'Cancer Causes Cell Phones!' - or, not

Remember when just about everything caused cancer - and the rest was either fattening, caused heart attacks, or drowned you? The Lemming does.

Cancer Causes Cell Phones?

(from xkcd, used w/o permission)

If the conclusion wasn't so obviously wackadoo, the Lemming suspects that someone might have a shot at getting research money to 'prove' that cancer causes cell phones.

CANCER!!!!!, Common Sense, and the Lemming

The Lemming's explained about this not-exactly-apathetic blog before. It's not that the Lemming doesn't care; the Lemming's 'apathetic' about the latest AND WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! scare. Whatever it is. There have been too many, over the decades - and there's a discernible pattern.

Many doomsayers seem to be upset because things aren't just the way they remember them being, back in the 'good old days' of their youth. Over the last half-century, the destroyers of society have included:

• Telephones
• Television
• Cable television
• Computers
• The Internet

And, of course, cell phones. Information technology seems to be really scary - and that's another topic.

So, does the Lemming think that cell phones are absolutely, positively safe? No.

Does the Lemming think that cell phones cause CANCER?!!! No.

The Lemming thinks that the usual 'it's new, and it scares me' thing is happening again. The Lemming has used cell phones, and will continue to do so. But the Lemming won't use duct tape to keep a cell phone to his year 24 hours a day, or try to swallow one. That probably wouldn't be a good idea.

But, if cell phones cause cancer - and not the other way around - the connection seems tenuous, at best.

Something Doesn't Cause Cancer? (Maybe It's a Conspiracy!)

"Do Cell Phones Cause Cancer or Not? The Latest Answer Is No"
Bryan Walsh Friday, Time (July 15, 2011)

"Back in May, a group of experts from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) made waves when they warned that mobile phones may indeed raise the risk for some brain tumors.

"As I wrote in TIME:

"To the surprise of many cancer experts, IARC classified cell-phone-radiation exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans." The panel put cell phones in category 2B on the agency's willfully unhelpful scale, below sure carcinogens like cigarette smoke and in the same category as the pesticide DDT and gasoline-engine exhaust. "A review of the human evidence of epidemiological studies shows an increased risk of glioma and malignant types of brain cancer in association with wireless-phone use," Dr. Jonathan Samet, the chairman of the IARC working group, told reporters the day the study was released...."

"I warned readers then that the IARC's conclusion was tentative at best, and that the argument over the potential dangers of cell phones was far from over. And here drops the other shoe — or study....

"...In a new paper in the American Journal of Epidemiology researchers looked at data from more than 2.8 million Danish adults, and found that those who had used a cell phone for 11 to 15 years were no more likely than new users or non-users to develop acoustic neuromas — a kind of brain tumor that develops near the ear, where cell phones would be used.

"From Reuters:

"Among the nearly three million Danish adults they had data for, just over 800 were diagnosed with acoustic neuroma between 1998 and 2006. And those who'd used cell phones the longest - at least 11 years - had no greater risk than shorter-term users or non-users.

"On top of that, [study author Joachim] Schuz said in an email, there was no indication that long-term cell users had larger-than-expected tumors. Nor did they have a tendency to develop acoustic neuromas on the right side, where most held their phone.

"(By the way, Schuz works for the IARC, the same World Health Organization's body that issued the earlier warning against cell phones.)...

"...Schuz's study echoes a recent review in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which looked at the results of the controversial Interphone study on cell phones and cancer — which I wrote about last year — and concluded that it was unlikely that mobile phone radiation would cause an increase in tumors.

"The authors wrote:

"While one cannot be certain, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use causes brain tumors."

"The key words here: "one cannot be certain." Critics of the review noted that the authors received funding from the mobile phone industry...."

So, we're supposed to add "Big Telephone" to the list of big-bads to be suspicious of? Still: it's a point. Folks might tend to see what they want to see in a nondescript pile of data. Even folks who write scary reports for WHO.

Silly Science: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

So, what's the harm in publishing one more half-baked 'scientific' warning that telephones lead to divorce, or cell phones cause cancer, or wearing plaid leads to sword dancing?

There's the story of the boy who cried "wolf." Maybe publishing these none-too-well-researched, dubious, and occasionally silly, findings isn't simply silly.

Related posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: Bird Poop, Animal Carcasses, and Dumping 8,000,000 Gallons of Drinking Water"
  (June 21, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: 'My Mind's Made Up, Don't Confuse Me With the Facts;' and Climate Change"
  (April 5, 2011)
• "It Blew Up Mars: And Earth Could be Next?!"
  (April 3, 2011)
• "Cheeseburger Bill: Minnesota's Shocking Attack on Contemporary Values"
  (February 22, 2011)
• "Autism, Childhood Vaccines, Bogus Research, and the Lemming"
  (January 6, 2011)

And even more posts about assumptions - unconsidered, myopic, and just plain daft:

• "Nuclear Weapons, Space Aliens, Conspiracy Theories, and Getting a Grip"
  (September 24, 2010)
• "Gods, Demons, and Used Spaceship Dealers"
  Drifting at the Edge of Time and Space (February 13, 2010)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  (November 14, 2009)
• "Not-So-Silly Science: Women Who Look Like Women are Healthier"
  (January 7, 2009)
• "Silly Science: Hourglass Figure Not Good for Women"
  (December 17, 2008)

Glowing Cancer Test From the Crystal Jellyfish: Maybe

"Glowing Jellyfish May Be Able to Detect Cancer Cells"
FOXNews.com (November 2, 2010)

"Jellyfish that glow in the dark are being used to light up cancerous tumors in laboratory experiments.

"Scientists put fluorescent proteins from a common jellyfish into human cancer cells then use a special camera to find them.

"A team from the Yorkshire Cancer Research Laboratory at York University has developed the procedure and its leader, Professor Norman Maitland, believes it will revolutionize the way some cancers are diagnosed....

"...'X-rays, for example, struggle to penetrate well deeply into tissues and bone, so diagnosing dangerous microscopic bone cancer is difficult. Our process should allow earlier diagnosis to take place. When a specially developed camera is switched on, the proteins just flare up and you can see where the cancer cells are. We call the process "virimaging." '

"The potential breakthrough follows ground-breaking work by American chemist Dr. Roger Y. Tsien, who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for taking luminous cells from the Crystal Jellyfish and isolating the glowing protein...."

A fancier name for the glow-in-the-dark crystal jellyfish is Aequorea victoria. According to Walla Walla University, it's found in the Pacific, from British Columbia to central California

This research could be really good news if it pans out. As the article pointed out, the trick to successful cancer treatment is often finding the disease early - and tools like x-rays aren't all that good at finding deeply buried traces of rogue cells.

Not-completely-unrelated posts:

• "An Educational Page About the Invertibrate Nervous System: That's Coherent!"
  (September 13, 2010)
• "Leeches, Teeth, and Science"
  (April 15, 2010)
• "Invasion of the Giant Jellyfish! No, Really"
  (July 20, 2009)

FDR, Missing Medical Records, and Cancer

"FDR kept deadly disease hidden for years"
The New York Post (January 3, 2010)

"Some 65 years ago, as World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, the American people faced an unprecedented constitutional crisis of which they were completely unaware -- and which has remained a secret ever since.

It has long been known that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during the last year of his life, was gravely ill with serious cardiac problems: He'd been diagnosed with acute heart failure in March 1944 and suffered from astronomically high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis.

But what the public did not know was that four years earlier, while still in the second of his four terms as president, FDR had been diagnosed with a deadly skin cancer, melanoma, in a lesion over his left eyebrow.

This disease would metastasize to Roosevelt's abdomen and his brain, causing a tumor that eventually killed him on April 12, 1945.

Which means the cerebral hemorrhage that struck him down shortly before V-E Day was not "a bolt out of the blue," as his doctors contended -- and as historians have long believed -- but the inevitable...."

Well, that's interesting.

Before I write anything more, please note: Apathetic Lemming of the North is not a political blog. I'm not out to cheer on one person or party, and say that everyone else is a poo-poo-head. On the other hand, I've been a historian, and never really lost the habit. Back to that New York Post article.

I had to think about the New York Post's subhead: "He kept his real illness hidden -- and may have endangered a nation" World War II was coming up, and happened, during FDR's four terms. So did the founding of the United Nations: which, according to a PBS article, is a name coined by FDR. (Kofi Annan - Center of the Storm. Timeline. 1920-1946," PBS)

FDR's dropping dead - partly because of a tumor growing in his brain - would have had, I think, a noticeable effect on the events of that period. But "endangered a nation?" Maybe, maybe not. I think America has a pretty good constitution, and a government that's built around the assumption that people aren't perfect.

Another Reason I Don't Miss the 'Good Old Days'

The closest to a constitutional crisis I remember, involving the presidency, was the Watergate era. For a while there, it looked like a large sampling of people in offices that are designated to fill in if the president, vice-president, speaker of the house, and so on down the line, can't serve - might be in jail soon.

A Wikipedia article says there are 18 people lined up to succeed the president, these days: from the Vice President to the Secretary of Homeland Security. That could be right, although the citation's link was broken. I did a little checking, and under the Succession Act of 1947, this was the order of presidential succession:

1. President
2. Vice President
3. Speaker of the House of Representatives
4. President Pro Tempore of the Senate
5. Secretary of State
6. Secretary of the Treasury
7. Secretary of Defense
8. Attorney General
9. Secretary of the Interior
10. Secretary of Agriculture
11. Secretary of Commerce
12. Secretary of Labor
13. Secretary of Health and Human Services
14. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
15. Secretary of Transportation
16. Secretary of Energy
17. Secretary of Education
18. Secretary of Veterans Affairs
    ("Presidential and Vice Presidential Succession: Overview and Current Legislation," Congressional Research Service | The Library of Congress (March 25, 2003))

The Wikipedia article added Secretary of Homeland Security to the list, which seems reasonable enough.

Back to FDR and Brain Cancer

Sounds serious, when you put it that way: doesn't it?

The author's assertion that FDR knew he had cancer that was eating his skin, belly and brain will, I think, be hard to prove. From the looks of it, the four-term president's records were sanitized fairly well:

"...Dr. Steven Lomazow, a veteran neurologist, and I reached this conclusion -- and others about Roosevelt's health -- after a five-year investigation, the findings of which are in our new book, 'FDR's Deadly Secret.' How can we be certain? After all, Roosevelt's doctors always denied he had cancer, no autopsy was performed and, save for a few lab slips, FDR's medical file disappeared after his death.

"But a careful inspection of hundreds of photos of the lesion indicates a melanoma, according to the late Dr. Bernard Ackerman, the world's foremost dermatopathologist, who worked with us.

"Moreover, evidence from Roosevelt's shockingly inept delivery of his final public speech strongly suggests that he suffered from hemianopia -- the inability to see the text in the left side of his field of vision...."

Based on previous experience, there will be quite a bit of "is not!" and "is so!" expostulating for the next few weeks. Or months.

And, I hope, a little serious research, too.

The New Deal president's 12 years in office had an enormous impact on America's development - and on world history. His record-setting presidency gets - and deserves - quite a lot of attention from people who study the history of this country.

Now there's something new available for serious research: the possibility that there was something growing in FDR's brain during those years.

More:

• "April 12, 1945 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies"
  History.com
• "Ammendment XXII: Limit of Presidential terms"
  Emory Law School

Colby Curtin, 10, Sees UP on Her Last Day Alive

"Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up' "
The Orange County Register (September 6, 2009)

"Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing - a movie.

"From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film.

"After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue...."

On the off chance that someone will read this and try to call Pixar for a free movie, because their pet canary wants to see UP, read on:

"...At that point, Orum-Moore, who desperately wanted Colby to get her last wish, began to cold-call Pixarand Disney to see if someone could help.

"Pixar has an automated telephone answering system, Orum-Moore said, and unless she had a name of a specific person she wanted to speak to, she could not get through. Orum-Moore guessed a name and the computer system transferred her to someone who could help, she said...."

That was June 9, 2009, a Tuesday.

Understandably, "Pixar officials declined to comment on the story or name the employees involved." I'm sure they care about kids and all that: but also don't want anyone working for them to get flooded by calls from people wanting a free movie.

Someone from Pixar arrived at Colby's house the next day day: which was just as well, as things turned out. The Pixar employee had a DVD of UP, a bag of stuffed animals - characters in the movie - and a movie poster. Also "quirky background details of the movie".

Then, they watched UP.

Or, rather, everybody but Colby did. The pain from her cancer was too much for her, and she was keeping her eyes closed through the movie. Her mom gave her a play-by-play of the movie as it ran.

Finally, the employee left, taking the DVD with him.

Colby died at 9:20 that evening.

There's more detail about Colby Curtin and her dying wish to see UP in the Register article.

Bottom line about the article? It's a very nice writeup of part of Colby's last day. Not too gushy, in my opinion.

Why Didn't Her Mom Just Buy the DVD?

Colby was in no shape to go to the movie theater: and anyway, her mom hadn't been able to make arrangements for a wheelchair to carry her.

They could still have just bought the DVD, right?

Colby died during the second week of June, 2009.

"Pixar’s Up DVD Release Date Announced (+Blu-ray)"
IMDB.com (August 10, 2009)

"Coming to DVD and Blu-ray this Fall and right in time for Black Friday is Pixar's latest cinematic achievement, Up. On November 10, 2009, you can own either a four-disc Blu-ray Combo Pack or a two-disc DVD, which both include a digital copy of the film...."

By November 10, 2009, when the DVD was in stores, Colby had been dead for five months.

What About a Wheelchair?

Why not just go out, buy a wheelchair for the kid, and wheel her to the theater?

In the Orange County area, there's almost certainly a medical supply house that carries that sort of thing. And, you can get a pretty good pediatric wheelchair for just under $500. Rental should be quite a bit less than that - around $65 a week in Orange County. Which, for some households, is chump change. Others, not so much. ("Lemming Tracks: Lower Middle Class and Loving It" (December 14, 2009))

A Vigil, a Funeral Mass, and Hawaiian Attire

A (very) dated announcement was on the same page as the online article about Colby Curtin:

"VIGIL AND MASS FOR COLBY CURTIN:"
"A vigil will be held for Colby Curtin at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church, 1441 W. Balboa Blvd., Newport Beach. Hawaiian attire that is appropriate for church is strongly encouraged as a way to celebrate Colby's life. A funeral mass will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the church."

Related posts:

• "Cure for Cancer and Energy from the Sea? This Might Actually Work"
  (June 16, 2008)
• "Jayci, Jason Yaeger: Father and Dying Daughter Meet
  (March 27, 2008)

More:

• "Vigil recalls girl whose dying wish was to see 'Up' "
  The Orange County Register (September 6, 2009)

Beer that Fights Cancer: No Kidding!

"Boffins may develop cancer-fighting beer"
"The Sydney Morning Herald" (January 14, 2008)

Food - drink, actually - that's good for you! A refreshing change from the "everything causes cancer, high blood, pressure, or whatever" medical news. Researches found (another) chemical in hops that's good for people: xanthohumol.

There's some of this cancer-bashing stuff in beer now, but these scientists plan to boost the concentration sixty times. I can see the ads, when the uber-beer hits the shelves:

"New and Improved! With Wonder-Ingredient Xanthohumol"

And, wouldn't you know it: The researchers are German.