2 August 2007
A major study is being launched into the correlation between mobile phone use and cancer rates, it has been reported.
The Times reports that professor Lawrie Challis is currently in negotiations with the Department of Health to secure 3 million funding for the research, which will examine 200,000 volunteers for five years.
Despite dismissing one European study that found a correlation between brain tumours and mobile phone as so slight "it could be chance", Prof Challis did answer "absolutely" to the question over whether mobiles could become the cigarettes of the 21st century.
Speaking about the possibility that phones could be causing harm, he told the Times: "You find absolutely nothing for ten years and then after that it starts to grow dramatically. It goes up ten times.
"You look at what happened after the atomic bombs at Nagasaki, Hiroshima. You find again a long delay, nothing for ten years. The same for asbestos.
"The fact that you don't see anything in ten years is also more or less what you would expect if there is something happening.
"Because there is a hint and because the professional epidemiologists who I trust and who do this all the time feel there is a chance that this could be real, they can't rule out the possibility."
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