Acoustic neuromas are slow-growing noncancerous tumors that develop on a nerve linking the brain and the inner ear."
Technically these tumors are more accurately called vestibular schwannomas (They arise from the vestibular branch (balance controlling) rather than the cochlear (hearing contolling - thus acoustic) branch of the 8th cranial nerve and the cells are scwhann cells not neural cells). They are benign neoplasms (not sure where the popularly stated notion that benign tumors are not cancers comes from but this is not really a good distinction since the border between benign and malignant tumors of many types is not sharp). ""We looked at DNA damage in animals, not in humans, and found that cell phone radiation can damage DNA," he said. The body's immune system has the ability to repair DNA breaks, but sometimes it can make a mistake and cause a mutation, which could be the first step toward cancer, Lai said." In instances like this dose is all important. How much radiation over how long a period of time? What size are the animals? (Radiation may penetrate to the vestibular nerves more easily in a small animal than a human). The fact of the matter is that I have been doing neuroradiology for about 30 years and I have seen no rise in the incidence of vestibular scwhannomas in my practice and none of my colleagues has commented to me that they have seen any increased incidence. I will hold an informal poll at the next national neuroradiology meeting in May and get back to you all but for the moment I remain very skeptical _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
