Every man, woman and child in Thailand has a mobile phone these days and having the mobile seems more important when eating in a restaurant than the knives and forks themselves!
However, remember the first mobile phones? We used to have to carry a suitcase full of batteries and needed three months at Thor’s gym to lift the thing. Who would have believed that one day we would be able to slip the mobile phone into our shirt pockets, where its death dealing invisible rays would kill us.
However, new developments always bring out the soothsayers and harbingers of doom. Forget attacks by extremists, we are all carrying a loaded time bomb in our mobile phone pockets.
I read a banner headline the other day which claimed “Hours of chatting on a mobile phone are suspected to be slashing male fertility around the world, new research shows.” It went on to say that “Men who use mobile phones for more than four hours a day produce fewer and poorer quality sperm, according to results of a study released at an American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference in New Orleans.”
I mean this is so serious, we should never keep mobile phones on our laps, or heaven help us, slipped between your legs as you drive the car. Can’t you see the headlines, “Driver’s gonads blown to bits by mobile phone while waiting at traffic light!”
If that was not chilling enough, Australian scientists are investigating if children are more vulnerable than adults to the effects of radiation from mobile phones. This should have us worried for our children, as Thailand has one of the highest usage rates of mobile phones. Every Thai, from the age of two, or the age of being able to speak, has one. Every child takes one to school. Even the national way of greeting has been changed to suit the mobile phone fad. The traditional ‘wai’ is now done by holding the mobile phone between your palms and bringing it up to touch your nose. True, just look around you.
The study of 110 adults at the Australian Center for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research has apparently confirmed mobile phones cause a change in brain function by altering our alpha waves.
The center is now investigating the effect on 40 children aged 12 to 13, and 20 people aged 55 to 75 years.
Associate Professor Rodney Croft, from the center, said while studies had been conducted on adults, the effect on children had, until now, remained untested. “Although there’s a tiny effect on healthy young adults, there is a possibility that it could be much stronger in children or the elderly,” said the worthy Professor.
Now, Mobile phones are hardly new technology, although the latest 4G variety seem to be able to do everything from cleaning the house, watering the garden, tying your shoelaces and washing the dog, as well as making and receiving telephone calls. There have been claims that using mobile phones produces brain cancer because people with brain cancer have used mobiles, and that is about as stupid as claiming that shoes are the greatest killer in the western society because 99 percent of people who died last year wore shoes.
What is not said in all these shock, horror headlines, is that these research chappies in the hallowed halls of academia need finance to keep going, and they are all in competition with each other to grab a slice of the research dollar eventually funded by you and I. The more shock, horror headers they can get, the more likely they are to get further funding. It is the money train again.
Now there are groups doing genuine research into the malaises of mankind, and the influence of cholesterol on cardiac deaths is a classic example. The Framingham study kicked it all off many years ago, and it has been progressively studied since then. High cholesterol is an adverse factor as far as your cardiac condition is concerned. Believe it. And is unaltered by mobile phone use. Believe that one too. And get your cholesterol levels checked as well.
Beware of ‘scientific breakthroughs’ reported in the popular press. It may just be fishing for funding.
