Mobiles protect against Alzheimer's Research showing that mobile phones protect mice against Alzheimer's disease could be bad news for mobile phones. Florida-based boffins have been getting mice on the phone by exposing them to the electromagnetic fields generated by a mobile phone to see how it accelerated Alzheimer's. Instead, they found that the fields …
It will be very interesting to see this relationship confirmed, and what's the mechanism behind it. Paradoxically, until the mechanism is clear, this find can actually add fuel to the "OMGCELLPHONERADIATION" crowd, as the consensus so far was that cellphones have no effect at all on the brain.
Given articles in the press a few days ago stating roughly "Scientists say that people who have Alzheimer's disease are less likely to get cancer, and those who have cancer are less likely to develop Alzheimer's. Researchers say it makes sense that cancer--a disease associated with cell proliferation--may be contrary to Alzheimer's--a disease associated with cell death. But researchers did not find a link between vascular dementia and cancer." It would therefore seem that this may actually confirm in a cod science way that by reducing Alzheimers as you report, your mobile probably does indeed give you cancer!
Cue frustrated statisticians trying to rebut this.
"It would therefore seem that this may actually confirm in a cod science way that by reducing Alzheimers as you report, your mobile probably does indeed give you cancer!"
That doesn't necessarily follow. If the current evidence shows no statistical link between cellphone use and cancer, while it DOES show a link between use and reduced beta amyloid deposits, then the answer could be something as simple as that the BA deposits are significantly more susceptible to chemical breakdown in cellphone-level EM fields than brain tissue.
At that point, the results described in the article become ammunition for the "cellphones kill your brain" argument only among those who already believe that to be the case and aren't actually interested in hearing anything to the contrary.
More study needed, clearly.
>>""It would therefore seem that this may actually confirm in a cod science way that by reducing Alzheimers as you report, your mobile probably does indeed give you cancer!"
>That doesn't necessarily follow. "
Well, it does, kind of, since "cod" science would mean "junk science" or some other kind of bogus production (cf. "cod fax", "that's a load of cod", "codpiece", etc., etc.).
M7S, you used that word once. I do not think it means what you think it means.
They still can't pass a double-blind test, so whatever mechanism this reveals by which EM radiation can affect the brain, it still doesn't have any perceptible effects to them, which is their major claim, and without which we must conclude they are just deluded neurotics.
Erm, correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the moby industry trotted out 'fact' after 'fact' 'proving' that mobiles have no effect on your brain.
So, over to you, Mr. Nokia
Meanwhile, presumably you'd need to be pretty demented anyway to use a moby for that amount of time, oh wait, I forgot the 'manager class'
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