RE: WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 4 Oct 02

["Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow@PNL.GOV>]

Thanks to Susan Gawarecki for keeping us posted on the always interesting

comments in Bob Park's What's New column.



Robert Park wrote:



WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 4 Oct 02   Washington, DC 



  1. CELL-PHONE LAWSUIT: THE LAWS OF PHYSICS ARE UPHELD.  A federal 

  judge dismissed an $800M lawsuit filed by a Maryland neurologist 

  who claimed his brain cancer was caused by cell phone use.  There 

  is, of course, no claim so preposterous that an expert cannot be 

  found to vouch for it.  This case rested on research by Swedish 

  oncologist Lennart Hardell, who published a study in this month's 

  European Journal of Cancer Prevention that found long-term users 

  of analog cell phones were at least 30 percent more likely than 

  nonusers to develop brain tumors.  His claim was widely reported 

  by the media. However, a review of epidemiological research on 

  cell phone use, commissioned by the Swedish Radiation Protection 

  Authority, described Hardell's study as "non-informative" and 

  concluded that "there is no scientific evidence for a causal 

  association between the use of cellular phones and cancer."  



  2. EMF AND CANCER: GETTING THE WRONG ANSWER THE HARD WAY.  From 

  the beginning, it was clear that the Hardell study got the wrong 

  answer.  All known cancer-inducing agents, including radiation, 

  certain chemicals and a few viruses, act by breaking chemical 

  bonds to produce mutant strands of DNA.  Photons with wavelengths 

  longer than the near ultraviolet do not have enough energy to 

  break a chemical bond in DNA.  Case closed.  If epidemiology 

  comes up with a different answer, the study is simply wrong.



    <snip>  



===================

Jim Dukelow responds:



I have problems with the logic in Park's second item above.  While it may be

true that "All known cancer-inducing agents, including radiation, certain

chemicals and a few viruses, act by breaking chemical bonds to produce

mutant strands of DNA", it doesn't follow that all agents/influences on the

process that turns a mutant strand of DNA into a metastatic tumor that

eventually kills the host/patient depend on having "enough energy to break a

chemical bond in DNA".  Therefore, the Case isn't closed, and there is still

room for basic biological research into DNA repair mechanisms, control of

aptosis, performance of the immune system, mechanisms of cell adhesion, cell

signalling cascades, mechanisms of metastasis, etc.



If epidemiology comes up with a different answer, that may be an indication

that the simplistic physical models of the biological processes offered by

Park, and his partner in this particular intellectual crime, the physicist

Robert Adair of Yale, simply don't capture the complexity of the biological

systems.



The question of possible mechanisms for biological effects of weak

non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation had developed a rich research

literature over the last decade and a half, the most interesting parts of

which are basic cellular research, not epidemiology, which is, as we all

know, a really blunt instrument.



Joseph Kirschvink and his colleagues at Cal Tech discovered about a decade

ago that human nerve cells, like cells in many other plant and animal

species, contained magnetite crystals, in the concentration of 5 million

crystals per gram, up to 100 million crystals per gram in cells of the pia

and dura maters.  These crystals will experience mechanical forces when

exposed to an imposed electromagnetic field.



One of the major features/accomplishments of life is the ability to detect

various kinds of signals with extraordinarily low signal to noise ratios.

Current evidence suggest that various species navigate over long distances

by sensing and analyzing small spatial variations in the earth's magnetic

field.  This in the presence of intra-cellular thermal noise that Adair

claims ought to swamp the "signal".



Those interested in this issue might look at:



A paper by W. Ross Adey, Cell and Molecular Biology Associated with

Radiation Fields of Mobile Telephones, available from

<//digilander.libero.it/bioem/adeyoverview1.html>.  This paper summarizes

various threads of biological evidence, both positive and negative.  Adey

was already a world-class neurophysiologist 35-40 years ago when I was more

or less familiar with that literature.



Kirschvink et al. initial report, Magnetite biomineralization in the human

brain, was published in PNAS, v. 89, pp. 7683-7687, available online at

<www.nas.edu>.



Robert Adair's rebuttal, Constraints of thermal noise on the effects of weak

60-Hz magnetic forces action on biological magnetite, PNAS, v. 91, pp.

2925-2929, is available from the same source.



The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has published

summaries of several meetings on EMF issues, available on their web site at

<www.niehs.nih.gov/emfrapid>.  These meeting reviewed the status of

biological research on potential mechanisms for weak electromagnetic

radiation to have biological effects.



I am agnostic on where all of this will end up, but am sure that Bob Park is

blowing smoke when he writes "Case closed.  If epidemiology comes up with a

different answer, the study is simply wrong."



Best regards.



Jim Dukelow

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Richland, WA

jim.dukelow@pnl.gov



These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my

management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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