Response Brief Filed in Landmark Case Against FCC on 5G and Wireless Health Impacts

The following is a transcript of this video. Also see related article.

DAFNA TACHOVER: Hi everyone, and thank you for joining us. My name is Dafna Tachover and I’m the Children’s Health Defense director of its 5G, and Wireless Home Program. We are holding this press conference to discuss the filing of our response brief in our case against the FCC, for its decision not to review, it’s 25 years old obsolete guidelines, in regards to the health effects of wireless technology radiation in 5G. Before I continue, I would like to go through a few preliminary matters. First is press conference will last for an hour. We have four speakers. Each will speak for about five to seven minutes, then we will be answering questions. If you have a question, please submit it through the Q&A system, and if you are from media, please state that you are from the media and also your affiliation. Our speakers are going to be: Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Children’s Health Defense chairman; Scott McCullough, who is our lead attorney on this case; and Professor David Carpenter, a public health expert, and who is also a petitioner in the Children’s Health Defense case. I will start with a little bit of a background about the case. Our case against the FCC was filed in February, 2020, and, the background behind the case is that in 1996, the Federal Communication Commission, was entrusted, by Congress with establishing guidelines to protect the health and safety of public, including children, of course, in regard to wireless technology radiation, even though our use of wireless technology have completely changed things and the radiation levels are now millions and sometimes trillions higher, than what they were 20 or 30 years ago. Thousands of peer reviews done scientific studies, showing clear evidence of harm, and that the guidelines are obsolete. Despite all of this evidence and growing evidence of sickness the FCC has not reviewed its guidelines since. In 2012, the Government Accountability Office of Congress, published the report, recommending that the FCC will reassess its guidelines, and as a result, in 2013, the FCC opened an inquiry, known as Docket 13-84, asking for the public comments, as to whether or not the FCC should review its guidelines. Despite overwhelming evidence that was submitted to the docket, by hundreds of individual, scientists, doctors, medical organizations, showing clear evidence of harmful cell phone, wifi, cell towers, and even 5G and showing an urgent need for, biologically based guidelines. After six years in December 2019, the FCC closed the docket, and published an order, deciding not to review its guidelines. The FCC order or decision didn’t analyze the evidence in the docket, and in eight short pages, it dismissed the evidence with slogans, rather than meaningful analysis of the evidence, as would have been expected from an agency after a quarter of a century. 60 days later on February 2nd, 2020, the Children’s Health Defense filed a lawsuit, challenging the FCC decision. The case was brought under the Administrative Procedures Act and claims that the FCC decision is capricious, arbitrary, not evidence-based, and an abuse of discretion. Our brief, our current brief, there’s no doubt, that indeed it is. On August 14, we filed our main brief in this case on September 22nd, the FCC filed its brief, and this Monday, October 19th, we filed our response brief, to the FCC, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the district of Columbia. Both our main brief and our response brief, were filed jointly with the Environmental Health Trust. Our brief included a request to schedule a hearing and hopefully in about a month or so, we will know if our request was granted, otherwise, essentially, as of this point, we done with the exchange with briefs. There were few amicus briefs that were filed in support of our case, including an amicus brief from the NRDC and leading Environmental Group. The Building Biologists Institute, and Bio-telecom executive, Joe who included a statement from Dr. Linda Birnbaum, who was the director of the NIEHS, between 2009, to 2019. Her statements support our case, and stating that there is good reason to believe that radio frequency cause cancer in humans. Our brief, including our response brief that was filed this week, accused the FCC of failing to meaningfully, assess the best amount of reliable, peer review, scientific and medical evidence generated after 1996, after the FCC published its regulations, and indicating proven harms, from exposure to current levels of radiation for Wi-Fi, cell towers, and 5G technologies. The FCC guidelines are based on the premise, that wireless radiation is not harmful, unless it is causing thermal change, that leads to tissue heating. In this case, the FCC continues to deny evidence that long-term exposure to non-thermal levels, of this radiation can cause adverse effects. And it also denies effects of pulsation and modulation and even denies that this radiation can cause biological effects, not only adverse effects. Our brief showed that the FCC position, is based on obsolete, and is proven assumption promoted by engineers, and those who have vested interest in maintaining the status quo. This guidelines ignore basic biology, medical reality, and scientific evidence. For example, we argued in our brief that the FCC didn’t even explain how its guidelines can coexist with the fact that we use FDA approved non-thermal pulsed EMS, for various treatments, including using radio frequencies to treat cancer. The most important evidence, or a case I believe, the most important evidence, that was brought forward is the human evidence, and unfortunately, the FCC order, or decision, completely ignored this evidence. Did not mention it at all, and unfortunately, the FCC brief did not correct that omission and make it even worse. Unfortunately, we have evidence of widespread sickness, including children, and the petitioners in our case are the evidence. Our petitioners include four parents of children who have been injured by wireless, a mother whose son died from cell phone related brain tumor, two doctors who see the sickness in their clinic and Professor David Carpenter, a leading scientist, who’s also the co-author of the most extensive review of the scientific evidence on this topic, The BioInitiative Report. As I said, the FCC order didn’t address the human evidence at all, it simply ignores the people, and the FCC brief explains that it is not under an obligation to address individual comments. Usually very interesting… The point is that usually, FCC briefs, in this kind of cases, the FCC challenge the standing or the rights of the petitioner to file a case. For this reason, in this case we filed extensive affidavits, by our practitioners, and interestingly enough the FCC didn’t challenge sending in our case, and we believe that the reason, is that the FCC didn’t want to attract the court’s attention to this affidavit, as they are very strong and provide undeniable proof of the FCC failure. I recommend people to read this affidavit. The FCC brief also exposed the favor of its own order. The FCC brief that was filed in September, didn’t rectify the omissions of it’s decision. In fact, it further exposed its weaknesses. The FCC refused what’s called post-hoc virtualization, which means it tried to justify its decision with arguments that were not in the order. And it also used unauthorized materials, misconstrued evidence, and misrepresented other government agency positions. Our brief of course proved all of those points, and at this point I want to introduce Scott McCullough, who is our lead attorney on this case, and, who’s done amazing work, for which I’m very, very grateful. Scott is an administrative and telecommunication attorney with many, many years of experience. And I’ll let him explain to us a little bit more about the legal issues that were raised in our brief, and our responses to the FCC brief. Scott? Anyone, Scott? Scott disappeared. Wow! Oh, I guess, so, I will continue and we’ll get back to Scott I guess. So, one of the… Essentially the way the FCC dealt with the evidence, is, dismissing the evidence. The FCC essentially went back to his 1996 order, saying that 1996 order, and a court decision from 20 years ago, saying that the evidence is controversial. And then the FCC said that nothing has changed, that consensus, has not changed, and there’s still no evidence. We actually argued that the consensus have changed, and now the consensus, the majority of scientists which are, mostly represented by the BioInitiative Working Group, by the EMF scientist appeal, that was signed by hundreds of scientists on radio frequency and electromagnetic field. What science says, is that, the harms are proven, the harms to humans, to animals and to the environment. And this view was confirmed or has been confirmed by many court’s decisions from around the world, to which we also quoted in our briefs. We also have quoted government agencies that support our positions, such as the EPA, NIOSH, the Department of Interior, and as I said, showed that some government experts, once they retire, they are now supporting our position, including Dr. Birnbaum, Dr. Chris Portier, who was the previous head of the Environmental Department in the CDC and others. Our brief also brought evidence that the groups, on which the FCC relies on to say that there is no evidence and no consensus, are groups like ICNIRP. And the WHO EMF groups may be influential, but in fact, they present in minority group. The brief claimed there was no… We had to basically explain and show, the conflicts of interest, and so, the brief claimed that the FCC gave inappropriate wave, to unreliable opinions by industry supported sources, such as ICNIRP, as I said, and the EMF Project. The brief also quoted a decision from Italy, won by the Italian Supreme Court, that found a causal link between, a causal link between cell phones and brain tumors, and a 2020 Appellate Court decisions, which stated that, expert with ICNIRP affiliation, lacked credibility and authority, and as such were essentially outside the scientific committee. As I said, the brief argues that organizations like ICNIRP, maybe influential, but they were present and minority peer. In contrast, the majority and the consensus are represented by the BioInitiative Report, but the FCC, also failed to exercise, proper decision-making when it dismissed the BioInitiative Report. In the order of the FCC only mentioned the BioInitiative Report, by saying that the suggested guidelines are in practical, because the levels of radiation they recommend are too low. But in the brief, the FCC went further, and now claim, that that the BioInitiative Report was discredited. Of course, like with the other contentious by the FCC, without bringing any real evidence, just quoting comments, not evidence, and, comments of telecom lobby associations, and engineers that are heavily funded by industry, and that have been discredited, themselves. I think I would like now to let Professor David Carpenter, tell us a little bit more about, the conflicts of interest of those organization, and about, the scientific consensus, that is now represented by the BioInitiative, which he also co-edited. David?

PROFESSOR DAVID CARPENTER: Thanks, Dafna. Well, as Dafna said, the BioInitiative Report was written by the experts that do research in this area. And it was experts drawn from around the world. That’s very important. The people that know the science, that should be making the recommendations. Now, the fact that the BioInitiative Report has been criticized by so many government agencies is almost a statement of its success, because the data presented in the BioInitiative Report with its hundreds and thousands of references to scientific studies, that show beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there are not only biological effects, non-thermal levels of exposure, but they’re hazards to multiple organ systems and two people. Now, the BioInitiative Report, was intentionally put up, as a website, and the purpose for that, was that this would then be accessible to anybody, anywhere, without having to pay. Some people criticized it because it wasn’t peer reviewed, while almost every aspect of the BioInitiative Report, was, independently published in peer reviewed scientific journals, for a different audience- that being the scientific community, not the general public. Now, as Dafna mentioned, a lot of the people that, criticize our position, which is that radio frequency fields, are hazardous to human health, and the FCC has done little or nothing to protect us. Draw upon the international age, the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and the WHO EMF Working Group. Let me give you some background of these groups. First of all, the person that originated the ICNIRP committee, was employed by WHO, and then he immediately took a job with the telecommunications industry. The ICNIRP committee is a self appointed committee. It’s not a government organization. It, is, ripe with conflicts of interest as was Professor Repacholi, the person that was responsible for its establishment. These people, have no credibility. They have no objectivity. They are not the people that have done the research in this area. It’s very akin, to our present situation, where the public health and scientific advice for how you prevent COVID-19, exposure and disease, is balanced, against politicians, who have their own, ideas there. So, the BioInitiative Report should be the basis on which, we proceed, to, evaluate, how serious is the threat to human health. And, the evidence that has developed since 2007, when the BioInitiative Report was first, presented, makes the evidence, even stronger, for there being significant adverse health effects, from, chronic exposure to radio frequency radiation. I will stop there. Thank you.

DAFNA: Thank you very much. Thank you very much, David. I think that Scott McCullough is back. Scott, do you hear me? Do you want to unmute yourself, Scott?

ATTORNEY SCOTT MCCULLOUGH: There we go.

DAFNA: Okay.

SCOTT: Can you hear me now, can you hear me?

DAFNA: Yes.

SCOTT: I apologize. For some reason, all my available connections just went down. And we’re still bringing back up sadly on AOL wireless net. I’m sorry, I missed everything, but, you want me to talk about the legal now? Yes?

DAFNA: Yes.

SCOTT: We really owe everything here to Robert Kennedy and his vision, and Dafna of course, was the one who put all of this together, and drove the team and brought us all the resources necessary to do this. Our case has its own identity, and it will get it some judgment, but it was consolidated, with decision with a similar petition by Environmental Health Trust. When that happens in these administrative appeals, the two teams have to come together and devise a common legal strategy, theory of the case, and the presentation has to be integrated. We did that here, and so I want to give a shout out to the petitioners and their counsel for their effort and all the that allowed us to, get this matter across the finish line. As I noted, this is an administrative appeal and, it’s a unique kind of case. Many of the things we do in administrative law and how we do them around familiar or even counterintuitive, folks who do other litigation. Our options and our arguments are limited to a certain number of lines of attack. Our main attack here centered around what we call a lack of freeze in decision-making, and inadequate explanation with the FCC did and refuse to do. As Dafna noted, they, indicated only a few paragraphs. I mean, really it wasn’t four pages, it was the material stuff was to… And spoken very broad generalizations about this decision. Even though I think history will show, that it was one of the most important ones in many, years, if not ever. Second, was their failure to address and resolve a host of issues they listed in the inquiry, that started in 2013 or fairly raised in the comments that were submitted in response to influence. We want the court to rule that the commission District Commission did not dispose of all the issues before, and remand with a requirement that the FCC adequately answer the questions that proposed, both by the commission and by those who took the time to submit comment. Third, was the complete imbalance in how the FCC assessed the evidence in the issue. The commission bought the industry line, but never really confronted the significant problem with the industry narrative. The FCC rejected the independent scientific and medical evidence, really only because they thought the emission limits, required by that evidence, would prevent reliable and useful service. Even though that’s not what everybody was trying to tell it. They never really dealt with the scientific and medical evidence, or the merits of it, and refuse to even consider whether lower limits would still allow service where possible. And then finally, most important, in our viewpoint, is the commission ignored the human evidence, and applied, facing those who have already been harmed, and are at risk of harm under the current guidelines. It chose to do nothing, nothing at all, or even talk about the people who are already sick, nor would it give them any avenue of relief. Even though the commission has been really, really busy, trying to close all other available avenues, under state law, even under federal law, where people can seek redress. The FCC’s position is, we are the only place that can decide it, but we’re not going to. And we think that was error and we want the court to make them decide these questions. Thank you.

DAFNA: Thank you, Scott, and I’m going to continue a little bit, with what Scott ended his… Scott ended with the issue of sickness and radiation sickness, essentially people who have been injured. As Scott mentioned, the FCC did not address radiation sickness at all in its decision. And of course, we raised it in our main brief, and showed extensive evidence in the docket, including hundreds of testimonies of people who have been injured. Hundreds of scientific studies showing that indeed those symptoms and those injuries suffered by these people, are and can be caused by radio frequency radiation. And the FCC also ignored the medical, evidence, including the doctors, who wrote to the FCC, saying, talking about the sickness they’re seeing in their clinics. And, the FCC, response were, you know, we… The FCC had to respond to this evidence, and of course, the way they responded, we anticipated that that’s how they’re going to respond to this. The way the FCC responded was, first, again, going back to its 1996 guidelines, claiming that, the guidelines do protect for, sensitive populations, including children. And then it went to, court decision from 2002, that says that the evidence in regard to radiation sickness or what’s called at the time, electro-sensitivity, is, inconclusive. And then the FCC again claimed, that that evidence has not changed. And to substantiate its claim, it again, quoted the ICNIRP decision, the ICNIRP report, which was published after the order, and, the WHO, EMF project, which is essentially the same as ICNIRP. And the evidence they brought also was one we expecting, which was, the scientific double blinded studies, show that people with electro-sensitivity, cannot detect RF signal. And, these studies, on which industry and FCC rely are essentially what’s called, subjective perception scientific studies. Sorry, subjective perception provocation studies. These are the type of studies that we do not rely on, to diagnose conditions. We definitely do not rely on to dismiss conditions, and, they are really the type of studies that, are really easy to manipulate. And this is exactly why the telecom industry have been funding these studies, to produce doubt and to produce study with negative results, so they can continue and create, or perpetuate the alleged lack of consensus. While the FCC, quoted this kind of studies, without going into details, the FCC brief completely ignored the evidence we brought in our brief, and that was in the docket, of hundreds of studies showing that the symptoms that people are developing, the neurological system, are well-established by science that physiological injuries, that those studies show like damage to the blood brain barrier, impaired blood flow to the brain, and others are proven to be able to be caused by exposure to radio frequency radiation, and that we even have studies that showing established, mechanism of harm like oxidative stress. For example, studies that were done on 700 people with electro-sensitivity, or microwave sickness showed that 40% of them have inflammation, which is a sign of oxidative stress. And there are about 203, of the 225 studies showing that this radiation is causing oxidative stress, which is an established mechanism of harm. So the FCC, while relying on ridiculous studies, with fundamental flaws, ignore real scientific evidence and dismisses this condition. The FCC even, ignored and dismissed the Access Board recognition of radiation sickness as a disability, and the FCC mocked the Access Board for relying on individual comments, and basically, and listening to the people and doing its job, and demanding that people’s rights will be accommodated or needs would be accommodated. So, another ridiculous dismissal of the evidence by the FCC was it’s a dismissal of the National Toxicology Program studied, as the NTP study, as many of you know, in 2018, the National Toxicology Program publish its results in regards to its study of cell phone harms. And, the study, which is a $30 million study funded by the FDA, showed that cell phone and wireless radiation, show clear evidence that they cause cancer and break DNA. Nevertheless, the FCC and the FDA, dismiss the study claiming that it doesn’t apply to humans. And this position of the FCC, is simply indefensible. The evidence in the docket shows, that for us, this study followed FDA protocols, on how to conduct studies that will apply to humans. And the evidence found in this study, in line with previous studies, as well as we, as the human evidence. In fact, the FCC continued to disregard the World Health Organization, the IARC, the International… IARC, which is the organization within the WHO that is responsible to classify carcinogen, and in 2011, IARC decided that, cell phone and wireless radiation, including from Wi-Fi, smart meters, cell towers, is a possible carcinogen. And, in its decision, IARC said, that, while we have enough epidemiological studies showing increased in human cancer, regard… Increase in human risk to get cancer from radio frequencies, we do not have enough animal studies. And the NTP and Institute study, which is another large scale animal study actually provide a missing link, that needed to change the classification of wireless radiation, into a human carcinogens. And, we also noted in our case, and in our brief, that, there are courts around the world that already ruled that cell phones do cause cancer, like the Italian Supreme Court decision from 2012. While the evidence, as I said, while the FCC as I said, dismiss the NTP study, without basis, it did not address the IARC decision. It did not address expert opinions, showing that yes, it should and can be extrapolated to humans, including the statement by Dr. Linda Birnbaum, who is the, head of the NIEHS, from 2009, to 2019. And now the failure of the FCC… The FCC essentially, misrepresented the position of numerous federal agencies, as Scott mentioned before, it’s misrepresented the content of documents, and, basically, dismissed the opinion of anyone who did not agree with the FCC without explanation. So, I think, what we’re seeing with the FCC brief, is, and FCC position, and FCC the way it address all of this issue, is not something that is unique to the issue of wireless, and radio frequency health effect. Unfortunately, there’s a complete failure of government agencies to protect the health and safety of people. And that failure is manifesting in epidemic of sickness, and especially in children, about 50% of children in the United States now suffer from chronic conditions. And, I think that the leading organization in the United States, to address this issue is a Children’s Health Defense. And the Children’s Health Defense was started and founded by Robert Kennedy to address this epidemic of sickness, to address the failure of government agency to protect the health of our children. And so, I would ask Robert, who is also an attorney on this case, to say a few words, Robert?

ROBERT F KENNEDY, JR: Thank you very much, Dafna, I’ll be brief. And I want to thank David Carpenter, who I’ve been working with on environmental issues, and my great pleasure to work with, for at least three, close to four decades. One of the really great superb, environmental scientists in the world, and out across the world. And I want to thank Scott McCullough for his extraordinary, for, leading the trial team and Dafna of course, for being the driving force in this country, and I think, in the world today for leading this extraordinary battle, to expose, not only the dangers of wireless radiation, but also, the subversion of democracy, the corruption of government officials, the capture of the agency that are, created to protect human health, and human wellbeing. FCC was created in 1934, by president Roosevelt at the dawn of commercial radio, and, its specific charge was to quote for the purpose of promoting the safety of life and property, through the use of wire and radio communications. Oh, the charge of this agency is to protect the public health, and to recognize that the airwaves belong to the public, and they have to be used in the public interest. And of course, part of that interest, communication, but also, more than anything else, to protect human health, and what I think we’ve shown. I’ve been litigating, against the agencies for 40 years now, and I’ve never seen a brief quite like this one, that utterly ignored the science, utterly ignored all of the purposes of the lawsuit, and just, demonstrated so clearly that this agency is no longer a functioning mechanism, or vessel of democracy, but it is the template for agency capture phenomena, that dynamic by which, regulatory agencies become the sock puppets for the industries that they’re supposed to regulate. This agency makes no effort to counter the science, the abundance science that Scott McCullough and Dafna, put in the brief, in extraordinary compilation of science that, David Carpenter, through meticulous work and matter review all the literature that exists, able to assemble and distill that literature and say with great clarity, and without any kind of controversy, this technology is harming human beings, and it’s causing great harm, and it’s causing cancer. And this agency, we’ve known for many years, that the industry that controls this aid, that is regulated by this agency is now one of the, not most powerful, arguably not the most powerful industry in the country, because it controls the communications in a democracy. And it’s enabled to undermine the function of that agency. So, thoroughly that is, literally, been able to place it’s… Public interest groups. For years I’ve said, it is the most damaging, lobbyist, in an industry, the kind of a lowest bottom feeder lobbyists, Ajit Pai. A man, who has vowed to destroy the FCC. And they’ve made him the commissioner of the FCC. So, we’re not surprised, that we get a brief, as shocking as this brief was, that there was no attempt, in this brief to counter the science. Let me explain to you how badly, this brief was written. The FCC brief. They had to… The daunting challenge they face, not only mountains of science by agencies all over the world like IARC, which is, you know, the undisputed arbiter of cancer science. It was created by all of the Western nations, to say, you know because we needed uniformity, and we needed independence in cancer science, so it assembles, the greatest, scientists in particular topics every year and it puts them in panels, and says we want you to review all of the evidence, about carcinogenicity of this particular exposure. And they are renowned for independence and integrity. So not only does agencies like that, are saying, yes, this is causing cancer, but, EPA is saying the same thing. Dr. Blackburn from EPA, we had… Doctor… I mean, Dr. Blackburn from EPA, Dr. Birnbaum, from the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, the leading agency in our country for making these kind of determinations, said yes, it’s causing cancer. Chris Portier, probably the most respected former member of IARC. The chief of CDC’s Toxic Division. Many, many years, has come out and said, yes, this is causing cancer. And Dr. Melnick, the head of the National Toxicity Program. The other the agency, specifically granted by Congress, to review toxic exposures as I said, yes, this is causing cancer. The Department of Interior, has said, the science that they are using is 35 years old and archaic. And so the challenge for, FCC, I feel sorry for their lawyers. There was no way that they could win this case by engaging in science, and so they chose to do something altogether different, which is to ignore the science, ignore all of human health facts, ignore the mountains of testimony that we submitted of individuals who specifically have been harmed by this radiation, ignore all the doctors, who testified about the harms that they had documented, ignored all of the agencies, that said, it is indisputable. This technology is causing Americans to get cancer, cell damage, and the entire grim litany, of chronic diseases. As Dafna pointed out, we have gone since the dawn of this technology around 1986, we had 12%, of American children had chronic diseases, today, 54%, according to HHS, has chronic disease. We know that many of these chronic diseases, aren’t specifically, attributed, to this technology. And yet all of those human costs, the purpose of this agency, is to protect human health and safety. That is the overarching purpose, and they had to ignore all of that evidence, all of those duties, all of democracy, in order to serve the interest, the single interest that they care about, which is industry profits. And this is an agency that is corrupt. It has a culture, an intractable and pervasive, culture of corruption. And the only concern it showed in this brief, as it is demonstrated throughout this law suit, is one concern, which is maximizing industry profits, no matter what the cost, to the human health, to the American public. This is an industry than has used political clout, that disabled democracy, to capture the agencies that Congress created, to protect us, protect human health, protect little children, vulnerable little children, from greedy corporations, to corrupt our politicians, to conduct their decisions, with no transparency, completely dictated behind closed doors by the industry that they’re supposed to regulate. And there’s no better showcase, for the pervasive corruption, that now infects, that has metastasized, throughout this agency, than reading the briefs in this case and saying the absolute lack of defense that they put up to defend their behavior on any terms that have anything to do with anything other than, making sure that their industry pays as little attention as possible to human health, and maximize and commoditizes our landscapes, commoditizes nature, commoditize our children, and in turn liquidates, the American landscapes and the American citizens for cash, and turns that cash into profit for themselves.

DAFNA: We need silence for a minute, to take it in. Thank you, Robert. There is a question, I think it’s… This one is for you Scott. One question is how can they, how legally, okay. Or legally, how can they not address what was in the brief? Or I think if we can translate it, it means, how did they defend their lack of action, legally?

SCOTT: Well, the commission’s defense, was basically, that they were reasonable, to rely on, a recommendation, by one official, at the FDA, who chose for entirely unexplained reasons, to reject the findings of the NTP cancer studies, that he paid some $30 million for, asked for, and was unhappy with, when he got the result. And the commission, best is straight up. We’re not a health and safety agency, so we’re going to rely on this fellow over at the FDA who tells us everything is just fine. And our response to that was, well, that Congress didn’t give FDA the authority here, it gave the FCC the authority, and the FCC has the duty to independently assess the evidence, especially when there are other federal agencies that have told you, clearly, several times, that there is indeed a problem. In administrative law terms, arbitrary and capricious. Their decision with arbitrary and capricious, and to the extended exercise, any discretion that was an abuse of that discretion. Sorry for the lawyer term, it basically means their decision was nonsense, and they can’t explain it, and so they’re just going to go mwaa, mwaa, mwaa, and hope they win anyway.

DAFNA: Do you want to address a little bit their dismissive of, what they called individual comments, that the FCC does not need to address individual comments?

SCOTT: Yeah. I’ve got to tell you, that’s one of the most astounding things I’ve ever seen a federal agency admit, that, even though it is required to put out, proceedings, such as this one, for, notice and public comment, and even though the statute and the rules require it, to not only read the material comment, but address them in its decision. The commission basically admitted, in its brief, that it didn’t read them, didn’t pay attention to them, didn’t care about them, didn’t have to, didn’t want to, so ‘leave me alone’.

DAFNA: Yeah. Well, we are not going to leave them alone, kind of. This is what this case is about, and, I think this is a good place to say that, we definitely have a very strong case, there’s no doubt about it. However, that’s not guarantee that the court is going to listen to us. These are very tough cases to win, so. We have high hopes, but, that we have a lot of work ahead of us, and, nothing is really guaranteed. And I think, if I can address what Robert said, whenever… I’ve been living in the U.S. for quite a while, and, I’m ashamed to say that I still don’t know the rules of baseball. And, but I do know who Babe Ruth is, and he said a sentence, that, you cannot beat a person who never gives up. And, I think, when I think about the Robert, this is what I think about. And I think that this is what it takes to beat this kind of absurd reality and failure of government agencies and corruption of industries, that’S really what we’re fighting right now. So, these fights are for the long haul, and sadly, we’re not going to necessarily see quick results, but we are, we shall continue. David, is one of these examples. He’s been fighting this corruption for 50 years, and been very courageous in doing it, and when it comes to wireless technology and radiation sickness, he’s really the first scientist who spoke up and spoke the truth. So, we appreciate him very much for that. David, there was a question, why is it that CDC and the EPA do not conduct studies on this issue? You’ve been working on this issue for many years. So, I think you’re the best person to answer that.

DAVID: Well, I think that EPA did have a major program, on the electromagnetic fields at some time ago, but there was, political pressure, for them to close that program and they did. Now the NIEHS, which is the agency that I work with mostly, will still accept grant applications, but, they go through the peer review process, and it’s never been a priority, from NIEHS, although they have sponsored some major reviews of the state of the literature. There’s some wonderful statements, by, the then time director of the agency saying, the evidence for harm, from electromagnetic fields cannot be dismissed, as not being statistically significant. The concern was, we don’t really know the mechanisms. Well, increasingly we know the mechanisms, as Dafna said, we know that oxidative stress is a common mechanism, for both the lower magnetic fields and the radio frequency fields. And in my judgment, it’s likely to be the key critical mechanism that induces all of these other things, like changes in brain metabolism, changes in blood flow, changing in EEG’s, and is responsible not only for the cancer, but for the electro hypersensitivity. So I think that, the other agencies have fallen through the cracks, and, they’re vulnerable to criticism for not having more active programs. But the power of the FCC and the power of the industries have really meant a political damper, on having these other agencies take initiatives to do more, on the whole study of radio frequency fields.

DAFNA: Thanks, David, and I think we should add, that EPA does have a regulatory duty, in regard to radio frequency radiation. Actually the EPA still in charge of regulating the environmental levels of radio frequency, but, when, in 1996, it was defunded, from continuing any work on this issue. And, one of the most obscure comments in the FCC briefs, when the FCC tried to explain… Tried to explain it to reliance of sister agencies, essentially said that the agency silence can be interpreted as consent. And, I think that is like probably, as Robert mentioned before, one of the most outrageous comments ever. So silence is not consent, when it comes to the EPA, I actually think that we can interpret this the other way. I think the fact that the EPA did not submit meaningful comments to the docket is because it had enough of being… By the FCC, continued to misrepresent its opinions. Scott the questions, that people raised here, and I know I’ve been asked a few times by people who read our brief, is, while we do talk about the corruption in ICNIRP, and in the World Health Organization EMF project, we did not go into the evidence of conflict of interest within the FCC. I’m sure a lot of people wanted to see the… Capture the agency report by Harvard University, but they did not see it in our brief. And I can assure you, no evidence, whatever people do not see in the brief, do not think that we forgot about it, or that it’s some kind of, like, misjudgment. Everything was carefully thought of, maybe you want to explain why did it not address FCC, what we call conflict of interest, and evidence of the fact that the FCC is a captured agency. Don’t hear you.

DAVID: Yeah, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Sorry. I’ve been doing administrative law for over 30 years, and I’ve had a few cases before the DC circuit, where this case is. And I can tell you every time I have tried to rest a case, or even significantly argued that proposition, the court really didn’t want to hear it. They hear these cases across a whole bunch of agencies all the time. They know what the administrative state is about. They understand. They don’t really need to be told, and frankly, they get tired of hearing it. It would have wasted work, and it might’ve been counter productive, but we do not raise it. Yeah I just lost volume again.

DAFNA: All right, there is a question about the reliance of the FCC guidelines, on IEEE, and on, ANSI, in terms of, their guidelines. David, do you want to address that?

DAVID: IEEE, by its name, is the Institute for Electricians and Electrical Engineers. I had, an email from a colleague the other day who was, talking about, something quite else, but he said, would you like to have an Engineer do your colonoscopy? I think exactly the point. These are not people that have any health expertise. They don’t even pretend to have health expertise. There is a hypothesis of faith in the engineering and physics community, that, electromagnetic fields, that don’t have enough energy to directly damage DNA, cannot possibly have any health effect. It’s just absolute nonsense. It flies totally in the face of all the evidence that we have. Now, in fact, we know that radio frequency fields do damage DNA. They don’t do it directly, they damage DNA through the creation of reactive oxygen species, which is a common mechanism for all kinds of diseases. So, why, the FCC should take their bottom line from groups of engineers and electricians, is really beyond me. It makes no sense, and it’s indicative of the problems we have in the setting of standards for human health protection.

DAFNA: Yeah. I think, we’re getting ready to end this press conference, and I can say is for myself, the process of writing the response brief wasa very painful one. We were allowed only 8,000 words, and of course, for every word the FCC wrote in its brief, I could write a thousand, disproving everything they say. So, it’s been a very painful process. So, there’s a lot more we wanted to write and a lot more we wanted to say and also a lot more that we even needed to say, to make our case stronger, but, we were bound by the number of words we were assigned by the court. But I think that, the evidence we provided in our brief is more than sufficient to establish our claim. We have a strong case, but as I said earlier, these kind of cases are tough to win, and it is not really up to the court. I do hope we will get, that the court will grant a hearing. And if the court will grant a hearing, then likely that will happen within four to six months. I sent out an email last night, to people about the press conference today, and about our brief, and I quoted, William Wilberforce, who fought slavery. And, in slavery just like in wireless technology, the justification was an economic need. And he said, there’s a famous quote by him, he said that, you may choose to look the other way, but you will never again be able to say you did not know. And, this sentence really, summarized what I personally wanted to say to the court. And, so, I do hope that the court will not look the other way, and we gave the court all the evidence it needs not to look the other way. So, we will continue to work on this case, and we thank everyone for their support, and if you can continue and support us and donate to our case, because it’s still a lot of work to be done, we appreciate your support and we appreciate your support so far. And thank you for attending this press conference and thank you to anyone and everyone out there who works on this issue of the utmost importance, and good luck to us all. Thank you.