Did a cell phone kill the son of Vice President Joe Biden? The brain tumor that killed Joseph “Beau” Biden has been linked, at least in the minds of many paying attention, to his heavy use of a cell phone.
It’s still unclear which specific type of tumor Beau Biden suffered from. Treatment to keep it from coming back failed. Cases like Beau’s most often turn out to be a primary brain tumor for adults known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM); most often (as with most cancers), treatments only help speed death from the cancer. (But that hasn’t stopped our spending billions and billions on cancer “research”, treating symptoms instead of triggers for the disease. Any fool knows by now that environmental factors are the No. 1 cause of cancer. The “cure” game is highly profitable; prevention, not so much.)
According to The Daily Beast, GBM is an aggressive and often fatal form of cancer. The estimated two-year survival rate is 17 percent for patients between 40 and 65 years old. Most media, like the Beast, report that scientists are not sure what the underlying causes of GBM are, but “Some believe that environmental risk factors, such as radiation from cellphone use, may contribute to brain cancer.”
Ipsilateral Tumors
Senator Ted Kennedy and lawyer Johnny Cochran, two other high-profile men who died of ipsilateral brain tumors as Biden did, also spent a lot of time on their cell phones. Edward “Ted” Kennedy died in 2008 from an unspecified malignant glioma of the parietal lobe. A malignant glioma can often progress into a glioblastoma, which is typically fatal. Before dying, Cochran said he thought his cell phone caused his brain cancer. His daughter Tiffany, for one, no longer holds a cell phone to her head. Like many people, she calls for more studies. Brain tumors can be very slow growing, taking 20-40 years to develop.
Brain Cancer
Brain cancer is a general term doctors use to describe a variety of malignant and benign tumors that grow in and around the brain. Brain cancer attacks thousands of Americans every year. In 2014, some 70,000 people suffered brain cancer, 14,000 died from it.
Many different types of brain cancer occur. A primary tumor arises from cells that compose the brain itself. Tumors form on the skull or the brain’s covering. Metastatic disease is a cancer from elsewhere spreading into the central nervous system. Each types carries its own prognosis – anywhere from non life threatening to an eight-month terminal case.
Glioblastoma, which killed Biden, is an aggressive, often fatal tumor. Causes of GBM are unknown. GBM is believed to be a disease that arises from astrocytes, brain support cells usually found in the cerebral hemispheres. Most cases of GBM stem from cell mutations. Some may turn into GBM from a previous lower grade tumor.
Invisible Hazards, Invisible Research
Some believe that environmental risk factors, such as radiation from cellphone use, may contribute to brain cancer. The problem is that nobody in the telecom (Read: Telecom) industry wants to find out; consequently, you haven’t heard much about cell phone dangers from a media that is either owned by, or reliant on, the telecom industry. That industry spent $25 million years ago to test cell phone safety. The doctor hired to run the research didn’t find the safe cell phone harbor they’d paid for; so they did just what you’d expect: They fired him and tried to bury his research. He kept it and published it himself. Dr. George Carlo wrote Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age. It is not an easy read. It threatens all we hold dear, including our most precious possession, the talisman that protects us from all life’s vicissitudes, all our insecurities, lonelinesses, fears. With a cell phone, we can conquer the world; without it, we are nothing. Without our phones we would return to the muck from whence we came, slithering on our bellies, no longer requiring use of our opposable thumbs. We would not know what to do while we wait in elevators, in restaurants, in bars, while we sit at home, walk down the street with our dog on a leash, drive our cars down the freeway, wait at green lights texting while others honk behind us. We would be lost creatures without our little phones. Better 20 years of cell phone joy and a nice little brain tumor, than 20 years without and the professional and personal hell of a lonely beast of the field.
Treatment Options Dismal
Treatment options for brain tumors are dismal. They include a poison cocktail combo of radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery. (Covered by insurance, of course, if you’re lucky; by bankruptcy, if you’re not.) Surgery attempts to gouge out the tumor. This butchery is followed by radiation (guaranteed to poison, but not to heal) and what is now euphemistically called “chemotherapeutics.” Any or all of these give a victim an improbable 10 percent chance to survive. Prognosis is worse for the elderly.
Research confirms Cell Phone Brain Cancer Link
In 2014, Swedish doctors found people who used cell phones more than a year have a 70 percent greater risk of brain cancer than those who used the wireless devices for less than a year. Published in the International Journal of Oncology, the study found people who microwave-cooked their brains with cell phones for more than 25 years had a 300 percent greater risk of developing the dreaded disease than those who fried their own brains for a year or less. The study’s authors concluded that “glioma and also acoustic neuroma are caused by RF-EMF emissions from wireless phones.” That’s radio frequency electromagnetic low frequency emissions, if you’re keeping score at home. Radiation is bad; it’s a known carcinogen. Even the World Health Organization has had to admit it. The WHO recently upgraded cell phone radiation to B2 category, “possibly carcinogenic.” That’s a euphemism for “can give you brain cancer and kill you.”
Italian Supreme Court awards Cell Phone Damages
In 2012, the Supreme Court of Italy granted worker’s compensation to Innocente Marcolini, a businessman who developed a tumor after using a cell phone for 12 years. The Italian court was the first in the world to rule in favor of a link between cell phone radiation and brain tumors. Marcolini was a financial manager at an industrial plant in Brescia, Italy. He used a cell phone for about five hours daily. In 2002 when he was 50, he felt tingling sensation in his chin. He was diagnosed with a nerve tumor. Marcolini’s worker’s compensation claim alleged that the tumor was the result of the wireless phones he was required to use for work. Marcolini’s case was initially rejected, but the Court of Appeals in Brescia reversed the decision in 2009. On October 18, 2012, Italy’s Supreme Court affirmed the Appeals Court’s ruling.
