“There is a complete disclaimer at the WEEP website, but the site uses an appeal to authority- Dr. Belpomme.”
There is a difference between an appeal to authority and a fallacious appeal to authority.
“Belpomme both diagnoses and treats people he says are affected b emf's, so he has a vested interest.”
We ALL look to leaders in their fields for information. If I was told I had a malignancy you're damn right I'm going to listen to the people who both diagnose and treat people with malignancies!
“He uses his Presidency of ARTAC as a position of authority, yet their declaration s not about emf's at all, it is about chemicals.”
It's a related field. This means nothing.
“The Declaration begins with this statement: "* ban all products which are recognised as dangerous for human beings by the scientific authorities"*
That sounds a little bit overboard to me.”
Same here. It doesn't make his research wrong. It only shows that you're taking cost/benefit into account, though without knowing what the real cost is.
“Most of my life I have been exposed to emf's far exceeding anything these people can even imagine.”
It isn't the “amount” of EMFs, but the types. As I said previously: Scientists came to the conclusion that the interaction of electromagnetic fields and biological systems must use nonlinear wave mechanics and “some researchers have even incorporated the mathematics of chaos dynamics,” as opposed to the linear wave mechanics presumed previously.
The fact that smoking causes lung cancer is better stated as smoking CAN cause lung cancer. The fact that some life-long smokers do not get lung cancer isn't proof that smoking is okay. If you're going to hit me with claims of logical fallacies then please watch your own.
“You talk as if we are still in the dark ages of science.”
No I don't. I used those examples as parallels to what we are doing today: denying the existence of illnesses because we do not yet understand them. That's what they did in those examples and that's what we're doing today. The medical field didn't even admit that ulcers had physiological etiologies until a few years ago.
“There has been a LOT of research into the subjects you mention, decades in some cases. Most notably there have been many epidemiological studies in supposed "hot spots", such as power lines and cell-phone towers. None of them found any statistically significant correlation.”
“None of them”? Firstly, how many long-term epidemiological studies could have been focused on cell phone use when it's still a recent phenomenon? It also ignores much of my other points: the complexity and our inability to understand these complex signals in a still poorly understood physiology, and also the difficulty of study design and interpretation.
“Lloyd Morgan, B.Sc., says, “In one Interphone study, by Lahkola et al (2008), which included results from the U.K. and four Scandinavian countries, the published Interphone results found virtually no increased risk of meningiomas. But when our correction factor was applied, using the mean value of the original odds ratios, not only was risk of meningioma found, but for every year of cell phone use, a person’s risk of meningioma increases by 24%. For every 100 hours of cell phone use there was a 26% increased risk of meningioma, a tumor of the lining of the brain, the meninges.”
“Morgan says, “What we have discovered indicates there is going to be one hell of a brain tumor pandemic unless people are warned and encouraged to change current cell phone use behaviors. Governments should not soft-peddle this critical public health issue but instead rapidly educate citizens on the risks. People should hear the message clearly that cell phones should be kept away from one’s head and body at all times.””
http://electromagnetichealth.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Poster_PDF_Final_6-10-10-1.pdf
That's just one study and that demonstrates why this cavalier attitude is dangerous.
“The cell phone warning you mention is for a different type of thing. The only possible health problem that such warnings are about are from thermal effects.”
This is not skepticism or debunking: it's denial and denying.
“Not entirely related, but consider that at many gas stations there are warning labels telling you not to use your cell phone.”
No, but it was prudent to be cautious with a new technology that they didn't yet understand.
“More on Belpomme.”
Unreferenced ad hominem, but it's very clear where you're coming from now. Search for something to support your position of denial and ignore information that supports the other side. Not only is it denialism: it's an example of a tightly closed mind. The mirror image of the chemtrail contingent.