Most of the public has been tricked by the industry and government agencies into believing that the answers to all of the question lie in more research on cause and effect. That is perhaps the biggest ruse of all. Cause/effect research done today, helps no one today, and it may not even help anyone tomorrow. In my view, what we need to help people exposed today is surveillance related research aimed at identifying high risk groups for intervention. It is simply too late in the game to rely only on basic cause/effect research to help public health.
- Wireless technology contributes a pervasive exposure that now impacts billions of people around the globe. We have never, in history, had such a large 'population at risk' from any consumer related technology. But, the elephant sitting in the room, so to speak, is that this problem is "post-market". The horse is already out of the barn. The exposures are already occurring every day. And, to make matters more complicated, the technologies evolve and change within every year -- so the exposure characteristics are continually morphing. Therefore, causation research studies per se, no matter who funds them or who conducts them, are only marginally relevant to public health protection.
- While scientists are arguing over parochial nuances -- including funding sources, locations of tumors, whose research is better than whose -- millions who could be helped with surveillance are not being helped.
The industry likes the concept of causation research because it delays the day of reckoning. Government agency officials like causation research because it allows bureaucrats to cover their behinds. The media likes causation research because it gives them something dramatic to talk about. But it doesn't help anyone else.
A basic tenet of public health has always been to understand enough about a disease process to be able to prevent or control it. We are there with our mechanism-based understanding of the effects of EMR in all the known effect windows. So, if we are serious about protecting public health, we should be focusing our efforts on the development of tools to help identify early stage symptoms so that corrective interventions can be applied early enough to work.
G. L. Carlo
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