As reported in great detail by Microwave News, the decade long INTERPHONE project is finally approaching the date for publishing the first summaries of results.
Since taking over as the director of IARC, Christopher Wild has succeeded in putting together a draft with two other colleagues that should represent the project’s final summary of the evidence observed on the association between mobile phone usage and risk of malignant brain tumours (Gliomas and Meningiomas). Sadly, especially considering the evidence published by Hardell and colleagues, the Acoustic Neuroma findings are still to be completed and will not be published along with the malignant tumour work.
Considering the amount of money, time and energy invested in the Interphone project to date, the continue lack of results and discussions on the implications of the results can only be termed as a disaster. This has not been helped by the public disagreements and divergence of views within the Interphone camp leading to such a stalemate, and the lack of consideration of a number of significant confounding factors (such as cordless phone usage) further exacerbates the issues. By the time the results are fully published, their relevance and usefulness will be highly questionable due to the age of the data.