The body at risk - danger of cell phones.

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                                                                                                                            0021710

UNIVERSITY OF EAST LONDON

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

THE BODY AT RISK: SO338

CASE STUDY

EXCLUSIVE!   DAILY MIRROR, SATURDAY, APRIL 5TH, 2003

“20 MINUTE MOBILE PHONE CALL COULD CAUSE CANCER

DAILY MIRROR, THURSDAY, JANUARY 15TH, 2004

“OUR MOBILES ARE SAFE; BUT WE CAN’T PROVE IT, SAY EXPERTS”

On Saturday 5th April, 2003, the Daily Mirror newspaper’s Consumer Editor Tanith Carey wrote an exclusive article headed:

“20 MINUTE MOBILE PHONE CALL COULD CAUSE CANCER”. (See Appendix 1a)

About ten months later on Thursday, January 15th 2004, Nick Henegan reported that:

“OUR MOBILE PHONES ARE SAFE; BUT WE CAN’T PROVE IT, SAY EXPERTS”. (See Appendix 1b)

SUMMARY

In her ‘exclusive’, Tanith Carey presents what she believes is a new case for consideration based on two recent studies. The first is from Dr. Reba Goodman who uncovered this new threat through experiments with fruit flies at Columbia University.  The second one is a Swedish study that according to Carey does not only confirm Goodman’s findings but also corroborate other previous studies.  Ten months later, Nick Henegan spoils Carey’s exclusive scoop when he reports that Government scientist, having looked at all the evidence from the last three years, are saying that there is no conclusive evidence to confirm that mobile phones damage health and add that nor will there be.  “This is one of those areas that cannot be proved 100 percent, one way or the other” said Professor Barclay who advised the Government on the Stewart Report into mobile phone safety in 2000.  He added that other studies--including one that looks at thousands of brain tumour victims—are being carried out. One comment, by legal director of Mast Action UK, particularly caught my attention.  He said “This report mirrors the Government experts’ advice on BSE, until the contrary view proved to be right”.

The articles, reported ten months apart, are sending mixed and conflicting messages somehow no different from the Stewart Report nearly four years ago.  When I use my mobile phone in the same room as my radio, television and computer, it interferes with them.  We are told to switch them off in hospitals and petrol stations and it is the same on board a plane.  The aim of this case study, using the articles as typical examples, is to acknowledge how the language of risk has produced a powerful morality of how people live.  The study will appreciate how the nature and extent of risk in modern society have changed and how this poses problems for the conceptualisation and assessment of risk, which are then open to social definition and construction, particularly in my study, low-dose and virtual risk.  The study will attempt to find out whether the risk of modern information and communication technology such as the mobile phone can be explained and understood through theoretical sociological frameworks.  It will discuss the issue of trust in science and availability of evidence, since in the wake of the BSE crisis, for example, “optimism (in science) has become controversial with many groups, not only within political and public groups, but within, and among, the different scientific groups themselves” (Beck-Gernsheim, 2000:125).  The study will explore how despite the developments in modern rationality and science, our decisions on risk are not only highly moral and political but take place against a background of legal constraints and moral regulations.  Above all,  I will analyse of the role of the media and its treatment of the debate about mobile phone safety; in what sense the media is a creator of risk perceptions, and to what extent it is simply a carrier.  

In the study, I begin by identifying three types of risk, followed by a detailed description of the newspaper articles’ main topic of concern--that is the link between mobile phones and cancer/health.  I then locate and discuss, within sociological risk theory, the controversial subject of mobile phone safety.  This is followed by an analysis and evaluation of both the persuasive and destructive power of the media.   In the end, I try to answer the question- who is to blame; the Government scientist, the media, the mobile phone companies or us the public.  The choice of two articles from the same newspaper source serves to illustrate firstly how they contradict one another and secondly how almost ten years since the first concerns about the link between mobile phones and cancer surfaced, and just about ten months ago, we are none the wiser and are probably more confused today than informed.  The reason for this concern is that mobile phones emit low levels of radio frequency or electromagnetic waves, in a word-- radiation-- and this word holds unpleasant connotations for many people (Maier et al, 2000).  

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According to Adams (1997), there are three categories of risk; directly perceptible, risks perceptible with the help of science, and virtual risks where “scientist don’t know/cannot agree: BSE/CJD and suspected carcinogens” (Adams, 1997: 285).  The type of risk we are analysing in this study is low-dose virtual risk, such as radiation from mobile phones, which completely evades human perceptive abilities.  When scientists don’t know or and cannot agree about the ‘reality’ of risks, the public are free to argue from belief and conviction.  Joost van Loon (2000) argues that whilst the language of science and politics still appropriates ...

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