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As a science and technology aficionado who believes in using science to promote human health and prosperity, I was startled to find myself classified as a Luddite by Frontier Centre research associate Paz Gomez in her article “Luddites Stand in the Way of 5G Prosperity: Fears Overblown, Ignore Benefits of Communications Connectivity” published on July 29, 2020.

The one thing I can agree with Ms. Gomez on is that faster communications would provide many benefits to humankind. However, choices have to be made about how to deliver faster communications to households, offices, farms and manufacturing buildings. Not all choices are good ones. And you can’t do a proper cost/benefit analysis without thoroughly exploring all of the costs.

The expression “5G” refers to the fifth generation of wireless technology, which will carry more data, at higher speeds, than previous cellular networks. But wireless 5G is not the only game in town when it comes to delivering high-speed internet. It faces stiff competition from fibre optic systems.

Fibre optic cables consist of extremely thin interior strands of glass or plastic which carry signals in the form of light, surrounded by multiple layers of cladding, coating and jacketing which prevent the light signals from escaping.

Fibre optic cables are already in use for most of the world’s internet transmissions. This 2010 article estimated that “ninety-nine percent of the Internet’s physical distance has been strung with fiber already.”

This means there’s a good chance that the street where your home or workplace is located already has fibre optic cable running along its length, even though it may not yet be in use (this is known as “dark fibre”.) I’ve been told that’s the case in the municipality where I live.

The problem stems from what’s called “the last mile”: the distance between the street’s central fibre optic cable and the customer’s wifi router or receiving devices. Until recently, this last mile (which might be only 20 feet in some cases) has ordinarily been wired with coaxial cable or DSL (Digital Subscriber Lines). Such cables transmit data reliably over shielded wires, but the transmission speed is relatively slow compared to fibre optics.

It’s the last mile that the two competing new technologies propose to speed up. This can be done in two ways: either by replacing the coaxial or DSL cable running from the street to your home with additional fibre optic cable, or by simply beaming signals wirelessly to your devices using antennae referred to as “small cells”.

Wireless 5G in North America would require the installation of millions of small cellular antennae in order to ensure continuous coverage[1]. That’s because the wavelengths they use have a very short range, so antennae have to be placed close together. For indoor use, small cells might need to be located as little as 10 meters apart. Outdoors, small cells have a range varying from 500 meters to 2.5 kilometers.[2] Some neighbourhoods might end up with small cells located on almost every telephone pole.

Different companies use different frequency bands for their 5G, but the most important thing to note is that none of the wireless 5G technologies have undergone any safety testing whatsoever with respect to the impact of these waves on human health. None. This was admitted by industry representatives at a U.S. Senate hearing held on February 7, 2019, an excerpt of which can be seen in this YouTube video.

Yes, there are government guidelines for electromagnetic energy. Here in Canada, they’re called Safety Code 6. Critics such as Canadians for Safe Technology (“C4ST”) allege that the code is severely obsolete[3]. It was created by Health Canada in the 1970s (long before the development of smart phones) to evaluate the technology existing at that time. It has not had any major revisions made to it in the last 30 years—but it has nevertheless has been extended to constitute the guidelines for a host of later-developed technologies including smart phones and cell phone antennae. Health Canada is apparently content to let it serve as the safety guideline for the untested 5G wireless radiation.

An international appeal signed by 398 scientists and doctors has recommended a moratorium on the roll-out of wireless 5G. They say new scientific evidence demonstrates that living organisms (both plants and animals) are adversely affected by EMFs (that is, existing electromagnetic frequencies emitted by 2G, 3G and 4G technologies—let alone 5G) at levels well below current national and international guidelines. The problem would simply be exacerbated by 5G.  The National Toxicology Program in the U.S. has published a study showing “a statistically significant increase in the incidence of brain and heart cancer in animals exposed to EMF below the… guidelines followed by most countries.”

The Bioinitiative Report (published in 2012 and recently updated to cover the period up to 2020) was authored by 29 people from 10 countries. Among them, they held 10 medical degrees (MD), 21 PhDs, and a few other degrees. This group doesn’t seem to fit the description of Luddites. Among the health problems they identified from EMFs, as indicated in scientific studies, are:

• Increased oxidative stress and free radical production (associated with numerous conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart disease, arthritis and diabetes—all of which have increased dramatically since the 1990s)
• Neurological effects (changes in memory, learning or perception)
• Disrupted immune function (an especially important problem in these days of COVID-19).

Dr. Martin Pall, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences at Washington State University. He has studied extensively the biological effects of electromagnetic fields, and summarized his findings in a letter to California legislators three years ago. His list of 14 different adverse health effects include life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias, lower sperm counts, cataract formation and sleep disruption.

In short, it is absurd to dismiss the health concerns about EMFs that have been brought forward by hundreds of scientists as the grumpy rumblings of Luddites who just can’t get their heads around the potential benefits of science.

Continue reading…

From LRC, here.

In matters of race and other social phenomena, there is a tendency to believe that what is seen today has always been. For black people, the socioeconomic progress achieved during my lifetime, which started in 1936, exceeded anyone’s wildest dreams. In 1936, most black people lived in gross material poverty and racial discrimination. Such poverty and discrimination is all but nonexistent today. Government data, assembled by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, shows that “the average American family … identified as poor by the Census Bureau, lives in an air-conditioned, centrally heated house or apartment … They have a car or truck. (Indeed, 43% of poor families own two or more cars.)” The household “has at least one widescreen TV connected to cable, satellite, or a streaming service, a computer or tablet with internet connection, and a smartphone. (Some 82% of poor families have one or more smartphones.” On top of this, blacks today have the same constitutional guarantees as everyone else, which is not to say that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated.

The poverty we have today is spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty is an absence of what traditionally has been known as various human virtues. Much of that spiritual poverty is a result of public and private policy that rewards inferiority and irresponsibility. Chief among the policies that reward inferiority and irresponsibility is the welfare state. When some people know they can have children out of wedlock, drop out of school and refuse employment and suffer little consequence and social sanction, one should not be surprised to see the growth of such behavior. Today’s out-of-wedlock births among blacks is over 70%, but in the 1930s, it was 11%. During the same period, out-of-wedlock births among whites was 3%; today, it is over 30%. It is fashionable and politically correct to blame today’s 21% black poverty on racial discrimination. That is nonsense. Why? The poverty rate among black husband-and-wife families has been in the single digits for more than two decades. Can anyone produce evidence that racists discriminate against black female-headed families but not black husband-and-wife families?

For most people, education is one of the steppingstones out of poverty, and it has been a steppingstone for many black people. Today, decent education is just about impossible at many big-city public schools where violence, disorder, disrespect and assaults on teachers are routine. The kind of disrespectful and violent behavior observed in many predominantly black schools is entirely new. Some have suggested that such disorder is part of black culture, but that is an insulting lie. Black people can be thankful that double standards, and public and private policies rewarding inferiority and irresponsibility, were not broadly accepted during the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. There would not have been the kind of intellectual excellence and spiritual courage that created the world’s most successful civil rights movement.

Many whites are ashamed, saddened and guilt-ridden by our history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. They see that justice and compensation for that ugly history is to hold their fellow black Americans accountable to the kind of standards and conduct they would never accept from whites. That behavior and conduct is relatively new. Meet with black people in their 70s or older, even liberal politicians such as Charles Rangel (age 90), and Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (85), Alcee Hastings (83) and Maxine Waters (82). Ask them whether their parents would have tolerated their assaulting and cursing of teachers or any other adult. I bet you the rent money their parents and other parents of that era would not have accepted the grossly disrespectful behavior seen today among many black youngsters who use foul language and racial epithets at one another. These older blacks will tell you that, had they behaved that way, they would have felt serious pain in their hind parts. If blacks of yesteryear would not accept such self-destructive behavior, why should today’s blacks accept it?

Black people have made tremendous gains over the years that came as a result of hard work, sacrifice and a no-nonsense approach to life. Recovering those virtues can provide solutions to many of today’s problems.

From LRC, here.