The FDA, Wireless Industry Deception and Cell Phone Radiation: A Deep Dive Time Line

The following timeline is reposted from Science Corruption.

1992 Feb 4: The Food & Drug Administration (FDA), which had many biological scientists but only a few staff radio engineers at its Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), began to get concerned about the proliferation of cellphones and the lack of industry research into possible health effects.

The possibility of another tobacco-type health scandal was openly being discussed, and a closed Congressional hearing was held to develop regulations, and recommend further studies of electromagnetic field (EMF) health effects.

The Committee promoted the idea of moderation in phone use until more was known, while an FDA paper, dated Feb 4 1992, suggested that…

“those who spend long periods of time on their hand-held cellular phones could consider holding lengthy conversations on conventional phones and reserving the hand-held cellular models for shorter conversations…”

Many studies had been sponsored by industry, academic institutions, government laboratories and by military research organizations into the effects of low levels of electromagnetic radiation. The constant problem in the debate of risks is the limited knowledge about the fact that very specific fields interacting with our bodies can in fact have significant effects on our health.

These effects vary throughout populations with some effected to a greater degree than others. This is related to our physical and biochemical differences. The research which is being conducted by the industry is ignoring much of what has already appeared in the literature regarding risk factors.

1992 Apr 8: Susan Reynard of Madeira Beech, began a Florida Circuit Court lawsuit against cellphone companies after being diagnosed with a malignant parietal tumor of the brain in May 1990. She had used an NEC cellular phone for two years prior to the diagnosis. [The South Florida Sun-Sentinel later published a story about the lawsuit which kick-started the 1993 cellphone furore.]

After her death, her husband David Reynard continued the case. This was the first litigation in relation to cellphones (earlier suits had been over the military and police use of microwave radar)

1992 May: Microwave News, a highly respected independent newsletter which dealt with the possible health effects of all forms of EMFs from mains-power to radio-waves (edited by Louis Slessin since the 1980s) reported on the Reynard case. Until 1993, the newsletter had dealt mainly with the potential for power-lines and related ELF problems, and with EMF-related cases over broadcast towers and microwaves from military and police radar.

However, its coverage of cellphones increased rapidly after the initial filing of the Susan Reynard case in Florida. This early reporting showed that the wording of her claim was very broad (which it needed to be) The complaint said:

“The tumor was the result of radiation emitted by a cellular telephone [or] the course of the tumor was accelerated and aggravated by the emissions from the telephone…”
Much of the evidence she might have relied on in this case was still being concealed by the US Army and Air Force. Nor did she get support from the researchers at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) even though they thought there was reason for concern.]

1993 Jan 3: The Fort Lauderdale, Florida Sun-Sentinel published a local article on the death of Susan Reynard. Every major newpaper in the USA followed up with at least one item in the following fortnight.

• Wall Street Journal

   published a number of stories which mentioned that

• written testimony was provided by an Australian Dr John Holt who ran a quack Microwave Therapy Center in Perth, WA
• also by Florida neurologist David Perlmutter (who ran an alternative and complementary medicine clinic in Florida)
  [Neither was a highly credible scientific witness, and so Reynard was never able to produce substantial research evidence..]

Massachusetts Democrat Representative (later Senator) Edward Markey was championing the demands for further scientific investigation.

1993 Jan 12: CNN’s Moneyline program gave the lawsuit its first broad exposure. At the same time there was a ‘coincidental announcement that two high-profile business executives had developed brain tumors.

1993 Jan 21: The Reynard story broke nationally. Susan Reynard‘s husband David Reynard was continuing the suit against two cellular phone companies and the shop which sold the phone. He created a sensation when he appeared live on the Larry King Live TV show making his allegations.

Many newspapers took up the story, and the stocks of cellular phone companies tumbled on Wall Street. However

the Reynard case came shortly after the establishment of the so-called Daubert standards for the admissibility of scientific evidence, which followed the landmark 1993 Supreme Court ruling in Daubert v. Merrel Dow Pharmaceuticls […which sought to keep ‘junk-science” out of the courtroom — and ended up giving privileged access only to generously-funded corporate-friendly science instead.]

[Source Cellular Phones, Public Fears and a Culture of Precaution, by Adam Burgess]

[The Reynald case was still in progress in June 1993 when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Daubert Case. However it is extremely doubtful that Reynald would have succeeded with the available evidence to hand, anyway.]

1993 Jan 25: The EMF Health Report published Robert B Goldberg’s “The Cellular Phone Controversy: Real or Contrived’”

In the initial days of the controversy regarding cell phones the industry developed a huge public relations effort in the face of lawsuits and adverse press reports impacting the industry.

1993 Jan 25: Motorola held a press conference.

Industry representatives remained unequivocal as they responded to questions about cellular phone safety. Dr Quirino Balzano, a vice president of the land mobile products sector of Motorola Inc., which has its headquarters in Schaumburg, IL, said at the briefing that the ” thorough and objective scientific process” that went into the creation of the current RF/MW safety guidelines, allows the industry to state with certainty that cellular phones are safe.

Edward Staiano, president of Motorola’s general systems sector, said that, “Our confidence in the safety of our products is rooted in scientific fact.” Staiano referred to “more than 40 years of research [and] more than 10,000 studies” demonstrating the safety of hand-held phones.

Microwave News commented:

The hollowness of the industry mantra became clear during Motorla’s January 25th press conference when, on questioning, the company was unable to come up with three studies that supported its position.

Essentially no studies have been done at cellular phone frequencies (800-900 MHz). But there is a growing body of work which indicates that various types of radiofrequency and microwave (RF/MW) radiation can contribute to the development of cancer. Laborarory. animal and human studies all point to a possible problem.

[This typical quote from the industry, illustrates the incredible exaggeration of the research as it related to cell phone risks in the early 1990s. You can’t prove something is safe by such research — many negative findings simply mean badly constructed research protocols or inadequate numbers of test animals.

On Jan 25th, in response to journalistic requests for studies which show the cellular phones are safe, Motorola released specific references to three studies by a team under Dr Ross Adey. Ross Adey rejected their interpretation and remained a fervent critic of the industry’s lack of research until his death many years later.

See Adey email:

The industry’s ten-thousand figure, when closely examined, proved to be picked out of the air. There were only a few dozen significant studies of microwaves, and most of these were at radar power levels and exposure distances. Close to zero negative studies suggesting (not proving) relative safety dealt with cellphones themselves.

1993 Jan 26: Rep Edward Markey (D-MA) wrote to the FCC’s Thomas Stanley, asking about the current RF/MW radiation safety standard and seeking information about any research the FCC has done on cellular phone radiation. The following day he asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO — the investigative arm of Congress) to investigate cellular phone safety and the history of federal regulatory efforts.

1993 Jan 29: The CTIA reacts by announcing that it had plans for making plans.

The industry unveiled its research plan in the midst of this public relations crisis. CTlA President Thomas Wheeler told a Washington press conference.

Despite the many studies showing that cellular is safe, it has become necessary to reassure those whose doubts have been raised by this scare. It is time for truth and good science to replace emotional videotape and unsupported allegations.

Therefore, the cellular telecommunications industry is today announcing that it will fund research to re-validate the findings of the existing studies, which have found that the radiowaves from cellular phones are safe.

We recognize that some may find industry-sponsored research is suspect. Therefore, we are asking the federal government to appoint a blue-ribbon panel to review the methodology and fidings of this research.

He would not say definitively how much money the industry would provide — only that it would be “well into seven figures,” that is, more than $1million.

[This trivial response, together with an ABC 20/20 story on the same day, caused cellphone company stocks on Wall Street to tank in the following days. The CTIA immediately turned to Ketchum Public Relations for advice.]

Separately, McCaw Cellular committed $130,000 for research by Dr Om Gandhi of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, to estimate how much radiation is absorbed by the human head from the antenna of a hand-held cellular phone. The first results will be available in about six months.

[The members of the CTIA had been selling mobile phones for a few years, and they were claiming 10,000 studies which proved that they were safe — yet no one had actually tried to measure how much of the radiation was being absorbed by the head. All these announcements did was to illustrate how callous and out-of-touch the industry big-wigs were.]

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) project for a general brain-tumor studyunder the direction of Dr Richard Adamson, was still in the planning stages.
[Brain cancer rates had been growing at what seemed like an alarming rate. The coincidence of these higher-rates and the proliferation of cellphones, produced the appearance of what was probably a spurious causal connection, since tumors of this kind usually have a 10 year incubation period.]

1993 Feb: The Florida lawsuit begins, with Reynard suing the cellular telephone companies (NEC and GTE) over his wife’s fatal brain tumour.

In early 1993, the hypothesis that radiation from cellular telephones might be causally related to brain cancer in users was first advanced in a Florida lawsuit. Officials from industry and government agreed on the need for additional research.

[Source: Carlo speech in 1995]
[In fact a number of previous cases had advanced the same hypothesis about microwave, and a number of previous studies had shown that causal mechanism might exist.]

1993 Feb: Lorraine Thelian, Executive Vice President and Director of the Washington office of Ketchum Communications [A subsidiary of Ketchum Public Relations — hereafter just ‘Ketchum’] had been given the task of finding solution to what the CTIA believed was just a public relations problem. Ketchum promotes iteslf as:

Ketchum is “a public relations and marketing agency which specializes in corporate and product positioning.” Case studies on the company’s Web site include work for BP Amoco, British Telecom, Nokia, Dow Chemical, Esso, ITT Industries, and American Dairy Brands..

Ketchum recommended contracting a suitable ‘independent’ science-for-sale entrepreneur to head a small “Scientific Advisory Group (SAG)” which would run a quick-and-dirty literature review to counter the cellphone health claims aired on the Larry King Show.

She then found Dr George Carlo (probably through John Graham and/or Matt Swetonic). At the time, Carlo was also working on the Dow Chemicals/dioxin “Flying Circus” (initiated by Ketchum, but run by Swetonic at E Bruce Harrison Co. (EBH))

• a budget of $ 1 to $2 million.
• hire three scientists who would form a Scientific Advisory Group (SAG)
• The SAG would look at the published literature on potential harm from electro-magnetic frequencies (EMF) and make a public statement exonerating microwaves.
• their efforts would be supported by a Peer Review Board comprising a half-dozen independent scientists who would provide credibility to the SAG pronouncements.
• a well-funded public relations program would then announce to the world that cellphones were safe.

They also recommended that the CTIA should demonstrated its socially responsiblity and ethical standing by establishing an entirely altruistic CTIA Foundation to bring further joy and light into the world.

[It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the CTIA or Ketchum that radio-wave exposures are totally unlike any biomedical concern of the past, and therefore required special expertise in physics, electronic, and a range of biomedical-related disciplins even to read and understand the literature.]

1993 Feb 1: BusinessWeek, Newsweek and Time (all dated Feb 8) appear with stories about cellular phone safety.

1993 Feb 1: Tom Wheeler, the president of the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA), hurridly put our a press release announcing that a special “blue-ribbon” panel would be formed, staffed by representatives from industry and government to oversee an unspecified “newly invigorated research project” .

[Since they were effectively starting from scratch, ‘newly invigorated’ was an overstatement. They’d only had only preliminary discussions with the FDA’s CDRH, who weren’t at all happy about being asked to just supervise research which would be under industry control.]

1993 Feb 2: Representative Edward Markey convened a Congressional briefing to consider a leaked FDA Memo by Mays Swicord and Larry Cress of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH). The memo said that microwave data ‘strongly suggests’ a cancer risk.

“Of approximately eight chronic animal experiments known to us, five resulted in increased numbers of malignancies, accelerated progression of tumors, or both,” wrote Drs. Mays Swicord and Larry Cress of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) in Rockville, MD. They also pointed to other evidence from laboratory (in vitro) studies that supported a cancer risk.

[Note that we know about this only because Microwave News published the details after getting access to it following a successful FOI appeal in 2003. However the date of this memo is April 7 1993 — a month later than the Congressional briefing; which must have been done before the letter was written.There must have been two memos.]

The Microwave News report in January 2003 published excerpts from the memo along with commentary which also reveals the extent of the Revolving Door of cellphone research:
At this briefing the CTIA also had to contend with a document prepared by Dr Elizabeth Jacobson, the CDRH’s deputy director of science who said

“Evidence exists of nonthermal and cytotoxic effects at power levels produced by cellular phones.”

And an appeal from the National Cancer Institute’s Dr Richard Admonson who was “adamantly opposed” to relying on the cellphone industry to fund and control this a research program. He had announced plans for a five year study on brain tumors that would examine cellphone links.

The Agencies were in dispute; according to the FDA’s Elizabeth Jacobson, such an NCI’s study on cellphones and brain cancer

“ignores the fact that widespread use of phones is a very recent phenomenon, and if there is any ‘latent period’ for development of tumors, a negative result will be hard to interpret.”

[Adamson later left the NCI to work as a lobbyist. He ran the Washington office of the National Soft Drink Association which worked in coalition with Philip Morris (they owned Seven-up). He later joined forces with George Carlo and Ernst Wynder in promoting the Nocebo concept.]

See Nocebo Conference

1993 Apr: Carlo’s book “Wireless Phones and Health II: State of the Science” says that:

• In April 1993, the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) [George Carlo, Ian Munro and Bill Guy] was established to formulate a program that was responsive to the public health risk allegations and to advise the wireless industry of such.
• In May 1993, the SAG program of surveillance and intervention was presented to the FDA and approved in concept, with the charge of implementation given to the SAG.
  [The FDA were decidedly unhappy with the program and declined to participate.]
• At the beginning of the program in 1993, a blue-ribbon Peer Review Board (PRB) was assembled.

[Carlo selected his old Cantox friend, the Canadian Ian Munro as his deputy, and they hired the retired Washington State University radio researcher, Bill Guy. to providing guidance — since neither Carlo or Munro had any experience in this highly-specialised EMF/RF area of biomedical research.

Guy had done real biomedical research work for the US Air Force on radar exposure — and when he retired, his laboratory at Washington University in Seattle, with its specially-built rodent exposure system was inherited by Dr Henry Lai.]

1993 Apr: The CTIA announces that it had put together a ‘Peer Review Committee’ [later called Peer Review Board (PRB] with the help of Ketchum and John Graham of the Harvard University’s Center for Risk Analysis who was on Ketchum’s Advisory Board.

It was to operate under the chairmanship of George Carlo [ie Carlo headed both the SAG and the PRB.] and it’s job would be to review all the scientific evidence of cellular telephone health problems.

The first Peer Review Board (PRB) consisted of a number of Carlo’s old associates and a couple of others hired for status and prestige. The CTIA also had advice from John Graham at the Harvard School for Public Health’s Center for Risk Assessment:

[Carlo and Munro, in their May 1992 2,4-D herbicide study for Dow Chemicals had enlisted a peer-review panel consisting of Sir Richard Doll, John Doull, Saxon Graham, Raymond Greenberg and Gary Williams.

Three of these scientists found their way onto this Cellphone EMF peer-review panel, while Raymond Greenberg became chairman of the Mains-Power ELF peer-review board being put together at the same time by the Electricity Power Research Institute (EPRI)] John Doull continued as a chemical and tobacco industry consutant

For the CTIA, Carlo, Munro and Graham had chosen

• Sir Richard Doll — Oxford Uni, in the UK — the celebrity epidemiologist from his famous anti-tobacco research (now working secretly as a Monsanto consultant.).
• Saxon Graham — a Professor of Epidemiology at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo — an old Carlo mentor and associate.
• Gary Williams — American Health Foundation. (assistant to Ernest Wynder, Carlo’s Nocebo and tobacco associate)
• Patricia Buffler — University of California, Berkeley. A highly respected epidemiologist. However she was also a consultant to the electric utility industry (which had a related problem with 60Hz mains power) and she on the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) peer-review board. The EPRI was the equivalent of the WTR in more ways than one.
• Philip Cole — University of Alabama at Birmingham — an old Carlo 2,4,D dioxin study associate.
  [Note there are a number of Philip Coles in the tobacco literature. This one regularly consulted to, and provided defence witness services for the electric power industry. He was also on ACSH Committtees, and worked for DowElanco.]
• Om P Gandhi — University of Utah; An expert in EMF measurements. [Gandhi withdrew from the second panel “by mutual agreement in view of his involvement” in cellular phone research. He was the only one on this first panel who knew anything much about the matter under investigation.]
• Donald R Justesen — University of Kansas and VA Medical Center; ‘neuropsychologist and behavioral radiologist’. He had been critical of microwaves because of the experimental effecta seen in rodent behavior (1975).
• Richard R Monson — Harvard University Epidemiologist; also with the Harvard Center of Risk Analysis. He was involved in children’s X-ray exposures which are ‘ionizing radiation’ problems.(cellphones are ‘non-ionizing’)
• Dimitrios Trichopoulis — Harvard School of Public Health and an old tobacco industry researcher. He was a case-hardened ‘skeptic’ of health activism, with some limited experience on workplace powerline exposure problems.

1993 Apr 26-27: The EPA ran a Radio-Frequency Radiation (RFR) Conference. with more than 200 scientists attending. Plenary papers were presented and six panels discussed various aspects of the problem. The EPA’s Summary and Result show that Margo T Oge, the Director of the Office of Radiation and Indoor Air explained:

A year ago, the Science Advisory Board (SAB) gave the Agency (EPA) recommendations in a risk document that deals with the potential health effects of EMF. At the same time there were various Congressional hearings on RF, and there was pressure put on EPA by various Congressmet to go back and finalize the guidance, And that’s why we’re here today.

Two key conclusions emerged from the conference:

1. there is sufficient information on thermal exposure effects on which to base an RF radiation exposure standard [later rejected and disproved] and
2. EPA should develop some type of RF radiation exposure guidelines.

They also were to develop a strategy which involved creating an interagency work group and requesting the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) to assess several remaining issues. [The NCRP were mainly nuclear radiation scientists] In the interim they suggested to the Federal Communications Commission that they adopt standard (from 1992) of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and Institute of Elctrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)

[The six panels at this conference had a mix of company and independent (mainly university) scientists. However George Carlo‘s name is not on any. Nor is he listed in the acknowledgements, or in the numerous study references.

However George Carlo from the Health & Environmental Sciences Group. turns up as one of the 150 attendees, which suggestst that this meeting was held before the agency was told that he was running the CTIA’s Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) — either that, or they deliberately chose to snub him.

Also in attendance was Charles Barna, from the [Tozzi/Auchter] Multinational Business Services Inc/Federal Focus Inc group (partners and associates of Carlo). and Carol Lippincott from Ketchum Public Relations (who found Carlo for the CTIA)]

1993 May 14: /E The Carlo/Schram book states:

“In mid-May 1993 Wheeler opened a meeting of his top policy and public relations advisers and his science adviser, Carlo, in the CTIA boardroom by announcing that their agenda for the session consisted of two items: One was the credibility of Carlo, and the other was the credibility of the SAG program Carlo had been appointed to run jus a month earlier.

Wheeler was concerned about “the flap in Science magazine” where Carlo had been exposed as the agent of the Chlorine Institute who distorted the consensus of the Banbury dioxin conference.

1993 May 25: The published report of a meeting between the CTIA and FDA in Cellular Business, July 1 1993, says:

At its May 25th meeting with the FDA, the CTIA Joint Review Committee reported that it had consolidated its research into the health and cellular issue under a newly formed Scientific Advisory Group.

Dr George Carlo, chairman of Health and Environmental Sciences Group, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC, and adjunct professor at George Washington University Medical School, was named chairman.

“We have turned over the research to the group in order to build a process with respected scientists and a peer review group that will assure that the conclusions have credibility,” said Ron Nessen, CTIA vice president.

1993 June 1: — May 31 1994 [First fiscal year] A later report by Jeff Silva “Research Fund may fall $4 million short of goal” (Published in 27 May 1996) records that the ‘blind escrow account’ established for the SAG received $450,000 from the CTIA in this first financial year. However…

nearly $1.5 million dollars was spent the same fiscal year by CTIA on non-research activities defined by the association as “staff support for the health/safety program, funds for developing scientific spokespersons outside the research process, media tracking, public opinion polling… as well as a variety of other non-research-related items.

Silver also notes that according to public statements made by WTR…

While CTIA’s budget shows $450,000 deposited into the WTR escrow account in fiscal 1994 [It was actually called the SAG at this time], WTR said in its July 1995 report on phase one of its program that almost $3 million was spent on research in 1994.

[The discrepency was never explained].

1993 June 16: The NIEHS, EPA, FCC and FDA met in an intragency meeting to look at cellphone research. Mays Swicord of the FDA briefed the other agencies on the CTIA’s mediocre efforts. The summary report said

“Swicord conveyed to the participants Dr Carlo’s opinion that industry should be in control. Swicord further stated that, after much discussion, a compromise on a dual approval project would be acceptable to Dr Carlo.”

Swicord discussed the proposal to establish a CRADA [Cooperative R&D Agreement] to bring funds into the Government…[unknown words deleted]… Dr Carlo’s organization could act as the Secretariat for the Interagency Project Advisory Group (IPAG).

[It is clear from this report that the government agencies saw Carlo as representating the CTIA’s interests, rather than as an ‘independent’ investigator.]
[Source Schram/Carlo book]

1993 July 1: Cellular Business: reports on Advisory group formed for health and cellular research (CTIA SAG)

At its May 25th meeting with the FDA, the CTIA Joint Review Committee reported that it had consolidated its research into the health and cellular issue under a newly formed Scientific Advisory Group.

Dr George Carlo, chairman of Health and Environmental Sciences Group, a consulting firm based in Washington, DC, and adjunct professor at George Washington University Medical School, was named chairman.

“We have turned over the research to the group in order to build a process with respected scientists and a peer review group that will assure that the conclusions have credibility,” said Ron Nessen, CTIA vice president

Carlo was initially funded to $2 million by the CTIA to put together the inital Scientific Advisory Group.

It appears that John D Graham, then at the Center for Risk Analysis, Harvard School of Public Health (and an advisor to Ketchum, and therefore to the CTIA) had a strong hand in the formation of the SAG. He also knew Carlo from previous dioxin and tobacco lobbying.

Graham’s thesis advisor at Carnegie Mellon University, Dr Granger Morgan of Pittsburgh, was contracted to head the advisory committee overseeing the EMF work. [Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Engineering and Public Policy] He had recommended “prudent avoidance” of electromagnetic fields in the early 1990s.

[Morgan’s name disappears from the records after this mention. Clearly he was not considered a suitable candidate for any supervisory position.]

1993 July 13: The CTIA wrote to Om Gandhi at the University of Utah, requesting advice on cellphone-health studies.

“We need copies of any studies that are pertinent to this issue to be available to the press.

As you know, one of the main causes of the cancer-scare media coverage was that the industry was unable to produce the ‘thousands of studies’ that have been conducted on the cellular phone frequency.”

Gandhi was unable to help because the studies didn’t exist.
[Source Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards by Carlo and Schram]

1993 July 16: A CTIA press conference held in Washington DC reported that the organization was “moving ahead with a three-to-five year, $15 to $25 million research program” under Dr George Carlo.

[These figures appear to be just a vague proposal at this time. The CTIA was in dispute with the FDA as to how credible research would be conducted.
The CTIA wanted the industry to control the research, and the FDA only to perform a peer-review function. The FDA wanted the industry to provide the funding and themselves to control the research.]

The CTIA has formed a three-person advisory group headed by Carlo [which] is currently preparing an assessment of existing studies and a research agenda.

Carlo has also set up a nine-member peer-review panel, which will comment on the research agenda and then work with the advisory group to develop requests for proposals (RFPs) for an initial six to eight studies.The RFPs should be issued in November, Carlo said, and funding should be in reseachers’ hands around the end of the year.

Wheeler said that “approximately 100” relevant studies reviewed by the SAG so far “show that there is no relationship between exposure in cellular frequencies and cancer.”

The ‘blue-ribbon’ FDA panel to review the methodology and findings of this research had not eventuated. The CTIA had also withdrawn its offer to the FDA to act as an auditor, because the Association “would not provide the agency with the control it requires to be directly involved in a research program,” the FDA said.

Nor were they able to enter into a ‘cooperative research agreement.’ [denied by the FDA]

The CTIA also produced an Interim Report. “Safety Update — Fast Facts: Portable Cellphone Safety.” George Carlo, had “reviewed about 400 papers” and found no problems. They also suggested that the FDA concurred with this view.

[To support them at the press conference, the CTIA had hired Ron Nessen as Vice President and industry spokesman. Nessen had been press secretary to President Gerald Ford.

They also hired Jody Powell of the tobacco industry’s favourite PR firm Powell Tate. Jody Powell had been press secretary to President Jimmy Carter, and Sheila Tate had been press secretary to Nancy Reagan.]
[Source Carlo/Schram book]

1993 July 17: Following the CTIA press conference, the Washington Times headlined its story “Cellular industry’s research finds no link.”

“So far, we have been looking for problems and have not found indications of problems;’ George Carlo, an outside scienlist heading the industry’s research program, said at a news conference in Washington.

Scientists funded by the Cellular Telephone Industry Association have begun a three-to-five-year study, at a cost of $15 million to $25 million, into whether portable phones held close to the head can cauae brain tumors.

The scientists are culling thousands of past studies to find out what areas need further research, said Mr. Carlo. a public health epidemiologist and chairman of Health and Environmental Sciences Group, a research firm in Washington.

None of the studies the scientists reviewed suggests that contact with radio frequencies used by portable phones can cause cell damage that leads to tumor, Mr. Carlo said.

When asked about the research of Dr Cleary, Carlo said that industry scientists had raised “questions about the scientific method” used by Cleary.
[He was intimating that the Cleary research was suspect. However no serious ‘questions’ had been raised in the literature except by the cellphone companies and their consultants.]

The Washington Post reported Carlo as attacking “recent studies suggesting that the electromagnetic field that a cellular phone generates can stimulate the growth of cancerous cells were not as ‘rigorous’ as they needed to be. ‘There is no strong biological basis to suspect that there is a cancer link’ he said”

This document-bundle from the FCC also includes the CTIA’s September press handout, What the Cellular Industry Has Done Since the “Cancer Scare”.

1993 July 19: Elizabeth Jacobson, deputy director of the FDA CDRH program,

“sent Wheeler a letter that sharply reprimanded the CTIA president and top lobbyist for what he had said…. ‘Rest assured. Cellular telephones are safe.’”

To sum up, Mr Wheeler, our role as public health agency is to protect health and safety, not to “reassure consumers.” I think it is very important that the public understand where we stand in evaluating the possibility that cellular phones might pose a health risk.

I am concerned that your July 16 press conference did not serve that end as well as it should have.

The FDA noted in a report that the CTIA had used the FDA to support its case, and yet no real research had ever been done on the safety of cellphones. It noted:

Dr Elizabeth Jacobson, deputy director for science at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, chastised Wheeler about comments at a press conference that she said “seemed to display an unwarranted confidence that these products will be found to be absolutely safe.

“Our job as a public health agency is to protect health and safety, not to “reassure consumers,” added Jacobson.

The FDA concluded by suggesting that the public might “wonder how impartial the research is likely to be.”       [Multiple sources]

1993 July 21: An Information Workshop on Cellular Telephone Transmitting Facilities was held in San Francisco by the California Public Utilities Commission. One paper examines the effects of the deliberate high-exposure to EMFs of the staff in the US Embassy in Moscow (a Soviet harassment technique which went on for years) and found an undifferentiated increase in a number of health conditions. It also looked at the radar exposures of servicemen.

See page 15 on for Part 1  Part 2 

1993 Sep 30: Carlo held a conference to discuss the SAG’s “Integrated Assessment of Existing Data” and to present a future research agenda. The CTIA said that they had

• formed a Joint Research Committee of cellular carriers and manufacturers to oversee research.
• pledged to fund research
• met with FDA and other government agencies
• Established a three man Scientific Advisory Group.
• Established a Peer-Review Board of world-class scientists
• Estabished a blind-trust to assure credibility
• completed the Integrated Assessment of Existing Data,
• undertaken scientific research in areas needing further study.

Carlo is organizing a symposium in Research Triangle Park, NC, on September 30 to discuss the research agenda. As many as 35 leading RF/MW researchers from government and academia are expected to attend. Carlo said.

In her letter to [the CTIA President] Wheeler, [Elizabeth ] Jacobson [FDA] wrote that CTIA’s statements that the FDA would “review and validate” the research “did not accurately characterize the relationship between CTIA and the FDA.” She continued: “It goes without saying that we would review your data.”

[Carlo’s book says that the FDA, FCC, EPA and NCI all boycotted this meeting]

1993 Oct 4: Carlo wrote to the CTIA proposing a PR program to counter the absence of support from the government agencies. It would involved:

• an open letter from Carlo to Wheeler — to be published in the next CTIA newsletter.
• a letter-to-the-editor of the Wall Street Journal
• a letter to CNN ‘clarifying the misinformation regarding the Peer Review Board and the relationship with the FDA

Carlo also stressed that the industry should never get into the position where it funded a government regulator like the FDA to do research. He accused Mays Swicord and the other members of the CDRH of promoting

“a self-serving ploy espoused by one or two midlevel bureaucrats within the agency who would benefir by the receipt of external research funds.’

[Source Carlo/Schram book]

1993 Nov 26: According to the Carlo/Scramm book Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards, Tom Wheeler at the CTIA wrote a memo headed “Dealing with the Hydra Headed Cancer Scare” to his top associates, outlining his own battle plan.
CBS News were about to do a story on the stand-off between the CTIA and the FDA over the control of the research. Wheeler wrote:

“Until they indicate that they are looking for something more than a story of a fight between FDA & CTIA, we won’t appear on camera [and] the FDA will do the same.

CBS News apparently had three Wheeler/Carlo letters that had been leaked to them (according to Carlo) by Mays Swicord at the FDA. The FDA were holding out for full control of the research program, with the industry just providing the funding. Carlo and the CTIA were opposed to this attempt to assume control.

Carlo and Wheeler took the position that funding the FDA would be interpreted as ‘buying them off’.

One of the things that concerns FDA is that George is an advocate not a scientist,’ Wheler wrote. “He’s our consellor on these issues and the man who is managing the process… as such he’s suspect…. It is Harvard “[Graham’s Center for Risk Analysis]” which has been retained to manage the research program.

George has been retained to advise CTIA and to manage CTIA’s component in the overall program.”

In his book, Carlo claims to have recruited the Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis himself, and that Wheeler had wanted “Carlo and the peer-reviewer officals at Harvard” [ie Graham] to tell him “where we will be vulnerable so that we can attempt to mitigate that vulnerability now” in order to out-maneuver the FDA.

[With some exceptions, as with the details of this memo, it is wise to take the claims in the Carlo/Scramm book with more than a grain of salt. We have not relied on it to any degree in this analysis; it is clearly self-serving and often deceptive.]

1993 Nov: /E Carlo’s book maintains that in late 1993 a lawyer for Motorola sought his advise about a Californian scientist/consultant Dr Asher Sheppard who had been testifying at a number of public meetings about the potential health risk of cellular phone base stations.

Carlo’s advice was that Motorola should hire him as a consultant to shut him up. They did so, and then nominated him to serve on the Peer Review Board (supposedly put together as an independent group by the HRCA) He says “I always viewed him as Motorola’s guy on the board.”

[So much for the claim that the Peer Review Board was an independent group kept at arms-length by having the Harvard Center for Risk Assessment as a go-between.]

1993 Nov: The Environmental Protection Agency now became involved in the cellphone health dispute. The EPA provided critical comments to the FCC about their decision to adopt the ANSI/IEEE standard for radiation exposure, and recommended that it only be adopted with some modifications.
[They were rightly dubious about the grounds on which it was based.]

The EPA suggested that “more protective exposure limits” were needed at lower and higher frequencies, and that distinctions should be made between occupational and general public exposure. They were also adamant that there was a need to consider ” ‘athermal’” effects, and the “need to consider pulse- and ELF-modulated RF radiation.”
[No one ever followed these recommendations.]

1993 Dec: Until this period, John Graham had just acted as an advisor to the CTIA through his sub-contracting to Ketchum Public Relations. However, in order to be able to demonstrate how independent and arm’s length all their research was, the CTIA, as organisers of the SAG, announced that the research agenda on cellular EMFs would be coordinated through Harvard School of Public Health’s Center for Risk Analysis.

[You’ll also find the Harvard group and Graham himself, prominentaly featured in the Phillip Morris archive documents at this time. Although the tobacco industry and the cellphone industry weren’t necessarily collaborating, they were both in some product-liability and junk-science coalitions (such as TASSC) and clearly well aware of the techniques and lobbying organisations being used by each other.

When the CTIA announced that the HSPH’s Center for Risk Analysis staff would audit the science conducted by Carlo’s SAG and later his WTR, they didn’t spell out what they meant by ‘independent’ and ‘arms-length’.]

1993 Dec: Robert Kane, a research and development engineer with Motorola on cellphones, sues the company after developing a brain tumor. He had worked on testing the early cellphone prototypes. The case was quietly settled by a confidential employer-employee resolution.

1993 Dec 14 – 15: Thorne Auchter (ex OSHA and MBS) became involved with the cellphone-health issue probably through becoming a silent partner of George Carlo in Health & Environmental Services (Group) about this time.
[We can’t be certain about Jim Tozzi; he may also have been a silent partner, or just a friend. They all seem to have shared ownership of a large game-fishing boat.]

Auchter and his partner Jim Tozzi (operating through Federal Focus Inc. a highly profitable non-profit) was contracted by Carlo to organise a number of projects for the cellphone industry Scientific Advisory Group (SAG):

• 14-15 December 1993: “Cellular Telephone Research and Cancer Symposium” (Washington, DC)
  • “A joint Federal-private sector symposium for development of a comprehensive research strategy for assessing potential health risks from cellular telephones.”
  •     The symposium was designed to assist the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG) in developing a multi-year research agenda investigating the possibility of carcinogenic effects from cellular telephones.
      The two-day symposium included a series of tutorials by leading scientific researchers from government, industry and academia [which] discussed a wide variety of topics.
• October 1994: The convening of a “National Symposium on Wireless Transmission Base Station Facilities” (University of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh) ,
  [This was also a Carlo-SAG/CTIA commission]The emphasis appears to have been on having industry engineers run workships for the untutored in why cellphones could not possibly have any health effects.
• They also published “Federal Focus National Symposium on Wireless Transmission Base Station Facilities: A Tutorial” The development and publication of educational materials on the state of scientific knowledge regarding the potential for health risks from cellular communications base stations.
  [No one in the Tozzi/Auchter operations would have known the first thing about cellular base-stations. And by focussing on base-stations, they diverted attention away from the handsets which was the major cause of concern.]
• Providing assistance to Federal agencies and the private sector in raising funding for, and coordinating, the exhibit on U.S. environmental technology at the Rio “Earth Summit”
  [This appears to be a reference to the coalition which floated the Heidelberg Appeal]
• A briefings of Executive Branch officials on the “unfunded mandates” issue impacting state and local governments
• Participation in Executive Branch discussions leading up to Executive Order 12866 (on regulatory planning and review)
• Publication of “A Blueprint for Constructing a Credible Environmental Risk Assessment Policy in the 104th Congress” (Oct. 1994)
• The publication of “Environmental Endocrine Effects: An Overview of the State of Scientific Knowledge and Uncertainties” (CSEEE, Sept. 1995)

1994: Nokia introduces the first mass-produced digital GSM phone handset (#1011) in Europe. The American industry followed with its Digital AMPS (TDMA) models.

1994: Henry Lai of Washington University in Seattle published Microwave irradiation affects radial-arm maze performance in the rat(with A Horita and AW Guy).

This study on the performance of rats in a radial-arm maze after microwave exposure showed that the microwaves “retarded learning, indicting a deficit in spatial cognitive function.”

After 45 min of exposure to pulsed 2450 MHz microwaves (2 microseconds pulses, 500 pps, 1 mW/cm2, average whole body SAR 0.6 W/kg), rats showed retarded learning while performing in the radial-arm maze to obtain food rewards, indicating a deficit in spatial “working memory” function.

This behavioral deficit was reversed by pretreatment before exposure with the cholinergic agonist physostigmine or the opiate antagonist naltrexone, whereas pretreatment with the peripheral opiate antagonist naloxone methiodide showed no reversal of effect. These data indicate that both cholinergic and endogenous opioid neurotransmitter systems in the brain are involved in the microwave-induced spatial memory deficit.

Lai repeated this work with the pulsed transmission system in 1998 with the same results.

1994  1998 

1994 Jan: Microwave News broke the story that engineer Robert Kane was suing Motorola over his brain tumor, and CBS TV’s “Eye to Eye” ran a story.

1994 Feb: /E Dr Soma Sarkar of the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences in New Delhi, India, published a research paper early in 1994 suggesting that EMF can cause breaks in DNA strands. She used frequencies above those used by the cellphones of the day (but close to today’s phones) and relied on an assay technique called “micronucleus” (irrregular size of nucleii after cell division) to detect chromasome cell damage.

Her findings were dismissed by the industry as being “of questionable relevance” but were confirmed only a few months later by the Lai-Singh research (Washington University, Seattle) using a more sophisticated alkaline comet-assay techniques which allow them to see the actual strand breaks.

1994 Feb 11: The Wall Street Journal runs an article by John Keller “Are They Safe?”

1994 Feb 11: The CTIA’s SAG [Originally said to be looking at bio-effects of ‘cellphone radiation” is officially renamed to look at radio in general: In a 1995 Carlo speech he explained:

In 1994, the SAG changed its name to the Scientific Advisory Group on Wireless Technology (SAG-WT) as a reflection of its expanding research role in the areas of telecommunications technology and electromagnetic interference.

[Actually, this name-change appears to be an attempt to downplay the problem of cellular phones by widening the coverage of the investigations to encompass all radio-emitting devices — including two-way radios, cordless phones, radar, etc. However the funding and the industry focus remained the same.

It becomes obvious to most industry watchers and journalists that the CTIA’s SAG operation is merely a delaying tactic. Nothing of any significance is being done.]

1994 Feb 11: Wall Street Journal “Are They Safe” by John Keller, quotes Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave Newsletter

“The industry hasn’t told the public the full story about how there has been very little research on biological effects at low level exposures, similar to those of handheld phones,’ says Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, a New York newsletter and a frequent critic of the industry’s handling of the safety issue.”

Very limited information has been available to the public about the risks of cell phones or various electromagnetic fields outside of some obscure research and academic circles. The fact is that increasing evidence has been mounting and the true risks of these energy fields are becoming well known.

The industry has also asked for proposals on studies that will examine possible genetic effects of exposure to cellular-phone frequencies. Peer review of all of the industry backed studies will be coordinated through Harvard University’s Center for Risk Analysis, says George L. Carlo, an epidemiologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and chairman of the group.

1994 Apr 4: Kathleen Lobb of Powell Tate (the PR firm retained by the CTIA for ‘crisis management’) sent Carlo a memo “Materials for Crisis Communications Plan”

As you know, Powell Tate is assisting CTIA in developing a crisis communications plan and handbook that it will make available to its members in order to be prepared if and when an industry crisis occurs.

Carlo agreed to write the introduction. [Source Carlo’s book]

1994 June 1: — May 31 1995:
[This is the second fiscal year of SAG — but the first with part of the WTR program of real research]

A later report by Jeff Silva “Research Fund may fall $4 million short of goal” (Published in 27 May 1996) records that

“The budget for WTR research jumped to $5 million in fiscal years ’95-96.

Slightly more than $1 million in funding for CTIA public and industry affairs was budgeted in fiscal 1995.”

However, Silver also notes

“..that the WTR [had] said it planned to spend $10 million in 1995. It is unclear whether WTR was referring to the calendar year or fiscal year. WTR refused to comment.”

A later WTR document maintains

The 1994 [94-95] budget of nearly $3 million included more than $2 million (or 70 percent) for fundamental Risk Evaluation Research in the areas of dosimetry, toxicology, epidemiology, and clinical studies. From that budget, Scientific Outreach received $370,000, Ongoing Surveillance received $270,000, and Risk Management Research received $160,000 in support.
[‘Scientific Outreach’ is a euphemism for scientific PR. ‘Ongoing Surveillance’ means paying staff or compliant scientists to read the literature and attend conferences. ‘Risk Managment Research’ can mean anything.]

1994 June 17: A Workshop on “Safety of Mobile Communications”, was held in conjunction with the Bioelectromagnetics Society meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark.

[The Bioelectromagnetics Society, of BEMS, is a society of EMF researchers, mostly from the cellphone industry, but with a few independent university researchers. It was controlled at different times by the industry and at other times by the independent researchers, and it also published a journal.]

Microwave News reported on a Copenhagen Workshop saying:

In an interview, Carlo told Microwave News that the research program is a “massive undertaking” and that $15 million is not going to be enough to resolve the safety issues. “After $25 million, we will have a database to make some further decisions,” he said.

He stressed that, “I have been told that I’ll have enough money to do the job if the studies are rigorous and peer-reviewed.” Carlo, an epidemiologist and a lawyer who is the chairman of the Health & Environmental Sciences Group in Washington, plans to issue an overall research strategy at the end of August.

So far, the CTIA program has been moving slowly. A year and a half after CTIA announced the initiative, only one research contract has been awarded —to Drs. Kenneth Rothman and Nancy Dreyer of Epidemiology Resources Inc. of Newton Lower Falls, MA, to develop a database on the use of cellular phones for future epidemiological studies.

Two other contracts, announced by Carlo last December, have not yet been finalized. These are dosimetry studies by Dr C.K. Chou of the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, CA, and by Dr Om Gandhi of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.

Because of the almost total lack of funds for health research in the US, very little new biological data were reported at the meeting.

• Chou was the old research assistant to Bill Guy who later worked for Motorola.
• Om Gandhi had been on the original PRB put together by Carlo and he was also a member of the IEEE EMF standards panel.

• Kenneth Rothman was also the editor of the journal Epidemiology. He didn’t ever see any possible conflict-of-interest in thes