The Honorable Alex Azar
Secretary of Health and Human Services
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201
The Honorable Stephen Hahn MD
Commissioner of Food and Drugs Administration
Jeffrey Shuren, M.D., J.D.
Director, Center for Devices and Radiological Health
Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20857
Re: Call for Retraction of Flawed FDA Literature Review on Cell Phones
Dear Honorable Commissioner Hahn, Honorable Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and
Dr. Shuren Director of the FDA Center for Devices and Radiological Health;
As experts in the field of bioelectromagnetics, we are writing to urge you to retract a recent flawed report entitled “Review of Published Literature between 2008 and 2018 of Relevance to Radiofrequency Radiation and Cancer. Further, we ask you to remove and replace recent revisions to FDA websites that invoke this recent report as grounds for asserting that cellphone radiation has no known health effects, contrary to official reviews in other high-technology nations.
As many of us have detailed in letters sent to your offices, this report does not merit publication or posting on FDA’s website as it represents a highly limited review of the literature, contains “numerous scientific errors” omitting important studies for review and including studies that have been rejected for their flawed methods, and fails to acknowledge official actions by governments in France, South Korea, Belgium, Cyprus, European Parliament and recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics and California Department of Public Health that have issued specific advice about why and how to reduce exposures to cellphones and other wireless radiation sources. By dismissing scientific evidence of adverse effects and downplaying the need for individuals to take precautionary measures when using cell phones, the FDA review does not comport with the Agency’s mission of protecting and promoting public health.
Contrary to what the report and FDA website assert, there is no “scientific consensus” that cell phone radiation and 5G are safe as evidenced by the official statements of hundreds of scientists and medical organizations.
An interdisciplinary panel of independent experts providing a systematic review of relevant literature on cell phones and wireless radiation and health should guide the agency in its policy recommendations. Further, this review should also consider growing evidence of environmental effects along with public health impacts of exposures and relevant policy developments.
Signed,
Ronald Melnick PhD, former National Institutes of Health Scientist
Lennart Hardell MD, PhD, Professor Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Health,
Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden (retired). The Environment and Cancer Research Foundation Örebro, Sweden
Samuel Miham MD, former Head of the Chronic Disease Epidemiology Section, Washington State Department of Health
David Carpenter MD, Director of the Institute for Health and Environment at University of Albany’s School of Public Health, former director of the Wadsworth Laboratory of the New York State Department of Health.
Henry Lai, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Alfonso Balmori, BSc Biologist. Spain
Beatrice Golomb, MD PhD, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Diego
Devra Davis, PhD, MPH President of Environmental Health Trust and Fellow American College of Epidemiology, former founding Executive Director, Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
Hillel Baldwin, MD, Fellow American Association of Neurological Surgeons
Dr. Anthony Miller, Professor Emeritus of University of Toronto and World Health Organization Senior Advisor to Environmental Health Trust
Prof. Tom Butler, University College, Cork, Ireland
Igor Belyaev, PhD, Dr.Sc.Head, Department of Radiobiology of the Cancer Research Institute, Biomedical Research Center of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Magda Havas, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Trent University
Prof. Suleyman Dasdag, Department of Biophysics, Medical School of Istanbul Medeniyet University, Istanbul,Turkey
André VANDER VORST, Dr in Applied Sciences
Professor emeritus at Université catholique de Louvain, BELGIUM
Don Maisch, PhD, Australia
Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University
Peter Hensinger M.A.
Hugo Schooneveld, PhD, Former senior researcher, Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Dr. Monika Krout, Germany
Professor Elihu D. Richter MD, MPH at the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Department at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Marc Arazi MD of Phonegate Association, France
Marko S. Markov PhD, author of major medical textbooks in bioelectromagnetics.
Wenjun Sun PhD，Professor, Bioelectromagnetics Key Laboratory, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, China
Denis L Henshaw, Fellow Collegium Ramazzini, Emeritus Professor of Human Radiation Effects, Atmospheric Chemistry Group, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol
Christos D. Georgiou, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Biology Department
University of Patras, Greece
