing him of not producing the studies he mentioned, and stating the studies weren’t peer-reviewed. When Carlo presented the study’s findings to the CTIA board at their 2000 conference, Wheeler cut him off after ten minutes. Two burly men whisked him to a taxi before journalists could speak to him. As Carlo told The Nation, “they would do what they had to do to protect their industry, but they were not of a mind to protect consumers or public health.”
The CTIA massaged the message again after the World Health Organization published its Interphone study in 2000. The study showed that those who used a cell phone for 10 years or longer saw their risk of glioma (a type of brain tumour) increase by 120 percent. John Walls, VP for public affairs at the CTIA told reporters, “Interphone’s conclusion of no overall increased risk of brain cancer is consistent with conclusions reached in an already large body of scientific research on this subject.” It was an example of what some like to call, “creative truth-telling.”
A fourth tactic is to kill the research altogether. Biochemistry professor Dariusz Leszcynski first experienced this in 1999 when he was adjunct Professor at Harvard Medical School. He wanted to investigate the effects of radiation that were higher than the government-allowed levels (and likely closer to reality), but kept getting overruled by scientists funded by Motorola. In 2011, Leszczynski said in an interview, “Everyone knows that if your research results show that radiation has effects, the funding flow dries up.” A year later, his employer, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland, stopped researching the biological effects of cell phones and released him.
The draft version of a National Toxicology Program study in 2016 called cell-phone radiation a “probable” or “known” carcinogen with “broad implications for public health.” Yet, when the final version was released in 2018, the study’s senior scientist John Bucher said in a press conference, “I don’t think this is a high-risk situation at all.” Microwave News editor Louis Slessin wondered openly, “What Changed at NTP?” His best guesses were industry, military, and political pressure, as well as leadership changes.
Yes, the fifth tactic is to put your person in charge. Tom Wheeler, CTIA president from 1992-2004, chaired the Federal Communications Commission from 2013-2017. Meanwhile, Meredith Atwell Baker, FCC commissioner from 2009-2011, has presided over the CTIA since 2014. In a Harvard University ethics paper, journalist Norm Alster called the FCC a “captured agency,” and cited the CTIA website which praised the FCC for “its light regulatory touch.” Leave it to Big Wireless to maintain their message over the airwaves.
