WASHINGTON-While the World Health Organization has reaffirmed the need for more bioeffects research on mobile phones, lawsuits attempting to link wireless devices to brain cancer in the United States are falling by the wayside.
Over the past six months, three cellular cancer claims either have been dropped or thrown out.
In November, the family of physician Dean Vincent Rittman pulled a lawsuit in Houston that argued the doctor’s fatal brain cancer was caused by heavy mobile phone use.
While Rittman’s wife is no longer suing for damages against Motorola Inc., the top U.S. mobile communications equipment manufacturer, a lawyer familiar with the case said Rittman’s children still have the option under Texas law to again pursue litigation while they are minors.
“The weight of the evidence continues to support the safety of cellular phones and mobile communications systems,” said Norman Sandler, a spokesman for Motorola.
Motorola, which has sponsored or directly conducted more cellular cancer studies than any other U.S. entity in recent years, said no results that would reflect a possible health risk from mobile phones have been detected in that body of research.
In another case, all but one count were recently dismissed in a lawsuit that alleged consumers were used as guinea pigs in an epidemiology study sponsored by Wireless Technology Research L.L.C.
The issue of privacy invasion still is in contention in the Busse case.
WTR, which is conducting cellular industry-funded cancer research, is headed by Dr. George Carlo in Washington, D.C. To date, WTR’S epidemiology study is all that has been produced in the six-year, $25 million program that has been extended a year.
Another major cellular cancer lawsuit in Chicago died several months ago.
In that litigation and in other similar cases, the plaintiffs appear to have been frustrated by the inability to present expert witnesses and strong scientific data to support their arguments.
Other than the Busse privacy issue, there is believed to be only one other cellular cancer lawsuit alive.
But the issue is far from dead.
“We have to seriously address this issue so that we can provide public confidence one way or the other,” said Dr. Michael Repacholi, head of the WHO’s Electromagnetic Fields Project.
Repacholi, head of an Australian study that found more cancer than normal in genetically altered mice exposed to low-level radio-frequency energy, joined scientists from 17 countries in Geneva last month to explore where more RF radiation bioeffects research might be needed.
The five-year WHO project, which began in 1996, acts as a clearinghouse to review research conducted in various countries.
About $100 million reportedly is being spent in the United States, Japan, Australia and the European Union on RF scientific studies.
Repacholi, though skeptical about a cancer link, suggested that definitive answers on the cancer question may be some years off because mobile phones are relatively new and the incubation period for cancer is 10 to 15 years.
Given the relative lack of cancer research at the federal level and in the private sector in the United States, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) continues to press the Food and Drug Administration on the issue.
The FDA did not respond by a Dec. 19 deadline to a new series of questions on RF research, but a draft response is said to be waiting bureaucratic review at the agency.
Reuters and Microwave News contributed to this article.
