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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Mobile phones, friends not harms
- Ada Majd (15 April 2006)
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analysis of mobile phone use
- Graham Warner (19 April 2006)
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Ban 'hands free' mobile phones?
- John S Norris (20 April 2006)
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Where were the media?
- Neville W Goodman (20 April 2006)
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What is the Risk of Talking?
- James D Stevenson (20 April 2006)
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Ada Majd, Genreal Practitioner Iran - Tehran
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Thanks for clarifying article and thanks for good quality and quantity of information
in your time saving article.
I think this is a true need to reduce the pandemic concern about the use of mobile
phones. These concerns about the harms of mobile phones to children and all others
have induced lots of stress in general population.
However, their harm is not countable due to all harms we receive everyday from
different kinds of pollutions and heavy metal poisoning, around us and so close to us.
In fact, as you said, mobile phones have helped to save lives not only by reporting
accidents but also by calling physicians in emergencies.
Competing interests: None declared |
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Graham Warner, Consultant Neurologist Royal Surrey County Hospital, GU2 7XX
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Sir, Since I would imagine the lending of mobile phones to be unusual, I wonder if the authors have overlooked a glaring objective measure of telephone exposure. Cellular phone companies can give very accurate accounts of time used. Even considering other factors such as hands-free equipment, why was this not analysed? Doubtless the companies would have been keen to assist if, as seems likely, their product would have been given the all clear. Competing interests: None declared |
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John S Norris, Consultant Neurosurgeon Hurstwood Park Neurosciences Centre, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 4EX
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Sir, If the suggestion is to ban even 'handfree' mobile phones whilst driving - should drivers' conversation, discussion & argument also be banned with passengers? What about in-car listening to music, current affairs, etc? Competing interests: None declared |
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Neville W Goodman, Consultant Anaesthetist Southmead Hospital, Bristol, BS10 5NB
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The media, of course, took little notice of a paper that failed to find evidence of a health risk of mobile phones. The Daily Mail is especially fond of health scare stories, but searching their website on "mobile phones" and "cancer" turned up no new stories, just the old ones, mostly suggesting the phones are a risk to health. I note that e-letters to Hepworth and co-workers' study point out that the mobile phone industry helped fund the study. What does anyone expect? To me, it was implausible that mobile phones could cause brain tumours, as it was that power lines could cause cancer. For anyone other than the phone companies to fund such studies would seem to me a waste of money. We spend inordinate amounts on research into risks of little account, while ignoring things that undoubtedly harm our health. This makes it not just a shame, but a dereliction of duty, that the media ignore evidence when it fails to make a good first page splash. Yesterday, I passed a van driver who was holding a cigarette in one hand while he spoke into a mobile phone in the other. The risks of the real world make it irrelevant that mobile phones do not cause gliomas. Competing interests: None declared |
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James D Stevenson, Medical Officer/Instructor RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine
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Sir or Madam, Life is not a risk-free occupation. Part of life is communicating with others around you. When it is made illegal for a single adult to travel in an automobile with unattended children in the back seat less than six years of age, I will begin to have some sympathy for this idea that people in the front seat should not talk to other people. A cranky three year old in the back is far more distracting from driving than any conversation I can remember with someone in the front seat. What is the difference (hands-free, of course) with speaking with a living person in the front seat and a telephonic communication?. Airline pilots talk to each other, in flight, about golf, vacations, family, sportcars, and so on. People listen to the radio, glance at maps, sip coffee. Driving is a multi- tasking situation, and people will act in ways other than giving total concentration of driving. Given all the medical problems to which we should attend, I simply do not understand why there is such energy devoted to the concept that speaking on a telephone should demand more legislation to limit our actities of daily living. Competing interests: None declared |
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