This Is Your Brain on a Cell Phone
Wired News had an unsettling story this
morning: A University of Washington researcher has found that cell phones
appear to cause long-term-memory loss in laboratory rats. Yes, yes, I know what
you're going to ask--what are lab rats doing talking on the phone? Actually,
it's even weirder than that. Dr. Henry Lai, a research professor in
bioengineering in Seattle, first put 100 rats into a tank of water and "taught
them to swim to a platform in the middle of the tank," WN reports.
(How do you teach 100 rats to swim? You start with teensy-tiny water wings, I
guess.) Then, after the rats knew the route, Lai confused them by dumping
powdered milk into the water, making it harder to navigate--the rats had to
make it to the platform by memory, rather than by sight. Finally, after the
long-suffering rodents had learned the route, Lai bombarded half the rats with
microwaves similar to the kind that's emitted from mobile phones. Not
surprisingly, the poor rats couldn't remember the way to the platform after
that. It got even worse when Lai removed the platform: The unbombarded rats
swam to the place where it should be and looked around with concern; the
cellular rats just swam around randomly, like members of the Royal family at
the beach.
I could see this one really upsetting the digerati. For
years, people have shrugged off suggestions that cell phones could cause
certain kinds of tumors. (I was interviewing an engineer recently who referred
to GSM phones as "brain fryers"--he laughed when he said that.) A link between
cell-phone use and brain cancer ... big deal. It's only death. But a suggestion
that cell-phone use makes us dumber? That could be serious trouble for the
cell-phone industry.
Of course, it's impossible to say at this point if the
results from Lai's experiment will extrapolate to humans. Other research will
need to be conducted (rats in a tank of juice, I guess, followed by a vat of
beer). Also, Wired says the radio transmissions are slightly different
from the type used by cellular phones. Still, I figured that you, as president
and founder of the Cell Phone Haters Club, would want to be aware of this
development so you can disseminate it (how? Carrier pigeon?) to your
members.
