Technical Errors and Misleading Statements

Who should you trust for information about your health?

Medical experts or economists?

Row over cancer risk of mobiles - The Australian

AUSTRALIAN brain surgeon Charlie Teo is one of 16 world experts who have accused a global newspaper of publishing "technical errors and misleading statements" in an article that rubbished the idea mobile phones cause cancer.

In an open letter, the experts, who work in Europe, the US and Australia and have qualifications in fields such as cancer medicine, public health, statistics and electromagnetism, said the article published in The Economist "fails to provide critical information about this important public health challenge", and demanded that the journal print a correction.

The experts wrote that history was "replete with failures to control highly profitable carcinogenic substances, ranging from tobacco to asbestos, until proof of harm became irrefutable", and suggested on a conservative analysis that mobile phones and other wireless radiation might be seeding 250,000 avoidable brain tumours every year.

The document was released in riposte to an article published in the British-based Economist in September that ridiculed those who believe mobile phones are harming people as a "tinfoil-hat brigade" who continue to believe "deadly waves in the ether are frying their brains".