* The latest Mouse study in Australia (18/9/02)

Tramès per Klaus Rudolph (Citizens' Initiative Omega)

The Adelaide-based Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science mouse study (using 1600 mice) was not industry-funded, but funded by a much-delayed grant from the Australian government.  It was supposedly a "replication" of the original Adelaide-Hospital/Repacholi study which found a doubling of the lymphoma rate in transgenic mice.

It took them many years to get around to it, and many more to publish their results, but that is par for the course in this area of science. No one is in a hurry.

The suggestions that Tracy Utteridge, the supervisor, is suspect because she is a member of ARPS is a bit far-fetched, as is the suggestion that she should be viewed with suspicion because she once worked at the School of Electrical and Information Engineering. If you are going to use criteria like these to determine who is a reputable scientist and who is not, then you'd knock out every major scientist working in the field today -- including Ross Adey, Henry Lai, and most others.

If your correspondent has any evidence that supports his inferences, let him put them out where we can all see them.

As Neil Cherry points out there is a very small dose-related finding in this study, but that misses the most interesting data, which is that, among the transgenic mice (the sensitive detectors of cancer), nearly 75% of the control group (120 mice) contracted lymphoma (15 with Lymphblastic lymphoma, 74 with Non-lymphoblastic). With this degree of disease in the control group, it is impossible to come to any serious conclusions about the exposed mice.

In other words, the result was not a negative finding (countering the old positive Repacholi finding), but a "null" -- where nothing can be determined from this outcome. It was a failure somewhere in the fundamental design, or in the choice of mice, or in the handling of the mice. So no conclusions can be drawn.

So this wasn't even a near-replication of the Repacholi study. Despite their claim to have sourced the same lymphoma-prone mice from the same company, it is obvious that the mice weren't even close to being the same. In Repacholi's 100 control mice, only 21 developed cancer (3 lymphblastic + 19 non-l).

So in the two control groups, the Utteridge study had 75% with cancer while Repacholi only had 21%. That is an enormous difference.

Put another way. With the Utteridge study we could expect only 25% of the mice were really being tested (above the baseline natural level of lymphoma) which is a small minority -- while with Repacholi 79% were being tested, which is a substantial majority.

This is what happens sometimes with mouse studies.  The original Repacholi 50Hz study (done in parallel with the cellphone study in 1993-6) also suffered a similar fate because many of the mice suffered from a kidney disease and that made this whole study worthless also.
 

However, the recent Utteridge study seems to have been well designed and very well done, and many of the faults of the original study were corrected.  The exposure of the mice was far more controlled  -- although it still occured in the far-field — but it may have introduced much more stress in the mice because they were confined in small tubes (this could effect the stress protein levels).

What I don't agree with, is the way the researcher's publicity appears to cheer for the mobile phone industry on every possible occasion. Scientists are supposed to be impartial.

I was very critical of the way in which the original Repacholi study was released to the press.  It was done in a way clearly designed to minimise its impact -- and that study was funded and controlled to a degree by the industry.

However I doubt that the release of this Utteridge study was manipulated in the same way.  They certainly didn't go out of their way to inform the local media (I didn't even get a press release) but nor did they deliberately manipulate the media by choosing a time and location guaranteed to limit coverage.

However I don't agree with some of the over-simplistic statements made by the scientists to the press -- particularly of:

"That then gives you confidence that if you don't find an effect in these animals you are probably not going to find an effect in normal animals, humans being a
normal animal,"  said Tim Kuchel, a spokesman for the Adelaide research team.

Kuchel's statement is rubbish when their control group had a 75% incidence of lymphoma-cancer without exposure to EMF. This incidence in the controls is high enough to mask all but the most gross exposure effects. However, I'm prepared to believe that this was a more general statement, taken out of context to a degree and misinterpreted by journalists.

Although, you might remember that the release of the Repacholi study with its doubling of the cancer rate in 1997 was accompanied by loud cries from the same Adelaide scientists for the public "not to be concerned" because "mice aren't men". Now, suddenly, an inconclusive study with supposedly the same mice, "gives you confidence" about human mobile-phone safety.

It's this sort of hyped-up claim that makes us all suspicious about the independence of some scientists. But in this case it is probably nothing more than a scientist trying to promote the significance of his own research (when that significance isn't justified).

And Kuchel's statement that the new research:

... had all the possible safeguards needed to ensure the results were reliable."

is simply false.

Clearly it didn't, because the only possible conclusion you can come to, is that the research is inconclusive.

This study needs to be done again before it even goes close to countering the 1997 Repacholi finding. But it won't be.

Stewart Fist - writer and columnist
See http://australianit.news.com.au (click on COLUMNS)
http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/ (some archives)
http://www.electric-words.com (main archives)
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Message from Roy Beavers


Next item:

Insights into electromagnetic interaction mechanisms

Reba Goodman (Department of Pathology, Columbia University Health Sciences, New York, New York), Martin Blank (Department of Physiology, Columbia University Health Sciences, New York)

Please note: it concerns about low frequency!

New York

Abstract

Low frequency (< 300 Hz) electromagnetic (EM) fields induce biological changes that include effects ranging from increased enzyme reaction rates to increased transcript levels for specific genes. The induction of stress gene HSP70 expression by exposure to EM fields provides insight into how EM fields interact with cells and tissues.

Insights into the mechanism(s) are also provided by examination of the interaction of EM fields with moving charges and their influence on enzyme reaction rates in cell-free systems. Biological studies with in vitro model systems have focused, in general, on the nature of the signal transduction pathways involved in response to EM fields.

It is likely, however, that EM fields also interact directly with electrons in DNA to stimulate biosynthesis. Identification of an EM field-sensitive DNA sequence in the heat shock 70 (HSP70) promoter, points to the application of EM fields in two biomedical applications: cytoprotection and gene therapy. EM field induction of the stress protein hsp70 may also provide a useful biomarker for establishing a science-based safety standard for the design of cell phones and their transmission towers.

© 2002. Wiley-Liss, Inc.

*Correspondence to Reba Goodman rmg5@columbia.edu , Department of Pathology, Columbia University Health Sciences, New York, NY.

Quelle (Source): 'Journal of Cellular Physiology', Volume 192, Issue 1, 2002.
Pages: 16-22
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/93517371/START

Forwarded by Volker Hartenstein, member of the Bavarian Parliament


Next item:

I wish Dr. Munzert had been able to attend the conference here in the USA, because I have known for ten years that this kind of weapon existed.  The way I learned was that victims were searching for help on the Internet, and asked me for help!  I couldn't provide much help, but I believed them and listened to what they told me was happening to them.

We never knew who was behind the attacks on people; it might have been a government agency acting in secret, or it might have been criminals.  It was clearly illegal, of course, but the police were no help because 10 years ago they did not know anything about this, and anyone who complained to them sounded crazy!

Thank you very much.  I am going to send a copy of Dr. Munzert's paper to the Chief Medical Officer of the state of Wisconsin. He and I are planning to join together to make a presentation on Microwave Radiation Safety at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Council of Safety (in 2003).  He has been investigating a cancer cluster that occurred in the vicinity of microwave ovens that were in continuous use on a production line in a food processing company. I think he will find Dr. Munzert's paper very interesting indeed!

Please convey my thanks to Dr. Munzert for all he has done to investigate and report on directed energy weapons using microwave radiation, and for planning to attend the InfowarCon program earlier this month in Washington, D.C., and for allowing you and others to send out copies of his paper on the Internet. His was a MOST important presentation that SHOULD have been made!

Marjorie Lundquist, Ph.D., C.I.H.
Bioelectromagnetic Hygienist
P. O. Box 11831
Milwaukee, WI  53211-0831  USA


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