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HealthWatch: Study Links Cell Phone Use And Cancer

NEW YORK (CBS) ― An estimated ten billion people worldwide use cell phones, and more than half of American cell phone users leave them on all the time.

Many have questioned the health risks of all those electromagnetic rays, and today a group of doctors is doing so publicly.

Cell phones have become our inter-human connectors. We use them without thought, which is just what concerns Dr. Ronald Herberman.

"I would really hate to stand by and wait for an epidemic of brain tumors to occur before something is done about it," Herberman said.

Now he's put out an internal Pittsburgh Cancer Institute advisory. It's a cell phone warning, authored by scientists in Pittsburgh, Canada, and Europe, as they looked at an unreleased inter-phone study of 9,000 cell phone users worldwide.

They say it found a doubled risk of brain tumors, acoustic neuromas, and other tumors of the head.

But some say there's no physical evidence to support this.

"It depends on what you consider evidence," Dr. Devra Davis, of the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said. "If you want to have enough sick or dead people before taking action to prevent harm – that's what we did with tobacco, isn't it."

The Pittsburgh doctors are trying to put on the pressure for more research and critical cooperation from the cell phone industry.

They say recent studies show children are more at risk because their skulls aren't completely developed until age 17.

"We need time, but in the meantime we ought to take precaution," Davis said.

The American Cancer Society and the cell phone industry say today's move lacks scientific fact.

The doctors involved say the only way to understand the health impact of the devices is to study data from cell phone company records, which they just don't have access to.

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