German Lang. Media: Good Vibes from your Cell Phone
From the university's press release: "The mice didn’t wear tiny headsets or have scientists holding cell phones up to their ears; instead, their cages were arranged around a centrally-located antenna."
It’s great to be able to spread good news: Cell phone radiation not only does no harm, but actually makes mice smarter, according to a study from the University of South Florida, Tampa (in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease). Furthermore, the radiation improved the symptoms of a second group of mice genetically manipulated to develop Alzheimer. Might long time high frequency radiation be a possible way to treat Alzheimers? If such effects would be observed in a study of a new compound pill against Alzheimers, pharma companies won’t hesitate to develop it, quotes the Berlin Tagesspiegel (Adelheid Müller-Lissner) a German Alzheimer expert from the University Bonn. Müller-Lissner hints to the reader that previous studies find a correlation between radiation (in this case low-frequency) and improved brain function of Alzheimer patients (a European Journal of Neurology study done by Giovanni di Dio Fatebenefratelli Scientific Institute in Brescia).
So far, so good. But then the article closes with the remark, that the results are a relief for cell phone users worried that the radiation might do harm to their brains.
I haven’t been worried before, because tons of studies looking at bad influence of cell phone radiation to (mouse or human) brains have shown NO effects. But now there seems to be proof, that there actually IS a certain amount of interaction! Were all the old studies badly designed? Why did the Tampa study looked for long-term effects (well, mouse-life-long) for the first time, apparently (that’s what the press release says)? The Tagesspiegel article says it: There is still a LOT of research needed. And until I get a good biological explanation HOW exactly the cell phone vibes interact (positively or negatively) with our brains, I won’t put a cell phone under my pillow at night to boost my memory skills…
Lots of German media picked up the news, which was spread via EurekAlert first and then through the agencies (like AFP and dpa, the leading German news agency). But unfortunately, no one really took the effort to provide a little bit more background regarding the field of (cell phone) radiation biology and what to think of this surprising and kind of disturbing piece of research.
Süddeutsche Zeitung (Christoph Schrader) pays attention to a flaw of the study: The mice could move in their cages (near or far from the radiation source), so that the scientists cannot be sure, whether all mice got the same amount of radiation.
Spiegel Online (mbe ?) explains, that genetically manipulated mice, who normally develop beta-amyloid plaques typically for Alzheimer, do not get the plaques if they were exposed to cell phone radiation starting early on in their post-natal development. The scientists have no idea, what’s the mechanism behind the positive results. They just observe a slightly higher temperature and metabolic rate in the mice brains.
Rheinische Zeitung Online just picked up the AFP report, more or less. Die Welt and Neue Zürcher Zeitung chose dpa.
Stuttgarter Zeitung (Michael Simm) describes the lead scientists Gary Arendash a little bit more, to ensure the reader, that he is a well-known scientist with a high reliability – despite the surprising findings.
- Sascha Karberg
