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Host Intro: Today, we?ll conclude our conversation with Jerry Phillips.  Last week, in part one, we learned that Jerry?s a scientist who says that as a funding source, the cell-phone manufacturer, Motorola, tried to block his lab from publishing accurate information about cell phone radiation.  Now, let?s continue our conversation with Jerry Phillips, as he talks about events leading up to the loss of his research lab in 1998.     Jerry picks up the story after a group of independent researchers at the University of Washington, Drs Lai and Sing, had shocked the cell phone community with a study showing that radiation from sources such as these can cause DNA damage.  Jerry Phillips.

Groups Featured in this report include:
Motorola-Radio Frequency Health, motorola.com/rfhealth
Microwave News--with Louis Slesin, http://www.microwavenews.com

Also in this Saga

Cell Phone Safety and Industry Part 1	A look at why British safety agencies discourage cell phone use among young children and the FDA doesn't.
Cell Phone Safety and Industry-Part 2 (Jerry Phillips)	Jerry Phillips says that Motorola tried to block him from publishing accurate information on cell phone radiation.
Cell Phone Safety and Industry-Part 4 Blake Levitt	Interview with Blake Levitt--journalist and cellphone industry watchdog.

Full Text:

I?m Shelley Schlender.  This is For Your Health.

Today, we?ll conclude our conversation with Jerry Phillips.  Last week, in part one, we learned that Jerry?s a scientist who says that as a funding source, the cell-phone manufacturer, Motorola, tried to block his lab from publishing accurate information about cell phone radiation.

In the U-S, allocating public funds for health research used to be a greater priority.  But these days, ?public-private? partnerships for research funding give the industries who provide much of the funds a greater hand in what?s happening. Those industries include pharmaceutical drugs, pesticide makers and manufacturers of hormone supplements for livestock and cell phones.  Jerry?s account gives insights into what may happen when the funder is uncomfortable with the researcher?s findings.  We?ll go to part two of Jerry?s story in just a minute.  But first, here?s an excerts from a statement about the interview, provided by  Motorola.  Note that the full statement was provided last week.

?When Dr. Phillips presented the findings of his DNA study to Motorola, the data were inconsistent. Motorola asked Dr. Phillips to conduct additional work to clarify the findings. Dr. Phillips declined Motorola's invitation to continue his research with additional funding. He informed Motorola that he would proceed to seek publication of his results.  Dr. Phillips was free to do so under Motorola's policy of respecting the independence of Motorola-sponsored researchers and laboratories. Motorola commissioned a separate laboratory to follow up on the results published by Dr. Phillips. That and other studies have failed to confirm his conclusions.

Thanks to KGNU?s Bob Freeman for reading that statement from Motorola.  Bob says that his reading of the statement doesn?t mean he endorses it.

Now, let?s continue our conversation with Jerry Phillips, as he talks about events leading up to the loss of his research lab in 1998.     Jerry picks up the story after a group of independent researchers at the University of Washington, Drs Lai and Sing, had shocked the cell phone community with a study showing that radiation from sources such as these can cause DNA damage.  Jerry Phillips:


I went to Adey and said hey, look!  how about some more funding from Motorola.  Why don?t we try to do a replication of Lai and Sing, not just a replication but an extension.  He talked to Balzano about it, and he said, fine.  Write a proposal, and we?ll see what we can do.

We got funding to buy some equipment we needed to do the study the way they needed to.  It?s for something called the common assay.  It?s a way to measure damage to DNA.  The bottom line is, Motorola gave us to money to say, here go for it.  Do your DNA damage study.  So we did it with two different cellular telephone fields.  One known as a TDMA field, and the other known as an i-den field.  Certain frequencies, certain pulse patterns.  It?s a way to characterize the radio frequency field itself.

The first thing we did was to have some people trained by Singh in the assay technique.  If we?re going to try to use his technique and replicate his work, I wanted to know how he does it.  He?s a wonderful man and trained two of my people in his laboratory.  Answered all the questions that we had.  We replicated one of his studies right down to the last data point.  Once we could replicate his study, not related to radio frequencies.  It involved using a chemical to produce damage to some cells.  But once we knew we could go ahead and treat the cells, measure the damage, replicate his published study, then we began looking at the effect of radio frequency damage in the cells we were working with..

We spent quite a bit of time doing the study very carefully, and in January of 97, I think it was, I submitted the final report for the study to Motorola, and I sent the all the data, and I sent them everything else, and indicated in the final report that we were going to publish that particular study, and I went about my merry way and kept doing research.

And one day, I got a phone call from May Swicord.  Mays said they got the report, and he had a lot of questions about it, and I said, great.  Let?s talk about it.  His attitude was belligerent at the time.  He was concerned about what he described as consistency of data.  About, Sometimes we had an increase in DNA damage.  Sometimes we had a decrease in DNA damage.  He didn?t see how that was possible, and I had to explain the basics of cell biology to him.  He?s not a cell biologist.  I tried to explain to him that there?s no reason to expect an effect always in one direction.  There?s no reason to expect that the effect will always be threefold in one direction.  Maybe it?ll be threefold, maybe it?ll be fourfold.  The cells are never the same when we work with them on different days.

I cited for him a number of published studies in other areas where you can use different concentrations of the same chemical and get two different effects..  An affect up in one case and down the other.  I told him about other studies, where you could use the same chemical at the same concentration, but at two different times in the life cycle of a cell, and see two different types of effects.  These things are known.  They?re known all throughout science.  I had a whole file of papers that I referred to as dual effect papers.  And so I?m talking to Swicord about this, and he doesn?t buy any of this stuff, and I?m thinking to myself, what do you expect from an engineer.  Anyhow . . .

. . . But Jerry Phillips, Was it that he?s an engineer, or did it have more to do with him being with Motorola?

I think it had a lot more to do with Motorola, because our studies demonstrated an effect on DNA damage, and it demonstrated again the ability of the fields to couple with the cells, and produce an effect, whether there was an increase in damage or a decrease in damage.

Do you think that Swicord?s comments had to do with him not understanding from an engineer?s perspective talking with a cell biologist or did it have to do with an industry person understanding that data that is critical of his company is not something he wants his researcher to do?

Oh, the latter.  Definitely.  Again, what they wanted was the work of Lai and Singh to fall by the wayside and be forgotten.  And here we are, producing studies, while our studies are not being done exactly the same way . . . we used different frequencies than Lai and Singh, We?re still demonstrating that DNA damage is affected and these fields could couple with biological systems.

Is this the same Motorola who approached you with funding initially, saying they were okay with any kind of good scientific information you gave them, whether they were pro or against radio frequency safety?

It was Motorola, but it obviously wasn?t the same Motorola, was it.

Do you ever wonder if there was a bait and switch that happened, or was this a change in administration?

I think it was a matter of wistful thinking.  I think Motorola wanted very much, and hoped very much that studies would show that there would be no biological effects whatsoever.  Or if we saw biological effects, they would be of such a nature that they could easily be passed off as not having any effect on human health and development.  
When we start seeing effects on DNA damage.  When we see effects on brain tissue, no matter what the direction of those effects, that becomes worrisome to a company who has billions invested in the technology.

Do you think they were so confident in their technology, they really didn?t expect to have negative results when they first approached you?

Yeah, I think they really hoped not to have negative effects.  Although, It isn?t so much of a concern to Motorola when groups like ours show effects.  If we show something, Motorola has demonstrated that there are other researchers out there who are willing to accept their money, and consistently come up with studies that show no effects whatsoever.

I don?t know quite how to say what you?re implying here.  Can you say it for me?

Oh, I don?t know I?m implying anything.  I?ll tell you outright.  There are some scientists who know that you can design an experiment in this area to produce any sort of effect you want.

You said in this area.  Is there any area of science where this can?t be possible?

I?m not going to deal with any other area right now.  I don?t want to give you that big, broad sweeping statement.  But I know in this particular area, if I want to set up a study that?s guaranteed to show no effect, I can do it.  And Motorola has purchased results.  I mean, I know laboratories that they?ve funded to the tune of many millions of dollars, and these labs have produced one study after another after another that say, look, Lai and Singh were wrong.  Look, this other lab was wrong.  Look, Phillips was wrong.  Everybody is wrong, except these other people hired by Motorola.

Now, When it comes to pubic opinion, or even when it comes to legal opinions and court actions, most folks don?t understand how to interpret the science.  I mean, What do you expect from a jury or a judge.  To know good science from bad science?  Of course not.  At the same time, They don?t understand the purpose of those studies that show no effects.

One thing I have a tremendous problem with is that People believe they can take those studies that show no effect in one hand and those studies that show an effect in another hand and you see, which one is heavier. Which one is heavier?  How does it balance?  And that?s not right.

So many people say, if there?s 2,000 peer-reviewed, scientifically based studies that say no effect, and ten that say effect, the way to decide is to count the studies.

That is what people do, and in this area, it?s not 2,000 to ten.  There are a tremendous number of studies that indicate biological effect from exposure to various electro magnetic fields.  Now, not all the studies that show effects are good.  Not all the studies that don?t show effects are good.  But there are good studies on both sides of the issue, and the way that needs to be interpreted by people is to say look, the fact that we have good studies that show effect means that something is going on.  And it helps us to find those conditions under which we have an effect.  Now, we have studies that don?t show an effect and some of those are good.  They help us too.  They don?t cancel out the other studies.  And that?s what people try to do is to cancel.  They tell us when things don?t happen.

That?s you talking as a scientist.  I?m thinking of the language that often appears in government reports or media reports, that says the overwhelming body of peer-reviewed, scientific evidence says, and then there?s a statement about what it says . . . that sounds like counting.  Whoever has the most studies gets to win.  You?re saying that scientists, if they?re ethical, have another way they could look at these things, but it?s harder to do.

It?s harder to do.  I think you put your finger on it.  It becomes a much more difficult issue, because you actually have to get in there and look at what the science is telling you.  Look at the individual studies.

I mentioned these dual effect papers.  I remember one time I was looking at a paper that dealt with biological effects of calcium.  There were two very famous groups, and they were at opposite ends of the issue.  One group said this is it, and the other group said, no, your wrong.  This is it.  And what it came down to is, they looked very carefully  at the data that each group had produced, and said, look, what is this telling us?  And, by looking at the conditions that each group had used, precisely, when they got an effect and when they didn?t, they ended up solving a tremendous puzzle.

So instead of saying, us against them, and we win or they win, it was, ?How do we use this information that?s a compare and contrast to solve this puzzle together.?

Oh, man, that?s what science should be all about.  And that?s what they should be doing.  But Look at the difference in the case of power lines.  Look at this in the case of cell telephones.  The bottom line is money.

You?re implying that with cell phones and power lines, this kind of research could be used to perhaps make safer cell phones and figure out a better place to put cell phones and power lines and using problem solving in that way.  You?re implying that might be possible.

You?re speaking much too rationally now.  Unfortunately, a lot of government regulators haven?t spoken that rationally in the past when they?ve convened hearings.  When they?ve gotten testimony relating to power lines.  You?re speaking much too rationally about an industry that has billions of dollars to win or lose.  Depending upon which way the issue heads.  They?re not interested in solving scientific puzzles,  they?re interested in making money.

Jerry Phillips, I would assume that most industries in the long run are better off if they create a better product, and that part of creating a better product would have to do with dealing with safety issues.

This has been done.  I?ll give you a couple of examples.  When the 60 hertz issue was hot.  Do electrical and magnetic fields power lines or appliances in the home that run at 60 hertz cause any diseases or disorders?  One particular appliance that was a big concern was an electric blanket, because the blanket is right on top of the body, and the electric and magnetic field is very intense at that point.  It?s right on top of you.  What the electric blanket industry did was very quietly rewire the blankets.  It turned out, it was a very easy thing to do to produce a blanket that produced a minimal magnetic field. The point is, if you tell people you?re doing this for health, it increases your liability.  You?re telling people at that point that they had a reason to be concerned in the first place.  Health concerns are an issue.  If you quietly do it behind the scenes, nobody knows.  Then all you?re doing is producing a better product.  Why did you do it?  Because it?s a better product.

Are they doing it right now with cell phones and cell towers?

I can?t tell you for sure.  I can say that when I was in California and having all these to dos with Motorola.  Right before we left California, I was told Motorola had developed an antenna that would direct the signal away from the head.  That way, the bulk of the power was going out where it should, toward the tower, toward the cell cite, rather than toward the head.  Why would they do something like that?  Not because health is concerned, but because you?re producing a better product.  Better efficiency.  You?re directing the power where it needs to do, toward the tower, or the cell cite.  Not toward the head.

That?s one way to look at it.  While they weren?t letting you publish your information, they were absorbing it.  Perhaps?

Who knows?

So we don?t know.  Let?s go back to the story.  We don?t know what Motorola?s motivations are or how they use information from researchers.  But there?s a question about whether researchers get to do good research and get it published.  What happened in this situation where Motorola executives had a very belligerent conversation with you? What was the end result of that?

During that conversation I had with Swicord, he told me, and this is fairly close to a quote, that I shouldn?t consider publishing the data at this time.

This was the data that would have corroborated the Washington group?s assertion that there are noticeable and measurable changes that occur in laboratory animals?

Lai and Singh had done their work with whole animals.  I prefer not to work with whole animals.  I was working with human cells.

You had both been working with biological real things.  And Instead of saying his work was full of hooey, you had indicated that it might be right.

That?s correct.  So Motorola wanted me to do additional work, and Not consider publishing, so it was the idea of here, we?ll give you more money.  You keeping doing more studies and don?t publish right now.  I said, no.  the study?s done.  I?ve been doing research for over 25 years.  I know when a study is done. And I?m going to go ahead and publish the work.

What happened when you said you were going to go ahead and publish?

Swicord and I cut that phone call off.  And there was a second phone call with me, our biostatistician, cause they had questions about our statistical analysis, and I said, that?s why we pay this woman.  She?s our biostatistician.  She tells us what tests to run.  Swicord and Balzano for Motorola.  And I had to go through the same questions that Swicord has raised with Balzano.  The bottom line there was, they said look.  Do more work.  Don?t publish now.  Do more work.  And I said no.  and I stopped getting phone calls from them.  Then I got phone calls and emails form ross Adey, and Ross told me that, I should give Motorola what they wanted.  And I said, no.  I?m not going to give Motorola what they want.  The study is good.  It?s ready for publication.  There?s work that needs to be continued.  We?ve raised a lot of questions that I want to answer.  I?m going to try to get the study published and keep the work going.

He told me I had better give Motorola what they wanted, or it could be harmful to my career.  And I just laughed that off.  There was nothing he could do to my career,  there was nothing Motorola could do to my career.  That was one of the last conversations I had with Ross Adey.

About Ross.  Ross had always railed against people being funded by industry, because of the influence that industry had, or potentially had, on people?s work.  We talked about this before accepting the money from Motorola.  During a lot of our group meetings, Adey was adamant we were only going to do the best work possible.  At the time that he told me to give Motorola what they wanted or else, that I had better think of the good of the whole group and not just my own group, he was in the position to lose all of his funding, except for what was coming in from Motorola.  And he understood that if he didn?t give Motorola what they wanted, that he was going to lose it all, and he did.

Including the government funding?

Government program was being terminated.  The government program died in 1998.  the whole program just disappeared.  

Just disappeared.

Yeah.  Bill Richardson came in as head of DOE.  At that time, the program to study 60 hertz electric and magnetic fields was terminated.  With that money gone, the only money coming in to fund the group was coming from Motorola.  And Adey knew, to keep any kind of program at all going, he needed the Motorola funding.

So it had changed from icing on the cake, this funding from Motorola, to being mainlining.

Pretty much.

I didn?t appreciate the change in Adey?s attitude, I didn?t appreciate the prostitution that?s involved there.  That, Oh, I really need the money, and I?ll give it to you, and let me keep everybody in line, and I?ll give you what you want, Motorola, and you keep the money coming in.  And as it turned out, none of this did Adey any good anyhow, because Motorola ended up pulling all his funding, terminating any association with him at all and  the researchers that were left in his group.  When he told me to give Motorola what they wanted, I said, to hell with this, I?m not doing anything, ever again, for Motorola, I?ll work on the DOE project, and that?s it.

Where did that study get published?

In a journal called Bioelectrochemistry and Bioenergetics in November 1998.

What happened to your funding, after that study was published?

I pulled myself out of the Motorola project, and Balzano told Adey he was going to have to get rid of me anyhow on the Motorola stuff.  I was told that by a group member who was there when Adey and Balzano were talking about the situation.  Balzano said you?re going to have to get rid of Jerry now. And Ross said, yes, and that was it.

Have to get rid of you?  After you got a study published in a peer reviewed journal?

After I had submitted it and it was accepted for publication.  But I had already told him that I wasn?t going to do any more Motorola work anyhow.  So the bottom line is, Adey lost his funding.  The work was given to a group from Richland, Washington.  They did the work for Motorola, instead of Adey.

What?s been the results of their studies?

I don?t know if that study has been published yet.  I don?t think they?ve published anything.

That?s just where it stands right now?

Right.

Did you go on to do any more research in this area?

No.  In fact, I?ve talked with Henry Lai about this several times.  I still have about four or five papers I could write up, if I ever had the motivation to do so.  Henry would like this, because at lest one replicates his study of 60 hertz electric and magnetic fields on DNA damage.

When the DOE program died, my wife and I saw this as our opportunity to leave California, so we donated about our laboratories, it was about a third of a million dollars worth of equipment and supplies to a local university where we had contacts and good experiences, so we left California and moved out to Colorado.

Jerry Philips, if you still wanted to do that kind of research, you could have brought your lab with you.  There was more than just leaving California happening here.

You don?t do research that way.  It?s not like have lab will travel.  You have to have someplace to set up shop.  Universities don?t just accept people who have labs or good ideas.  If you?re going to move to a new position, first of all, you need to move to an open position.  If you?re going to come in at our level, you have to have research funding.

You knew there were all these factors that meant this was the end of your research career.

That was the end of my research career.  Yeah.

So it wasn?t moving to Colorado for the heck of it.  It was recognizing that this decision to publish this paper was a decision to end your research in this area.

At the time, I didn?t know things were going to end up as they were.  At the time we published the paper, or the paper was accepted, anyhow, the decision with the department of energy was still up in the air.  We held out hope until very late into 1998 that the program was going to be revived in one form or another.  And it wasn?t.  they just killed the program.

What do you do now?

I work for Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, here in the Springs.  They?re a non profit group created in 1958 after the Russians sent sputnik up and folks in the US realized that maybe they were a bit behind in math and science..  This organization produces textbooks, as well as smaller programs, K-12, and we also have some undergraduate programs, mostly for freshman biology.  So I write science programs and just have a great time doing it.

What has all this taught you about the current state of scientific research?

That?s a complex question.  Oh, my.  I?ll give it to you a couple of ways.  One is, I think in general, the state of research is pretty good.  However, funding is a big issue.  Funding is a major issue.  It?s where the funding comes from, and how funding is determined.  And that I think is keeping things down a little bit.  I know there are needed areas of research, like that that I worked in, that could use some funding, and the only funding that?s available and the only funding for work in this area that?s been available for years has been from industry.  How can industry support work that deals with its own efforts and do so fairly?  Well, we know from our experiences with Motorola that it can?t be done.  What does that mean in terms of drug development?  I don?t know.  What does it mean in terms of other issues that relate to industry interests where they?re providing the bulk of the money for the research, well, I don?t know.  But one has to be a little bit skeptical.  

The wolf guarding the sheep?

The potential is certainly there.  I don?t mean to imply that that?ll happen all the time.  But the potential is there.  It?s been done before.  All I have to do is look again at what Motorola did to us and say, look, is this just an isolated incident?  Well . . .  Probably not.




I?m Shelley Schlender. Jerry Phillips continues to work in Colorado Springs, now leading science discovery programs for kids.  In their statement to KGNU, Motorola has said that the worldwide research shows that mobile phones pose no known health risks. They add that links to the World Health Organization, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and other sources are accessible at www.motorola.com/rfhealth.?.  Next week, we?ll get an update about industry funding and radio frequency radiation, from the perspective of industry watchdogs. If you missed a part of this interview, you can listen to it, and others in this month-long series, by going to the KGNU website and checking ?For Your Health? on the listings page.  That?s ?For Your Health? on the listings page of the kgnu website, kgnu.org.  .Questions or comments about this program?  Call the comment line.  303-447-9911