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by grecy 2582 days ago
You know the World Health Organization lists cell phones as "Possibly Causing Cancer in Humans" right?

That's the world's leading authority on human health saying that. I don't care that technically speaking cell phones "can't" cause cancer because they are thought to be non-ionizing.

That's just the same as all the other things in history that have been impossible until they've been done.

3 comments

WHO lists many many things as possibly being carcinogens. Remember that the world health organization had coffee listed as a possible carcinogen for 25 years before it was removed in 2016.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/world-health-organization-to-dr...

From your perspective, I suppose everything is possibly carcinogenic since you don't care about whether technically speaking something "can't" cause cancer. I would give more credibility to the numerous scientific studies that have look at this than the words (that could be applied to literally anything) of some working group associated with The WHO. https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electrom...
Give that cancer rates in the developed world are skyrocketing (>50% of people will have caner in my lifetime), but that everything is "safe", yes, I'm more than a little skeptical.
Except for the fact that this isn't true. "Over the past decade of data, the cancer incidence rate (2006‐2015) was stable in women and declined by approximately 2% per year in men, whereas the cancer death rate (2007‐2016) declined annually by 1.4% and 1.8%, respectively. The overall cancer death rate dropped continuously from 1991 to 2016 by a total of 27%, translating into approximately 2,629,200 fewer cancer deaths than would have been expected if death rates had remained at their peak." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21551

Most of the increase has come from our increased life expectancy since getting cancer is very strongly linked with age. Lifestyle choices have also contributed. An aging population and greater detection will result in more cancer cases.

They're not "thought" to be non-ionizing. They are non-ionizing.

Could there be some other mechanism that we don't understand yet and haven't observed yet that could be harmful? Yes, of course. But nobody has been able to provide any evidence yet.