Iowa senator Tom Harkin recently became chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. On Monday, Harkin vowed to look into the possibilities of cancer risks from mobile phone use. He said he was concerned that nobody was able to definitively prove that mobile phones could not cause cancer.
“I’m reminded of this nation’s experience with cigarettes. Decades passed between the first warnings about smoking tobacco and the final definitive conclusion that cigarettes cause lung cancer,” Harkin said. It is estimated that 4 billion people worldwide use mobile phones regularly.
Harkin called a hearing of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, to examine the issue on Monday. “I will pursue this beyond this panel, with the National Institutes of Health,” he said afterward.
However, Harkin should be aware that an enormous amount of research has been conducted already on this issue, and no link has ever been found to prove that mobile phones do cause cancer. Simply saying that nobody has been able to disprove it does not make it more plausible, and it is slightly concerning at least that an elected Senator would pursue something on the grounds that nobody could disprove its existence - but it isn’t surprising.
Of course, there are reports occasionally that do show that there “might” be links in cases, and just recently the Environmental Working Group showed that radio wave emissions vary from one mobile phone brand to the next. Even with this taken into account however, all the research has shown that mobile phones do not emit waves capable of damaging DNA in cells in a human body.
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Result for: misunderstanding
Earlier this month we reported that director Michael Moore’s latest film was to be released legally, and for free via the Internet and as of today, he has followed through with that promise.
The film, which is intended to bring out new voters for the upcoming presidential election, was made available via the movie’s official site, but more interestingly through BitTorrent as well, using the Pirate Bay tracker with PeerExchange and DHT allowed as well.
Therein lies the problem however. The film’s site says the downloads are only available to US and Canadian residents and makes it very clear that when downloading from the site you will go through an IP lookup system which will then either accept or deny your request. By putting the movie on torrents, especially extremely popular public ones such as The Pirate Bay, there is no way to enforce geographical restrictions.
Was it intentional? Was it an accident or a complete misunderstanding of how the BitTorrent protocol works? We don’t know, but more importantly, the film is available and for free, from wherever you want to get it.
