The cell phone-brain tumor story scared people for a few months, but the popularity of the phones has never been higher.BOB RIVES/STAFF

Medical myths

It doesn't take much for isolated incidents to turn into a nationwide scare

Web posted November 6, 1997

By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer

Lorraine Banks heard the news about brain tumors, but it wasn't enough to make her drop her cellular phone.

``Well, it scared me a lot at the time,'' said the 65-year-old real estate agent, whose cell phone is a lifeline to the office when she's out. ``I was sort of thinking, `Well if it gets me, it gets me.'''

A man in Florida filed a lawsuit in 1993 alleging that the cellular phone he bought for his wife in 1988 caused a brain tumor in her head two years later in about the spot where the phone's antenna rested as she talked. The man's appearance on Larry King Live later that year prompted widespread panic, and cell phone companies' stock dipped by 10 percent, according to a report by the American Council on Science and Health. But there was never any scientific evidence to back up the man's claim, the group said.

And like most people, Ms. Banks didn't find that out until last week.

``Oh, great,'' she exclaimed. ``That's encouraging.''

FEAR THAT ALAR on apples or packets of sweetener will cause cancer lingers after the news fades. Such medical myths cause people to hold their cell phones away from their heads or eye cranberries with suspicion.

The American Council on Science and Health has documented 20 ``unfounded health scares'' in the past 40 years. The group adds about five each time it updates its annual report, said council president Elizabeth Whelan.

The problem is that people who know better don't speak up when the stories hit, Ms. Whelan said.

``The medical community doesn't want to get involved,'' she said, leaving it to groups like hers to take up the fight.

But environmental groups say the council is using quirky stories like the cell phone-brain tumor scare to draw attention away from legitimate concerns over chemicals and pesticides, whose manufacturers fund the council.

Legitimate or not, the stories have taken on the resilience of ``urban legends'' and are interwoven into the fabric of modern culture, said John English, professor of journalism at the

University of Georgia and founder of the Pop Culture Association in the South.

``It's like the Doberman choking on a finger,'' said Dr. English, referring to the oft-told, friend-of-a-friend story about people who come home and discover that their dog died gagging on a digit snatched from an unfortunate burglar. The story takes on fresh credibility as it passes by word of mouth, he said.

THE LARGER EFFECT of the medical myth is that it usually concerns common household items, creating in its backlash a ``mass hysteria'' that is no longer controlled by the media that spawned it.

``It becomes part of the widespread common culture whether you actually buy it or not,'' Dr. English said.

And the most effective ones have been those that targeted common items heretofore unquestioned.

``Cranberries on Thanksgiving, remember that one?'' Dr. English said.

The 1959 Cranberry Scare concerned a weed killer called aminotriazole that was sprayed in cranberry bogs, according to the council report. Though approved for use a year earlier, tests at the Food and Drug Administration showed that ingesting massive quantities caused thyroid cancer in rats. That year, 15 days before Thanksgiving, some cranberries contaminated with the weedkiller in Oregon and Washington were quarantined while crops in other states were clean. When asked how someone buying cranberries would know whether they were contaminated, Secretary of Health Arthur Fleming made the unfortunate comment that they wouldn't.

The resulting bedlam -- from terrified consumers on one side and angry farmers on the other -- prompted public officials to backtrack and announce that cranberries would be on their Thanksgiving tables. Presidential candidate Richard Nixon ate four helpings of cranberry sauce at a campaign stop to show his support for the berries.

PRACTICALLY THE EXACT same thing happened in 1989 with Alar and apples, Ms. Whelan said.

``They have almost the same blueprint,'' she said.

Environmental groups say there was, in fact, a reason for concern over the chemical, used to keep apples on the tree longer to ripen. At extremely high doses, it can cause cancer. A report hyping the risk hit 60 Minutes and -- evidence or not -- quickly set off a nationwide panic that ended with the dumping of apples and the manufacturer jerking the chemical from the market. Subsequent tests and comments from outside experts have downplayed the risk, and Ms. Whelan and her group trot out the ``scare'' as proof of what bad science can do.

Groups like the Environmental Working Group in Washington, D.C., say they can agree with the council on one thing -- both sides need to hold back their ammunition until they have the facts to back it up, said Michael Shelhamer of Environmental Working Group. But when there is a proven risk, it should be brought out to protect the public, Mr. Shelhamer said.

``If you want to take those one or two incidents and question us, that's fine,'' he said. ``But the science and the data prove us out.''

WHETHER THE ``scare'' succeeds often depends on how attached people are to the object in question, Ms. Whelan said. In 1977, when tests showed that huge quantities of saccharine caused bladder cancer in rats, people didn't run from it -- they rushed to the stores to buy it up, fearing a ban. The outcry prompted Congress to keep it in circulation but with a warning label attached.

And while the cell phone-brain tumor story scared people for a few months, the popularity of the phones has never been higher. Ms. Banks is proof of how much users depend on them. While talking on a telephone in her office, there is suddenly a chirping in the background.

``Oops,'' she said. ``My cell phone is going off in my lap.''

That cell phones would be a culprit is another example of how people often look for a cause for their cancers when the answer isn't clearcut or understandable, said James Fick, a neurosurgeon at Medical College of Georgia who is studying a genetic treatment for rare brain tumors.

``These kinds of things are very faddish,'' he said. ``There will always be something the public can point to and say, `This caused my brain tumor. This caused my child's leukemia.'''

And sometimes that cause sits nearby. Some medical myths are like folk tales peculiar to a certain region, and most places have their own bugaboo that prompts longstanding rumors, the way Savannah River Site has for more than 40 years, Dr. English said.

THE CONCERN OVER increased cancer rates around nuclear processing facilities like SRS prompted the Department of Energy to study the people who live around them. And after three years, the study found those rates no different than other areas of the region and state.

But that doesn't stop people from blaming medical and social problems on the plant. Mildred Ford, a community activist in Blackville, S.C., is concerned about what seems to her to be a higher rate of learning disabilities and still-born babies in the area, which in her mind might have something to do with SRS.

``We have no evidence, but we are concerned'' about a possible link with the plant, Ms. Ford said.

Much of the cancer study's findings were shared with community members in a number of different forums and widely publicized, said John Dunbar, an epidemiologist at the University of South Carolina who began the study.

But will that evidence stop the rumors and myths?

``I doubt it,'' he said wearily.