Brett is movie star handsome, with an equally gorgeous wife and a young son. The 46-year-old California resident has always lived what he describes as “an over-the-top healthy lifestyle.” He has worked out daily for 30 years and was a national championship rower in 1988, placing seventh in Olympic trials. “Even when I lived in a college fraternity house,” he says, “I didn’t drink alcohol or use any drugs whatsoever. I have never smoked, and in fact over the last three decades have had a reputation as a total health freak.”
| So how did he contract deadly brain cancer? “I was duped, the same way millions of people are still being duped today,” Brett asserts. “I now believe cell phone use is just as dangerous as smoking, if not in some ways even more so. My cell use was effectively like smoking four packs a day, with each phone call equaling one cigarette. That has me really, really angry—that I, like the rest of the world, was misled into thinking that cell phones were perfectly safe. That being so, I had to ask myself, how did I develop a brain tumor?” |  |
And then it dawned on him.
Brett is now suing his cell phone’s manufacturer, spurred forward, he says, not only by his brain cancer but also by the fact that he and his wife lost a baby daughter who was stillborn just a week after his brain surgery. “I am just so sure that this tumor came from my phone use,” says Brett, “because of my personal health habits plus the fact that my use of cell phones has been extreme for the past two decades. I have not even had a landline since 1988. For the past 22 years I have conducted extensive business in law and real estate daily on my cell, and did the same extreme high call volume socially. I was always on the max plans, typically using 5,000 minutes a month.”
Brett has undergone surgery, 30 days of post-surgical radiation to the head, eight cycles of chemotherapy, and is now in remission, closely watching his diet, and extremely hopeful that his malignant tumor will never return. In the meantime, he has generously and courageously joined the public education campaign spearheaded by Devra Davis, PhD, MPH. Dr. Davis is a renowned epidemiologist; founder of the Environmental Health Trust, a nonprofit devoted to researching and controlling avoidable environmental health threats; and author of a breakthrough new book, Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.
“The safeguards are simple to keep your health intact,” says Brett. “It’s as simple as using a headset to make a call or keeping the cell phone away from your pockets or your head. No call is worth losing your life over. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way.”
Brought to you by Environmental Health Trust, November 8, 2010.
