Journal mcgrew's Journal: .Cellphones and cancer 7
Over the last week or so the media has been in a frenzy about cell phones "possibly" causing brain cancer. Yahoo news is at it this morning with Cellphone cancer warning falls lightly on US ears. Of course we're not going to worry about it! Sometimes I think if you score more than two digits on an IQ test you're ineligible to become a journalist, because to steal a phrase from Terry Pratchett, these guys are not only not the sharpest knives in the drawer, they may even be spoons.
Don't worry, you're NOT going to get bran cancer from your phone. The whole idea is incredibly stupid.
How many people have you ever known to have a brain tumor? I've only known one, in my entire lifetime. Strokes, heart attacks, other cancers (especially lung cancer), auto accidents, industrial accidents, I've known plenty of people who've died from them. But I only knew one guy who ever had a brain tumor.
So I googled for some numbers. Fewer than 15,000 people die of brain cancer in the US each year, while 45,000 die from auto accidents (many of these are linked to phone use), hundreds of thousands die of heart disease*, hundreds of thousands more of lung cancer.
About the only thing that you're less likely to die from than brain cancer (from any cause, let alone cellphones) is terrorism, unless you live somewhere like Pakistan or Israel. But take off your shoes and be sexualy assaulted if you want to fly!
And they wonder why the newspapers are dying. Idiots.
--
* Google fails this morning. "Lung cancer death statistics" doesn't return any statistics about lung cancer deaths at all. Maybe I should try Bing...
Works for me (Score:2)
Googling "lung cancer death statistics" returns this CDC link as the first response:
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/statistics/ [cdc.gov]
If you die from "terrorism" in "Israel" (Score:3)
The odds are better than 10 to 1 you are a Palestinian Arab.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/ [ifamericansknew.org]
Three (Score:1)
All within five years of each other. One's still kickin'...
I haven't heard anyone blame the cell phone.. yet
was not confirmed. (Score:1)
Journalists... (Score:2)
Okay, that made me laugh out loud. And I have no idea why. Just kidding--I do, but the turn of phrase is so fun!
What I can't decide on is whether it's the scholastic training journalists receive being so abysmal or whether it's the type of people who go into the field possessing such poor critical thinking skills that's the problem. Tech publications are pathetic, mainstream articles on the wire--be
Hah... (Score:2)
Just stumbled upon this gem [myway.com] from the Associated Press you might find interesting. It reminded me of this journal entry, mcgrew.
Of course, since the average news consumer can't read above a 5th grade level, I don't hold out much hope...
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, that was a good article. Not only can people not read well, most don't have very good reasoning abilities, either.