22 Oct 2018 Beware propaganda from the wireless industry

Photo: Natee K Jindakum/Shutterstock

There has always been a suspicion that radio waves do more harm than good. With the arrival of the Internet of Things – wireless computing devices embedded in such everyday objects as fridges, washing machines and coffee makers – the scenario easily slips into one of doomsday. So the global telecommunications industry (worth trillions) needs to persuade its customers that any harmful impacts are negligible in comparison with the benefits.

However, according to “The inconvenient truth about cancer and mobile phones” by Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie (The Guardian, 14 July 2018).

“News coverage of mobile phone safety has long reflected the outlook of the wireless industry. For a quarter of a century now, the industry has been orchestrating a global PR campaign aimed at misleading not only journalists, but also consumers and policymakers about the actual science concerning mobile phone radiation. Indeed, big wireless has borrowed the very same strategy and tactics big tobacco and big oil pioneered to deceive the public about the risks of smoking and climate change, respectively. And like their tobacco and oil counterparts, wireless industry CEOs lied to the public even after their own scientists privately warned that their products could be dangerous, especially to children.”

It is clear that the world today cannot run without digital wireless communications. The question is on whose terms, at what cost (economic and health) and with what safeguards. As consumers, the public have a right to know the facts and to have a voice in policy-making. As the authors of The Guardian article point out:

“Lack of definitive proof that a technology is harmful does not mean the technology is safe, yet the wireless industry has succeeded in selling this logical fallacy to the world. The upshot is that, over the past 30 years, billions of people around the world have been subjected to a public-health experiment: use a mobile phone today, find out later if it causes genetic damage or cancer. Meanwhile, the industry has obstructed a full understanding of the science and news organisations have failed to inform the public about what scientists really think. In other words, this public health experiment has been conducted without the informed consent of its subjects, even as the industry keeps its thumb on the scale.”