Australië: Interview met Elisabeth Cardis, coördinator van het Interphone onderzoek.
donderdag, 20 mei 2010 - Categorie: Berichten Internationaal
In ABC Lateline (Australie) een onthullend interview met Elisabeth Cardis, coördinator van het Interphone onderzoek en enkele andere hoofdrolspelers in het debat over de schadelijkheid van mobiele telefonie. Hieronder een transcript van enkele citaten uit de uitzending:
Study probes link between cancer and phones
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 17/05/2010
Reporter: Ticky Fullerton
The findings of a possible link between mobile phones and brain cancer are inconclusive, but there are suggestions of an increased tumour risk at the highest exposure levels.
Transcript:
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The findings of the world's largest study into a possible link between mobile phones and brain cancer are inconclusive.
The survey gathered data from 13 countries. Overall, there was no increased risk of brain tumour observed. There were, though, suggestions of an increased risk of the deadliest tumour, glioma, at the highest exposure levels.
As well as looking at the report, Ticky Fullerton investigates the story behind the results and why they're three years late.
CHARLIE TEO, PRINCE OF WALES PRIVATE HOSPITAL: Brain cancer is the worst of all cancers. It's 100 per cent mortality once you've got it. It's affecting young people. The incidence is increasing.
TICKY FULLERTON, REPORTER: Interphone's overall results are inconclusive, but the concerns it raises are predictable: the increased risk, if any, is with people using mobiles for over 10 years for at least half an hour a day.
Lateline spoke to the global head of Interphone, now based in Barcelona. Personally, Professor Cardis worries about the increased risks.
ELISABETH CARDIS, INTERPHONE PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: The increase is greater when we look only at people who use the phone on the side of the head where the tumour developed and it's greater also in the temporal lobe, which is the anatomical location of the brain situated closest to the ear, the place where the phone is being held when you speak.
TICKY FULLERTON: Professor Rodney Croft has consistently argued against any link to brain tumours. He does not accept that the Interphone research suggests an increased use of glioma tumours in heavy mobile users.
RODNEY CROFT, CENTRE FOR RF BIOEFFECTS RESEARCH: When you look at the overall picture within the paper, it doesn't make sense in terms of there being a relationship between mobile phone use and brain tumours.
If there was, you would expect that that effect would get larger as the amount of mobile phone use gets larger, and that's not what happens.
It's based on the data which they argue is the least accurate. The data to do with how long people estimate they've used mobile phones for, and we know both from the Interphone data and from data here in Australia that that is extremely unreliable.
TICKY FULLERTON: What everyone does agree on is that there is bias or error in Interphone's huge data collection, leading to a bizarre result.
BRUCE ARMSTRONG, INTERPHONE AUSTRALIA, UNI. OF SYDNEY: If you just compare people who have ever used a mobile phone regularly with people who have never used a mobile phone regularly, you would conclude that mobile phones protected against brain tumours.
CHARLIE TEO: So, what accounts for that? Is it chance? Is it the fact that mobile phones are actually protective? Or is it bias, selection bias?
TICKY FULLERTON: Curiously, while media around the world were given embargoed copies of the results, what we didn't receive was one crucial analysis buried in an appendix.
Looking for evidence of bias, Interphone went back to their control group - healthy people who they'd surveyed about mobile use. They made a significant discovery.
ELISABETH CARDIS: We noted that people who did not use a phone tended to be under-represented among those who participated.
TICKY FULLERTON: When Interphone adjusted its results for this bias, the findings were enough to concern the chief investigator.
ELISABETH CARDIS: We see a trend of increasing risk with times in start of use, as well an increased use in the highest users, both in terms of cumulative number of calls and cumulative hours of calls. And I think these results are really very suggestive of a possible association.
TICKY FULLERTON: Would it be fair to say that having removed this bias, you see a much clearer picture of a potential risk in glioma?
BRUCE ARMSTRONG: That is certainly a way that you could interpret that.
TICKY FULLERTON: Professor Armstrong warns that there are other factors that might have produced the results, but Lateline understands that these controversial findings are the main cause of Interphone's three-year delay and rows between the world's top epidemiologists.
BRUCE ARMSTRONG: I'm a firm believer in need-to-know. What people need to know is what is in that paper. They do not need to know about the inner workings of the Interphone study group.
TICKY FULLERTON: For those that do believe in a possible clear and present danger from mobiles, Interphone's results are strong enough.
CHARLIE TEO: There was a 1.5 times higher risk of brain cancer in those people that use mobile phones heavily.
So, if you follow those patients out for 10 years like you should, oh my God, you don't know what the overall risk is gonna be. It could be even four or five times higher in that group.
TICKY FULLERTON: Decades of further research is now slated.
Ticky Fullerton, Lateline.
Voor het originele transcript zie:
www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2902097.htm .
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