Last week, three prominent neurosurgeons told the CNN interviewer Larry King that they did not hold cellphones next to their ears. “I think the safe practice,” said Dr. Keith Black, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, “is to use an earpiece so you keep the microwave antenna away from your brain.”
Dr. Vini Khurana, an associate professor of neurosurgery at the Australian National University who is an outspoken critic of cellphones, said: “I use it on the speaker-phone mode. I do not hold it to my ear.” And CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon at Emory University Hospital, said that like Dr. Black he used an earpiece.
7 thoughts on “What do brain surgeons know about cellphone safety that the rest of us don’t?”
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I’d feel better about their advice if they were experts in microwaves rather than brain surgeons.
I don’t think that brain surgeons have any expertise in radio wave affects on human organs.
Unless they’ve been lots, lots busier extracting tumors from people’s brains since cell phones were invented.
According to the fda mobile phones and other rf generators have been shown to be safe when used properly. In the case of a cell phone its always ok to use.
http://www.fda.gov/cellphones/qa.html
I think the three ‘experts’ cited should be asked to wear tin foil hats so we would be better able to assess their expertise on the subject.
Ephraim, while your point on the fact that they are brain surgeons, not microwave experts, is worth noting, I’m personally not too sure how far I’d trust the FDA to guide me on the issue. They are notorious for allowing food and drug products to get their OK which later turn out to be unhealthy, if not deadly. There are many extrememly effective lobbies at work within our government agencies, and the FDA is not immune to their influences.
I would never think to ask a brain surgeon whether or not being shot in the head is dangerous. I would consult a ballistics expert. Or perhaps a metalurgist.
Check here to see whether or not you want to continue (if you ever even did) having any faith in the FDA.
By the way. Aluminum foil replaced tin foil around 1910.
I love Ephraim’s little trick (a favorite of people who think like him) of refering to the three doctors as experts in his own first post, then referring to them as ‘experts’ in his second post.
The original item never calls them experts; Ephraim is the only one who called them that. But that doesn’t stop him from ironically quoting his own self – indicating that we should all be offended that these charlatans are going around calling themselves experts (except, of course, they are not).
If I thought Ephraim had managed to do this on purpose, I’d say he should apply for a job on Fox News.
a lot of brain surgery, especially those involving cancerous cells and tumors, are done by using electromagnetic waves ( at specific wave frequencies) to remove the targeted cells. neurosurgeons are well versed on the effects of electromagnetic waves on brain tissue, because they use it to operate on the brain and know its effect first hand.