Customer Reviews

Cellular Telephone Russian Roulette

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This is a kamikaze book, and would, if it got the attention it deserved, eviscerate the cell phone industry. If I were Robert C. Kane, I'd hire a bodyguard. The men behind the megabucks being raked in by the wireless industry can't be happy about a book like this. In lucid, readable, decisive prose, Kane, an industry insider, systematically dismantles the wireless industry's pretense of product safety. There is no pussyfooting around here about how there "may" be health concerns, as the February issue of Consumer Reports puts it. Kane starts right in on page one by stating, "Talking on a cellular phone can be likened to holding a microwave oven to one's head." Check out the last two chapters, "Public Deception I" and "Public Deception II", and the quotes from Carl Sagan and Ayn Rand. Powerful stuff. And then throw away your cell phone.

In Cellular Telephone Russian Roulette, author Robert Kane, a former top Motorola engineer, traces the history of cell phone development (in which he was involved) and analyzes the cell phone radiation bioeffects research base from 1950 to 1996.

Despite industry's claim to safety, Kane's report suggests that there was much more information available indicating safety concerns than the industry has ever acknowledged.

The work includes a review of:

· The foundations of radiofrequency (RF) radiation research (starting with radar).

· The discoveries of bioeffects from RF exposure as early as the 1970's, and the discovery of "hot spots" in the brains of mobile phone users.

· The industry's influence on "safe" exposure guidelines in order to meet its own product needs.

· The ways research design can be manipulated to bias the outcome of lab studies.

· The red-herring requirement by industry that research must identify a single biological causation mechanism for adverse health effects from RF exposure before science can say there is proven harm.

·The emergence of a PR campaign to mask the risks of cell phone radiation to the user.


It needs a good index and some section headings, but this book is jam-packed with information, much of which you won't find anywhere else. It will be of interest to those who have already gained some familiarity with the RF radiation health issue and are not put off by some of the technical terms used (megahertz, S.A.R., etc.). Serious readers may begin to smell more-than-feint traces of tobacco.

Another good book to dig up is Nicholas Steneck's 1984 science-and-values overview of "The Microwave Debate" which shows there has been some concern about RF radiation's ability to affect biology for quite some time.