Hands Free Cell Phones Can Make Men Shoot Blanks

First the people in white coats tell us that regular cell phones will fry our brains so everybody needs to use those ridiculous hands-free things (making it much harder for people to distinguish between certified crazy people who talk to themselves in the street and regular crazy people talking on invisible phones).

Now a new study by some white coat types in Cleveland are warning that men who use hands-free phones may be frying their sperm. That's because guys keep their phones in their pockets when they're yakking on the headset.

The researchers collected um, ounces and ounces of man juice and then held phones up to half the group. Then they counted how many little guys were still swimming around. (Why do I get the feeling that this was more fun for the sperm donors than for the researchers?)

The result was that the zapped samples had lower motility (movement) and viability (live spermies). Fortunately, there was no DNA damage to the ones that did survive, so if one of the guys survives the nuclear holocaust, the critter will be OK.

In the end, though, keeping your phone in your pocket might still be a more appealing path to male infertility than the one that Mike at Unraveling Life's Mysteries describes.

Cell phones = death?

I was chatting with a friend the other day. I told her I wasn't getting good reception.

Her: "Your talking on a cell phone?!!!! I hope you're using one of those wireless sets."

Me: "Uh, oh."

I had stopped worrying about the whole cell phones cause brain cancer thing a while back when some pretty definitive sounding studies by people in white coats determined that there was no evidence of causation between cell phone use and brain tumors, brain cancer, or brain farts.

But now the world is abuzz with worry thanks to a memo from some guy to his staff warning them not to use their cellphones without those annoying earbud things because of the potential cancer risk. Turns out the guy, Ronald B. Herberman, is director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Okay, he couldn't get a job at Harvard, but it's still pretty official sounding.

According to the memo: "Recently I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects including cancer," Dr. Ronald Herberman said in the memorandum. "Although the evidence is still controversial, I am convinced that there are sufficient data to warrant issuing an advisory to share some precautionary advice on cell phone use."

He says that children, especially, should have their exposure to cellphones limited because their brains are still developing.

I have to admit that the last bit makes me wonder if this whole thing isn't an elaborate ruse to get his kids to stop running up his cell phone bill...