Mobile phones "make you senile"....
This is just great. Now I have creeping senility to look forward to in my latter years? Oh well, at least I can have the luxury of talking to someone on my cell phone when it happens, eh?
Mobile phones and the new wireless technology could cause a "whole generation" of today's teenagers to go senile in the prime of their lives, new research suggests
The study - which warns specifically against "the intense use of mobile phones by youngsters" - comes as research on their health effects is being scaled down, due to industry pressure. It is likely to galvanise concern about the almost universal exposure to microwaves in Western countries, by revealing a new way in which they may seriously damage health.
Professor Leif Salford, who headed the research at Sweden's prestigious Lund University, says "the voluntary exposure of the brain to microwaves from hand-held mobile phones" is "the largest human biological experiment ever". And he is concerned that, as new wireless technology spreads, people may "drown in a sea of microwaves".
The study - financed by the Swedish Council for Work Life Research, and published by the US government's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences - breaks new ground by looking at how low levels of microwaves cause proteins to leak across the blood-brain barrier.
Previous concerns about mobile phones have concentrated on the possibility that the devices may heat the brain, or cause cancer. But the heating is thought to be too minor to have an effect and hundreds of cancer studies have been inconclusive.
As a result, the US mobile phone industry has succeeded in cutting research into the health effects, and the World Health Organisation is unlikely to continue its studies.
It may well turn out to be the case that cell phones do in fact adversely alter brain chemistry in unintended ways. Frankly, though, I'm not so sure that this should even be considered a problem. From my own observations, most folks rarely use their brains as it is. They're more likely to feel the effects of atrophy from lack of use long before they'll recognize any damage from microwaves.
