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RFK Jr’s cautionary position on Cell Phone radiation is supported by “the science”

by Madhava Setty | Jul 11. 2023

Last month RFK, Jr appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast for another long form discussion. Rogan announced up front that he intended to allow Kennedy to speak without interrupting him. A lesson he learned after watching an embarrassing exchange between Kennedy and Krystal Ball, co-host of “Breaking Points”, in May.

In that interview, Ball stated that although she believed that Kennedy was a genuine person, she disagreed with his views on vaccines. But rather than allowing Kennedy to explain his position and cite the evidence that supported it, Ball stepped out of her role as an objective journalist and played the part of a defense attorney for the medical establishment, repeatedly raising objections every few seconds.

Her audience took note. She was skewered in the comment section while Kennedy was lauded for his composure and patience.

With license to riff on JRE, Kennedy laid out coherent and defensible explanations for the decline in our population’s physical and psychological health. As to be expected, the schismatic MSM framed his hypotheses as more kooky conspiracy theories from the biggest spreader of dangerous misinformation who also happens to be arguably the biggest and most successful environmentalist on the planet who has fought polluters in the interest of public health for over three decades.

What they still cannot seem to grasp (or purposefully choose not to) is that Kennedy is asserting that there are plausible explanations for our deteriorating health that need to be sincerely investigated before being dismissed out of hand.

Chronic diseases among children exploded with the expansion of the Childhood Vaccination Schedule. Shouldn’t we rule this out as a potential cause if we care about our kids?

How do we know that environmental toxins aren’t contributing to gender dysphoria? We don’t.

Midway through the conversation with Rogan, Kennedy floated the possibility that 5G radiation is opening up our blood brain barrier to toxins. The blood brain barrier is a highly selective biological system designed to protect our central nervous system.

Kennedy asserted that he never puts his cellular phone next to his ear while speaking and that he carries his phone in his rear pocket. Kennedy let us know that he has seen enough evidence that incriminates ElectroMagnetic Radiation (EMR) as the cause of brain tumors in some cases.

Rogan asked Kennedy how 5G EMR could mess with the Blood Brain Barrier. Kennedy admitted that it was outside his scope of knowledge. Kennedy critics mocked the pair, criticizing him for his inability to explain complex biochemistry and Rogan for accepting the “crazy” theory prima facie.

Even Dr. Vinay Prasad, a sensible critic of public policy over the last three years tweeted that while Kennedy would be a formidable opponent in a debate with the scientific orthodoxy, his position on radiation spewing from your wifi router was nuts:

In his tweet above Prasad lets us know that he thinks Kennedy has made good points in his criticism of the pandemic response but is still prone to unsubstantiated opinions.

Prasad, a professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UCSF, has been one of the saner voices coming from the medical establishment. He’s been critical of lockdowns, masking and the exaggeration of “long Covid”. He is a proponent of evidence-based medicine, peer-reviewed literature and meta-analyses of randomized controlled studies.

My biggest criticism of Prasad is that he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the bias in published literature nearly enough. I believe this has led him to reject the possibility of effective early treatment of Covid-19. Though I disagree with him on this subject, I acknowledge that he has investigated the evidence before coming to any conclusion.

For someone who prides himself on only taking stands that are backed by “good” data, Prasad’s blithe dismissal of the dangers of WiFi radiation is puzzling. I don’t think he has actually done any research into the topic. At the very least he hasn’t cited any data that proves that wifi technology is safe. Instead he is relying on his own common sense, which somehow in this case suffices for decisive proof.

Electromagnetic Radiation Basics

Your wireless device exchanges vast amounts of information with cellular towers and wifi routers using electromagnetic waves. Download and upload speeds are dependent upon the frequency of the EM waves used. The higher the frequency, the more information that can be transferred in a given amount of time.

All good. Want quicker downloads of hi-def video? You’re going to need a system that relies on higher frequency photons.

The problem is that frequency of the EM waves is directly proportional to its energy. This fundamental relationship is known as the Planck-Einstein relation:

E = hv

Where v = frequency, h = Planck’s constant and E = Energy.

As you can see, our 3G phones from just a decade ago emit and receive EMR at frequencies 100x less than today’s 5G devices. The energy of photons emitted and received by our new phones is 100x greater than 3G phones, more or less.

Prevailing opinion assumes that photons are generally safe if their frequency is below a certain threshold, making it non-ionizing. Non-ionizing radiation cannot break chemical bonds. However with regard to the complex physiology of living beings where cellular function relies on tiny and ephemeral membrane potentials, this explanation is intuitively over simplistic.

The FCC has been busy auctioning 5G frequency bands to telecommunications companies:

“The FCC has made auctioning high-band spectrum a priority. The FCC concluded its first 5G spectrum auctions in the 28 GHz band; the 24 GHz band; and the upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands.”

Moreover they believe that this technology is vital for economic growth and needs to be pushed along:

“The FCC must update infrastructure policy to encourage investment in 5G networks. As Chairwoman Rosenworcel has said: ‘if we want broad economic growth and widespread mobile opportunity, we need to avoid unnecessary delays in the state and local approval process. That’s because they can slow deployment.’”

If the FCC is so clearly interested in the expansion of wireless technology, it must be safe, right?

Wrong.

Going down the Rabbit Hole…

The FCC has no formal body that investigates the safety of the technology it manages/regulates. The FCC takes its cues from the FDA and states:

“According to the FDA and the World Health Organization (WHO), among other organizations, to date, there is no consistent or credible scientific evidence of health problems caused by the exposure to radio frequency energy emitted by cell phones. The FDA further states that “the weight of the scientific evidence does not support an increase in health risks from radio frequency exposure from cell phone use at or below the radio frequency exposure limits set by the FCC”

This statement on the FCC website then directs us to this page from the FDA, “Scientific Evidence for Cell Phone Safety” where it is definitively stated:

“The state of scientific knowledge continues to demonstrate that:

• The current limit on radio frequency (RF) energy set by the Federal Communications Commission remains acceptable for protecting the public health. The FDA recently provided an updated assessment of the current limits based on the currently available scientific evidence (see Letter from the FDA to the FCC on Radiofrequency Exposure– PDF 74KB).

Okay. Now let’s look at this letter from the FDA that apparently provides an updated assessment of the available evidence.

It is a letter from Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D., Director Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA to Mr. Julius Knapp, Chief Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC in response to Knapp’s request for guidance with regard to safety standards of 5G technology. This letter was written on April 14, 2019.

Here’s the key paragraph from the letter:

Dr. Shuran, from the FDA, assures the FCC that no changes to safety standards are warranted at this time.

The rodent study from the NTP mentioned is titled “Cell Phone Radio Frequency Radiation”. They summarize:

NTP conducted two-year toxicology studies in rats and mice to help clarify potential health hazards, including cancer risk, from exposure to RFR (Radio Frequency Radiation) like that used in 2G and 3G cell phones which operate within a range of frequencies from about 700–2700 megahertz (MHz). These were published as Technical Reports in November 2018.

The NTP studies found that high exposure to RFR (900 MHz) used by cell phones was associated with:

• Clear evidence of an association with tumors in the hearts of male rats. The tumors were malignant schwannomas.
• Some evidence of an association with tumors in the brains of male rats. The tumors were malignant gliomas.
• Some evidence of an association with tumors in the adrenal glands of male rats. The tumors were benign, malignant, or complex combined pheochromocytoma.

NTP scientists found that RFR exposure was associated with an increase in DNA damage. Specifically, they found RFR exposure was linked with significant increases in DNA damage in:

• the frontal cortex of the brain in male mice,
• the blood cells of female mice, and
• the hippocampus of male rats.

So… the latest safety guidelines with regard to 5G radiation cite a study from 2018 that found evidence of heart, brain and adrenal tumors in rodents that were associated with exposure to 2 and 3G cellphone radiation.

The study also showed an association of RFR with DNA damage. This is reasonable evidence that there is more to be understood about the safety of non-ionizing radiation.

Moreover, there are studies like this one that was done over 40 years ago demonstrating that periods of RFR exposure in the 1.3 GHz range do, in fact, make the blood brain barrier more permeable in rats. Still sound nutty to you, Dr. Prasad?

But there’s no cause for concern because Dr. Shuran says that “NTP’s experimental findings should not be applied to human cell phone usage.”

Most people in this country have abandoned their 2 and 3G devices years ago. Perhaps it’s time to do a few more studies around the technology that the FCC is so excited for us to enjoy.

What other scientists are saying

Contrary to the public’s and the FDA’s complacency around this rapidly deployed technology, scientists from around the world have been urging the FCC to place a moratorium on the expansion of RFR bands required for 5G communications.

This is an excellent summary article that appeared in the Observations/Opinions section of Scientific American in 2019 around the time the FDA vouched for the technology: “We Have No Reason to Believe that 5G is Safe”.

Author Joel Moskowitz lays out a damning refutation of the FDA’s position citing over 500 studies that demonstrate biological effects from RFR from cellphones, celltowers, wifi routers and power lines. Furthermore, Moskowitz reports that:

• 240 scientists who have authored peer-reviewed, published papers on the topic have signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for more stringent safety guidelines
• The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in 2011.
• There is no research on health effects of 5G technology. However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research.
• There are 250 scientists and medical doctors who signed the 5G Appeal which calls for an immediate moratorium on the deployment of 5G

Why aren’t we “following the science”?

Beyond influencers like Dr. Prasad who call the potential risk of increasing EMR in our environment “nutty”, there is a clear campaign to frame any such danger as another “conspiracy theory”.

Articles like this one from the Science section of the NYT titled, “Your 5G phone won’t hurt you, but Russia wants you to think otherwise” attempt to convince us that EMR in the 5G band must be safe because publications like RT America (formerly known as Russia Today) say it isn’t.

The piece is a wonderful of example of propaganda from what is widely considered a reliable source of information among “educated” readers. It’s loaded with pseudoscience and citations that don’t actually substantiate the author’s thesis that 5G EMR is perfectly safe. It’s written for an audience that would rather be spoonfed than educated.

This was the article that opened my eyes to how far the Gray Lady would go to spin the truth. I was embarrassingly late to the game. I didn’t write a rebuttal until 2020:

What we are seeing today is an inexplicable abandonment of common sense. Highly profitable, international entities are granted the same rights as a defendant in a trial. They are innocent until proven guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.

Why is the standard of proof of harm for new technologies like mRNA therapies and 5G so high?

One may argue that the Covid shots afforded a brief period of protection from a highly survivable disease and should be given some latitude, but what is the life saving benefit of faster downloads?

Unlike the jabs, which could be avoided (albeit often impractically), every person is constantly being bombarded with higher frequency radiation whether they like it or not. Shouldn’t this technology meet an even greater standard of safety?

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