Exclusive by Nic Fleming and John Coles
EVIDENCE of the potentially harmful effects of mobile phones is being covered up, it was alleged yesterday.
Two of the world’s leading radiation experts told The Express that multi-national companies tried to influence the results of their research.
Professor Ross Adey, a biologist, said he had his funding withdrawn by Motorola before completing research which showed that mobiles effected the number of brain tumors in animals. Dr. Henry Lai, who has been studying the biological effects of electromagnetic fields for 20 years, was asked three times to change findings on how they caused DNA breaks in rats.
Their claims come as two new studies reveal links between mobile phones and brain tumors. Swedish cancer specialist Dr. Lennart Hardell found the risk of getting brain tumors was two and a half times higher for people using mobile phones. And Dr. George Carlo, heading a multi-million pound research project in the U.S., says that users have a increased risk of getting a rare type of brain tumors.
Last month Health Minister Tessa Jowell announced the setting up of a panel of experts to review research and to determine what future work should be done. She acted after Government-funded researchers led by Dr. Alan Preece at Bristol University found that radiation from mobiles does interfere with the functioning of the human brain.
Prof. Aday, of the University of California, a former senior Nasa adviser, was paid by Motorola to carry out a series of animal experiments between 1993 and 1996. "The animal experiments were conducted very strictly and in the case of digital phones we found an effect on the number of brain tumors in rats," he said. "It became clear that Motorola preferred we found nothing. During our funding there was constant discussion about the wording of abstracts and papers. Funding was suddenly withdrawn in November last year. In recent months, while we were trying to finish writing up the experiments, we have not been paid."
Dr. Lai, of the University of Washington, Seattle, described the industry’s interference as "unpleasant and intolerable". In 1995 he and his colleague Dr. Narendra Singh published their work showing rats’ brain exposed to mobile microwaves showed "double strand" DNA breaks. This meant the cells were either dying or going cancerous. He claimed that research money was withheld until an agreed version of his report was reached with sections of the mobile phone industry.
The Hardell and Carlo studies are highlighted tonight on BBC1’s Panorama, which warns mobile phone users to cut down the time they spend on the phone. All seven models tested were under the safety limits but the emission from some were 20 times higher than others.
Albert Brashar, spokesman for Motorola, denied the company halted research because it was not happy with the findings. He claimed Prof. Adey’s work "showed that exposure to our phones produced no increase in the number of tumors. In fact they had fewer brain tumors than might have been expected".