Can You Hear Me Now? You're Getting Cancer

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has decided that his run for governor is behind him and his mystery trip to Hawaii is now non-news, so he needs to get back into the race to the bottom of the political heap. And how does a good liberal do that? Make a big announcement that he is going to protect us from ourselves. Moderate/conservative writer Debra J. Saunders (yes, there is such a thing) jumped on the Newsom announcement in the San Francisco Chronicle. Cell phones might, maybe, could, sort of, theoretically cause cancer.

In a major long-term study of cell phone usage among rats, it was found that 25% of all rats that use cell phones more than seventy hours a week tend to develop cancer. OK, I made that up. But the genuine studies that have been conducted have demonstrated a very tenuous correlation between cell phone use and certain types of rare cancer, even among humans. A few junk scientists who have tried to contact polar bears on their cell phones received no answer from the bears, and concluded that the poor things had died of cell phone-induced cancer. But that's about it for the "settled science."

As Saunders so aptly put it, "In other cities, mayors usually try to make it easier for local businesses to prosper. But in the Special City, the mayor somehow manages to find ways that, if anything, make it harder for commercial enterprises to compete with out-of-town retailers. In San Francisco, that's not a priority. Newsom wants to require cell phone companies to post warnings for an ostensible cancer threat that has not been established."

The FCC and the ultra-cautious World Health Organization have found no measurable risk of developing cancer from excessive cell phone use. But details like that are not about to stop our crusading mayor. The American Cancer Society has actually turned Newsom's proposed warning on its head. "Patients with brain tumors do not report more cell phone use overall than the control [groups]. In fact, most of the studies show a trend toward a lower risk of brain tumors among cell phone users, for unclear reasons."

But just like Al Gore's direct connection to divine authority, Newsom has apparently received the Holy Word from on high, and isn't going to let mere human scientific studies interfere with his new crusade. Using the European standard of the "Precautionary Principle" (which states that if any abstract, unprovable, unscientific harm could occur in the mind of a zealot, then the activity must be banned or regulated), Newsom wants to require that all cell phone retailers post warnings about the dangers of cancer resulting from cell phone use. The science is settled, the clarion call must go out--"Use a cell phone, die of cancer." It's right up there with cancer caused by living near high-voltage electrical transmission sources. It's just easier to put away your cell phone than to move your house to get away from an imagined danger.

Newsom is therefore in-sync with the nanny Board of Supervisors. They want to protect the good citizens of San Francisco by reducing any conceivable risky behavior into non-existence. Of course that doesn't explain why they aren't just a tad concerned with risk when it comes to having "sex tents" on the streets for the purpose of public sex during the Folsom Street Fair, or how to explain that with two generations of public warnings, The City still has about 900 new cases of HIV each year.

Run, Gavin, run! If you want to be the firstest with the mostest, you're going to have to move fast. Someone else is out to steal your thunder, and on a national level. Representative Andrea Boland (D-Maine) is proposing federal legislation to require such warnings across the entire United States. As for myself, I'm just going to ignore the whole thing and go breathe in some second-hand smoke under a large power transmission tower.