Motor Neurone Disease is pretty rare. It affects, on average, only one in every 50,000 people in the UK each year. It’s caused by failure (death) of the motor neurones - that is, the brain cells that control movement in the various parts of the body.
 

A very substantial number of scientific studies into Motor Neurone Disease (MND) link death of these brain cells to an excess of calcium around them. These studies are not in any way related to research on electromagnetic field (EMF) effects, they are simply attempting to find out more about MND.
 

There is a link, though, between these findings and EMFs - particularly TETRA. Because, of course, the major health concern about TETRA was raised by the Stewart Report, in which a substantial number of research studies were listed that showed increased calcium efflux (= calcium deposition) around brain cells in the presence of EM waves amplitude modulated at around 16 Hz (cycles per second). TETRA emissions are amplitude modulated at 17.64 Hz (from the masts, and more so from the handsets). The majority of research studies on this subject have confirmed this effect, including one in 1996 and one in 1999. The most recent study, undertaken for the Government at DSTL Porton Down by Dr. John Tattersall, appears to have failed to take account of three factors highlighted by earlier researchers as significant - this is probably why he has failed to replicate their results.
 

So - direct theoretical causal link, supported by numerous research studies:
 

TETRA emissions modulated at 17.6 Hz stimulate increased calcium efflux, leading to increased calcium deposits around motor neurones (brain cells), leading to MND.
 

Drumcarrow, near Fife in Scotland, has the dubious distinction of being one of the first places to be blessed with a TETRA mast, part of the commercial Dolphin TETRA network that predates the Airwave TETRA service by some years. In a written response to Andrew Michell MP, dated 16 September 2003, Minister Hazel Blears points to Dolphin as a prior example of TETRA, offering it as a ‘case study’ for health issues.
 

Drumcarrow has also the misfortune of playing host to a large number of very serious medical conditions: various cancers, Parkinson’s Disease, ME, a variety of thyroid disorders - and a statistically highly significant number of cases of MND.
 

MND, as stated earlier, is a rare condition affecting only one in 50,000 people each year. In the small sparsely-populated region of Drumcarrow, four cases of this rare condition have been reported in just a few years. The likelihood of such a situation occurring by chance is so small that one could wait thousands of years and still have a less than evens chance of seeing it anywhere in a population the size of the UK - i.e. four cases within such a small group over such a short span of time.
 

This is not a case of ‘Well, you will get four red cards in a row every so often with a random shuffle’. Any attempt to write this off as a ‘random cluster’ is an insult both to the suffering people of Drumcarrow and to mathematical integrity. There may be a fifth case - yet to be confirmed - in which case the odds against become astronomical. In case it needs saying, there was no history of this condition in the region before the TETRA mast.
 

In short:
 

The research shows it, the medical evidence confirms it -
 

When are the authorities going to act on it??
 


 

Footnote
 

The NRPB Report on TETRA (2001) has a section entitled:
 

Biological Effects of Amplitude-Modulated RF Fields
 

A couple of excerpts from this section may be of interest.
 

Para 78
 

“Calcium plays an important role in many biological functions, especially in the function of nerve cells”.
 

Para 95
 

“Calcium efflux was not, and is not, a standard, widely-employed, measure of nerve function: any change in efflux is difficult to interpret, and carries no immediately obvious health risk.”
 

It appears that, not only does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing, but that neither hand seems to be in contact with the real world of neurological research.
 

Perhaps we should remind ourselves - this is the body that is paid to protect the health of the British people (or is it rather them that need reminding?)

TETRA