Re: EMF CONTROVERSY

["Dr. Marvin Goldman" <mgoldman@ucdavis.edu>]

>A Comment by Fritz Seiler and Joe Alvarez
>on the renewed flare up of the EMF discussion.
>
>As scientists, we find it is our duty to speak out and express
>our disapproval when self-serving , non-scientific statements
>are made, specifically tailored for the press.  Yet we must do
>this from a position of strength and use both the facts and
>the Scientific Method.  Above all, we must neither sink into the
>depths of scientific arrogance, nor join certain people in their
>strident and often ad hominem attacks.
>
>Many letters in this mailing list have complained about biases
>one way or the other.  Yes, we must admit that we too are
>biased and very much so; we are biased in the direction of
>Good Science and that means the uncompromising use of the
>Scientific Method.
>
>Like a bad penny, the EMF discussion comes around every 2-3
>years.  Essentially these events are due to some committee or
>other, which consists of persons who - for whatever reasons -
>decide to ignore basic requirements of the Scientific Method.
>Despite massive evidence to the contrary, they make confident
>pronouncements about EMF exposure to the effect that it is still
>a "possible carcinogen."  And the press loves it, laps it up, and
>blows it even more out of proportion.
>
>We are distressed by the statement of the EMF panel and are
>at a loss to understand how they could come to their statement
>in the face of the experimental evidence and of the carefully
>considered analyses which are readily available.  Consequently,
>we will try to analyze the situation in an unemotional way, or at
>least in as unemotional a manner as we can muster, given the
>enormity of the violation of both good science and good sense.
>
>So, the NIH Committee report has rekindled the discussion in
>the press and on both the RADSAFE and the RISKANAL
>mailing lists.  Actually, we find it kind of strange that, whenever
>these "uncaring physicists" (and that is a quote!) blow some
>biological correlations or model concepts out of the water, some
>EMF committee or other will launch a scientifically insupportable
>statement which is designed to maintain the viability of EMF
>related cancers.
>
>It may be just a coincidence that the big EMF controversy in 1991
>and 1992 erupted just after the well known physicist Robert Adair
>at Yale, showed that a direct correlation of EMF and any biological
>effect on the cellular level was extremely unlikely [R.K. Adair,
>"Constraints on biological effects of weak extremely-low frequency-
>electromagnetic fields," Physical Review, A43, 1039 (1991)].  In
>the same year, he published the paper "Biological Effects on the
>Cellular Level of Electric Field Pulses," in Health Physics, 61,
>395 (1991) and a more generally understandable paper in the
>HPS Newsletter, October 1991, p.18.  In these publications, he
>points out that biological-effects are highly unlikely because the
>ambient electromagnetic fields can, at the cellular level, generate
>only fields which are 1,000 times smaller than the fields generated
>by the thermal agitation of the ions in the cell at body temperature!
>Any direct EMF effects are thus drowned in the thermal noise.
>
>In the same issue of the Health Physics Society Newsletter, Bob
>Adair's wife (Eleanor Adair, a microbiologist or biochemist, we
>seem to remember) took the EMF biologists to task in her paper
>"Pathological Science for the ë90s: Health Hazards from Electric
>and Magnetic Fields" October 1991, p. 10.  She used the criteria
>for "pathological science" as they were laid out by the physical
>chemist and Nobel prize winner Irving Langmuir in his famous
>lecture on the subject of bad science (a copy of his talk is reprinted
>in the journal Physics Today, October 1989, p. 36; great reading!),
>and showed that some of the claims of the EMF supporters come
>dangerously close to meeting these criteria.
>
>This latest outbreak of the EMF controversy may well have been
>provoked by the excellent reviews in issue No. 1 of the journal
>Technology: Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 334A, 1997
>(Guest Editor, Richard Wilson, Harvard), which is dedicated to the
>EMF problem.  Its first paper is a thorough review of 86 epide-
>miological studies of EMF Effects.  Even though the data plotted
>in the paper show only the 95% confidence limits which are due to
>the random errors (sample size!), there is no discernible effect.  If
>the limits are amended to include also the systematic errors (those
>caused by unsuspected or incompletely controlled confounding
>factors, non-equivalence of the cohorts, etc.), the total uncertainty
>increases and there is even less reason to believe that there could
>be a nonzero effect.  The other four papers and the section devoted
>to a general discussion, relate to biophysical and other aspects of
>the problem, but none of them are encouraging for the EMF
>supporters.  Thus, this negative review may well have caused the
>renewed uproar.
>
>To add our input to the rather complete and conclusive discussion
>in the literature, let us look at the requirements of the Scientific
>Method.  In order to claim a viable cause-effect relationship, at least
>two conditions must be met: One, a causative link must be established
>between the agent, its biological action, and the health effect; and Two,
>an experimental correlation must exist between agent exposure and
>health effect.  With regard to condition One, there is no causative
>mechanism known at present.  Actually,  not even a plausible
>cellular or molecular effect of EMF is known, which could be
>presented as a possible step that could lead in the direction of the
>processes that may eventually lead to cancer.  With regard to the
>second condition, a realistic estimate of the total uncertainty leads
>quite clearly to a result of 1 for the relative risk, independent of
>exposure (Y.S. Loh, A.I. Shlyakhter, and R. Wilson, "Electro-
>magnetic Fields and the Risk of Leukemia and Brain Cancer: A
>Summary of the Epidemiological Literature," Technol. J. Franklin
>Inst., 334A, 3-21,1997).  It therefore also means that we have a
>zero excess relative risk due to EMF exposure.
>
>The argument "but what if?" cannot be used anymore because we
>now know that even if the risk exists at all, it is very small.  Using
>a rather cursory cost-risk-benefit evaluation leads immediately to the
>conclusion that the so-called "prudent avoidance" policy can only be
>legitimate, if it costs next to nothing, not the hundreds of millions of
>dollars and more that some measures are estimated to cost.  These
>funds should be used to mitigate some real risks in our society, not
>some vague potential risk of small size.
>
>Finally, let us stop flogging that dead horse. If there is some evidence
>of a potential damage mechanism that satisfies the criteria of the
>Scientific Method, then by all means let us pursue it.  But let us also
>behave like scientists, and use the Scientific Method in all aspects of
>our activities.  So, until an appropriate damage mechanism is found,
>no more studies are needed to investigate potential epidemiological
>effects.  What little money may be available should be used to follow
>up promising biophysical or biochemical leads, if there are any.
>
>
>*************************
>
>Fritz A. Seiler, Ph.D.
>Principal
>Sigma Five Associates
>P.O. Box 14006
>Albuquerque, NM 87191-4006
>Tel.     505-323-7848
>Fax.    505-293-3911
>e-mail: faseiler@nmia.com
>
>**************************