Like vaccines and autism or genetically modified potatoes and immune systems or DDT causing cancer, some myths stick around so long they become truth despite any evidence - and cell phone radiation may be on that same track.
Yale School of Medicine researchers are not immune to jumping on the pop culture bandwagon. It's easy if you just want to find something vague like Attention Deficit Disorder. In an experiment, they exposed pregnant mice to radiation from a cell phone placed on an active phone call for the duration of the trial. The control group of mice was kept under the same conditions but with the phone deactivated.
They then determined that the mice who were exposed to radiation inside the womb were more hyperactive and had reduced memory capacity. How? Look, if you can't diagnose a baby mouse with ADD you clearly can never go to the Yale School of Medicine. They did psychological tests and stuff, that's all you need to know.
They concluded the mice, which may or may not have had ADD, had those maybe behavioral changes due to an effect on the development of neurons in the prefrontal cortex region of their brains while their moms were pregnant. Surprise, they found exactly what they wanted to find. Could they measure those changes in development of neurons in the prefrontal cortex region of their brains? Well, no.
So if ADD cases went up in the 1990s, it was not because it was fashionable to diagnose it, it was because more women had cell phones. Why have ADD cases since the 1990s dropped, even though there are a lot more cell phones? Maybe 4G cell phones cause autism instead. Rodent pregnancies last 5 percent as long as human ones and rodent brains are much less developed than human babies but there may be a cautionary note here for human mothers just the same, like: DO NOT HAVE A 500 FOOT HIGH CELL PHONE TRANSMITTING NON-STOP IN YOUR HOUSE DURING YOUR ENTIRE PREGNANCY. It's for the kids.
Senior author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D. is a professor and chief of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology&Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine. That's a real title but what he is doing with it is dead wrong.
Citation: Tamir S. Aldad, Geliang Gan, Xiao-Bing Gao and Hugh S. Taylor, 'Fetal Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure From 800-1900 Mhz-Rated Cellular Telephones Affects Neurodevelopment and Behavior in Mice', Scientific Reports 2, Article number: 312 doi:10.1038/srep00312
