WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association last week attempted to delay ABC’s “20/20” broadcast on mobile phones and attacked the credibility of the man who led CTIA-funded health research.
ABC said it plans to air the segment on mobile phone health concerns, possibly this week. “60 Minutes” also is considering doing its own probe into mobile phone health-related questions.
“We schedule pieces to air when they are ready. That’s the only thing that dictates,” said Eileen Murphy, an ABC spokeswoman. “None of these outside influences ever have an impact.”
C. Andrew Copenhaver, a lawyer who previously represented Food Lion-a North Carolina-based supermarket chain-in a successful lawsuit against ABC for the 1992 “PrimeTime Live” broadcast about allegedly spoiled meat, wrote ABC President David Westin last Monday to request the “20/20” broadcast on mobile phones be postponed.
“I ask that you or your designees get personally involved in determining if 20/20’s proposed program on wireless phones meets ABC’s journalistic standards, and that you delay airing of the program until the review is complete,” said Copenhaver.
There was widespread belief the “20/20” mobile phone piece would air last Wednesday. Murphy said the segment was never scheduled for broadcast on that date.
Whether the CTIA letter had the intended impact is unclear.
“Networks are well accustomed to getting threatening letters from lawyers. It’s almost par for the course,” said Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post.
But he added, “A strong letter can delay a story by a week or so as TV lawyers check to make sure the piece is solid.”
In addition to claiming that results from mobile-phone testing in Germany are misleading because the United States and Europe have different safety standards, Copenhaver attacked the veracity of recent statements by Dr. George Carlo on possible mobile phone health risks and questioned his motives for making them.
“Mr. Carlo has recently published a book, and is seeking personal advantage from his statements to `20/20,’ ” said Copenhaver.
Carlo, hand-picked by CTIA President Thomas Wheeler to manage a five-year, $27 million cancer research project, alarmed industry in June when he announced positive findings among results that otherwise failed to find a mobile phone-cancer link.
Carlo heads Wireless Technology Research L.L.C. and Health Risk Management Group.
More recently, Carlo wrote top telecom executives and asked them for help in clearing up uncertainty about mobile phone safety that he believes CTIA and federal regulators are ignoring.
Carlo, a lawyer and epidemiologist, added fuel to the fire by marketing a new mobile phone safety guide on his new Web site. He also is underwriting video presentations at 7-Eleven stores and Subway sandwich shops on how consumers can make informed decisions about buying mobile phones.
“We’re in a gray area,” said Carlo. “Let the public decide how much risk they want to take.” Carlo advocates subscribers wearing headsets to reduce any health risk from wireless phones.
Carlo’s new mobile phone consumer guide sells for $20. “If we could give it away free, we would,” said Nancy Akers, a spokeswoman for Health Risk Management Group, a consulting firm.
Wheeler and Copenhaver accuse Carlo of making contradictory statements on mobile phones, and point to Carlo’s May 24 statement “that there is no need for public-health intervention and that follow up research is warranted.”
Carlo replied that Wheeler is grandstanding, saying the CTIA president is digging a deeper hole for the industry.
CTIA and the Food and Drug Administration, the lead agency that monitors mobile phones for radio-frequency radiation exposure safety, are negotiating a cooperative agreement whereby CTIA’s members would fund more multimillion-dollar research. FDA would oversee the research.
Jeff Nesbitt has been mentioned as a possible candidate to serve as a liaison between industry and FDA on post-WTR research. Nesbitt, employed by the Porter Novelli public relations firm here, was Carlo’s right-hand man at WTR and served in FDA, where he retains close ties.
Carlo calls the effort “an unholy alliance,” and is pressing Congress to intervene. The Senate public health and safety subcommittee, chaired by former heart transplant surgeon Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), could take a step in that direction this Thursday during a hearing on FDA modernization.
In addition to criticism from Carlo, the FDA-CTIA research effort is facing other problems, as well.
A two-day FDA meeting on post-WTR research that was supposed to have taken place last week was abruptly postponed, following howls of protests from government scientists who were neither invited nor notified of the event.
At the same time, Jo-Anne Basile, who manages mobile phone health issues at CTIA, was scheduled to have sat in on the meeting as an observer even as government scientists were excluded. Basile said FDA was responsible for the invitations.
Dr. Russell Owen, chief of the radiation biology branch at FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, and Dr. Michael Repacholi, director of the World Health Organization’s electromagnetic fields research, organized the meeting.
But it is unclear whether the meeting was cleared with Dr. Elizabeth Jacobson, deputy director of science at FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
Even though a formal agreement has not been completed, FDA agreed to let CTIA cover the costs of travel, accommodation and other expenses of scientists responsible for determining whether mobile phones pose a health risk to the nation’s 80 million mobile phone users.
The FDA-CTIA effort suffered another public-relations blow when The Boston Globe quoted FDA’s Owen as saying, “We do not believe cell phones can pose any health risks to humans.”
Owen told RCR he was misquoted.
“We have insufficient evidence to determine whether there exists any adverse health effects from RF exposures from mobile phones,” said Owen.
Also, CTIA’s Wheeler was sharply criticized for requesting that an industry technical group move faster in developing a standard for measuring how much mobile phone radiation is absorbed from phones by the head. Today, no such standard exists and one is needed for FCC safety compliance.
The reason for the criticism is that CTIA in 1996 ordered WTR not to spend money on dosimetry certification, a process for standardizing RF absorption measurement and compliance that is currently under way.
The wireless industry insists the overwhelming body of scientific research concludes mobile phones do not pose health risks, and FDA-despite its desire to see more research-has not intervened as as a result of cancer allegations that began in 1993.
To date, no lawsuit claiming mobile phones cause heath problems have succeeded in any state court.
