Motorola StarTAC 3000 User Manual page 102

occurs among people who have not used mobile
phones. In fact, brain cancer occurs in the U.S.
population at a rate of about 6 new cases per
100,000 people each year. At that rate, assuming 80
million users of mobile phones (a number
increasing at a rate of about 1 million per month),
about 4800 cases of brain cancer would be expected
each year among those 80 million people, whether
or not they used their phones. Thus it is not possible
to tell whether any individual's cancer arose because
of the phone, or whether it would have happened
anyway. A key question is whether the risk of
getting a particular form of cancer is greater among
people who use mobile phones than among the rest
of the population. One way to answer that question
is to compare the usage of mobile phones among
people with brain cancer with the use of mobile
phones among appropriately matched people
without brain cancer. This is called a case-control
study. The current case-control study of brain
cancers by the National Cancer Institute, as well as
the follow-up research to be sponsored by industry,
will begin to generate this type of information.
What is FDA's role concerning the safety of
mobile phones?
Under the law, FDA does not review the safety of
radiation-emitting consumer products such as
mobile phones before marketing, as it does with
new drugs or medical devices. However, the agency
has authority to take action if mobile phones are
shown to emit radiation at a level that is hazardous
to the user. In such a case, FDA could require the
manufacturers of mobile phones to notify users of
the health hazard and to repair, replace or recall the
phones so that the hazard no longer exists.
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