The why and wherefore of wireless technology research: Introduction and perspective

Abstract

The nine papers in this journal describe the organization and results of a focused research program to examine possible links between use of cellular telephones and brain cancer. The first paper identifies the origin of the research as a hypothesis about the putative link that was put forth in a lawsuit and quickly publicized in the print media and TV (Carlo, Hersemann, and O'Donnell, 1997). The authors comment that much health risk research in the last 30 years has originated from threatened or executed regulatory restrictions or lawsuits. A large body of research indicates that many people react strongly to new and little understood risks. The idea of the cellular phone<ancer link was new, and it frightened the public, many of whom have daily contact with the phones. Industry could not ignore the hypothesis; it was in the public's eye. At the same time, the hypothesis had no credibility for many technical people because there was and there is no known way that the radiation from the phones' antennae could cause the mutational events that are involved in carcinogenesis. Based on that information, manufacturers could have rejected the hypothesis out of hand, but only at the risk of the interested, non-technical citizen seeing the rejection as a cover-up or a reflection of industry's lack of interest in a health risk. Responding honestly to the hypothesis and hype, industry could say there was no science to support the putative link, but it also had to say little research had been done. In a different time, the absence of convincing information about harm might have been understood to indicate that tiiere had been no reason to