Cell phone signals extends rats lives

When I worked at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory I talked to a researcher who told me he did a study on satellite phones and cancer in rats. They wanted to make sure the specific signals used by these phones were safe because their have been concerns that the relatively high powered transmitters next to a persons head might cause cancer. We didn’t really have a plausible hypothesis for this since it was non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, but doing the tests on rats was due diligence in making sure the concerns were unwarranted.

He told me that the rats exposed to cell phone signals had fewer cancers than the control group! People didn’t really believe the results and even he was skeptical. He redid the study. Same result. I just sort of filed it away in my mind and would occasionally tell the story to people when something related came up in a conversation. I wasn’t really sure I believe the result either. I just know the researcher was convinced he did the testing correctly had much greater than chance data to support the conclusion.

I don’t remember his name and the only thing that might be associated with that study I could find in a quick search on the Internet was this. But today I ran across this:

Another result of the study is even more head-scratching: the groups of rats exposed to cell signals lived longer than those not exposed. That doesn’t mean that cell phone radiation will extend your lifespan. But, Carroll writes, it could mean the exposed group simply developed cancer as an inevitable part of aging, while the non-exposed group died before tumors could develop.

Wow! This is a much more recent and independent study. Yet it hints at the same result as the PNNL researcher found over a decade ago.

If true, what could the mechanism possibly be?

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3 thoughts on “Cell phone signals extends rats lives

  1. We use toxins and ionizing radiation to kill cancer cells. Maybe any sort of stress, such as heating, would more likely kill a cancer cell than a normal cell? Maybe just stimulating, getting things flowing, is good for rats in captivity. Hah; Try the same test on rats which are not in captivity, rats not in your control or under your influence…

    Equally interesting is the psychological/social/political trend in telling us that if it’s modern industrial it has to be bad for us, bad for the planet, rooted in evil and bad all around.

    We’re so thoroughly programmed in this belief that when we find evidence suggesting some bit of modern technology might be good for us, we’re perplexed. “How could this be?” THAT is the story here, for me. It explains why the anthropogenic global warming hoax was so easily perpetrated, for example. Once you’ve gotten the “modern/industrial = bad” meme in the minds of the public, they’re open to a lot of the wrong kinds of politics. Tax the corporations, restrict them, shut them down, nationalize them….the list is endless. Get us fearing, and we’ll hate. Get us hating and we’ll go for anything as long as it’s wrong.

    • Well said. Another way to put it is that the purpose of bureaucracies is to invent new problems as a way to justify their continued existence and growth. No problem will ever be “solved” since then the jobs would go away. If problems are threatening to look solved, new ones have to be created to take their place.

      • Global “whatever” being a prime candidate. In the 70’s the big scare was actually global cooling and reduction of food-growing capacity. Which, combined with Paul Ehrlich’s predictions that by the 1980’s massive famine would devastate the human population, which had spiraled out of control, created the crisis-du-jour.

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