Monday, August 17, 2009

Mobile phones and brain cancer

Australian Today Tonight program on mobile phones
Over the past week the investigative TV program “Today Tonight” aired in South Australia, and later nationally, a segment on mobile phones that included an interview with Canberra neurosurgeon Vini Khurana. The program can be seen on video by going to the Adelaide link:
and scrolling down on the icons to the left of the screen to get to the story. Well worth a viewing
Earlier this week I spent the evening at Calvary Hospital in Hobart recovering from laser surgery for a minor condition. My room was next to the neurosurgery ward. Being aware of the observations of neurosurgeons Khurana, Teo and Bittar of an increase in brain tumour patients, especially in young people, I struck up a conservation with two ward nurses about the publicity surrounding brain tumours and mobile phone use. The first nurse said she thought there was a definite increase in young patients in the ward and mentioned a sad case of an 18 year old who had just been admitted. The second nurse said that, from what she was seeing, she has forbid her two daughters from using a mobile phone and the family had a mobile strictly for emergency situations (i.e.: in case the car breaks down at night). So, it would seem that Khurana, Teo and Bittars' observations may be reflecting a general growing pattern in neurosurgery clinics in Australia.
Don
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