Oh come on! This is just getting ridiculous, this constant onslaught of news that the things we love — gadgets and the Internet — are destroying us in some way (Did you hear how the internet is destroying love and biodiversity?), either by rewiring our brains or by giving us cancer. The latest: Cellphones are just as cancerous as exhaust fumes and chemicals like DDT.
When I first ran across this story yesterday evening I gave consideration to just ignoring it, because it just made me ANGRY, but felt it important that people point out how absurd the great 21 century technology scare is getting. Did this sort of hysteria run rampant when television first proliferated. Radio? Actually, yes, it sort of did, and we all seem to have survived it pretty damn well!
Cellphones possibly cause cancer, a panel of experts from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer reported today.
The panel’s decision, which it based on a review of published studies on the topic, lands cellphones on a list of possible carcinogens that includes the pesticide DDT and gasoline engine exhaust.
Thankfully, the ABC report goes on to note that hairdryers probably pose a greater risk to human health than cell phones and that the WHO is being alarmist, but still, this stuff is really starting to get my goat. Just let me live my life enjoying the things that I enjoy and stop trying to rain on my parade, dangit! In fact, bring me pizza and kittens right now!
There, that’s better. HAPPY TIME! HAPPY TIME!
Anyway, here’s ABC’s video report on the matter…
(Lead image via. Pizza and kittens photoshop via Topher Chris)
