5. Blue-Ribbon Committees and Powerline EMF Health Hazards
The possible public-health menace of powerline EMFs cannot be reliably evaluated by non-representative experts in a consensus-seeking process.
- EMF Blue-Ribbon Committees
- The Appointment Process
- Qualifications
- The Politics of Appointment to EMF Blue-Ribbon Committees: A Case Study
EMF Blue-Ribbon Committees
We believe that disease is the result of the operation of a causal chain. If we could identify links in the chain, perhaps it would be possible to prevent the operation of one or more of the causes, with the result that the disease would not develop. Despite advances in the treatment of disease and increased knowledge of the genes and other mechanisms that mediate disease, we know little about the causes of disease. Why did this person develop this disease at this time?
We attribute some causes of diseases to God or fate—an atavistic gene or a capricious microbe. Some causes, however, may originate from where people live or work. The possibility that powerline EMFs could be this kind of a cause has been with us since at least the 1970s. In response, from time to time, various kinds of experts formed committees to evaluate the evidence and offer an opinion to the public about the health hazards of EMFs.
The formation and functioning of these blue-ribbon committees of experts were complex sociological phenomena, with important differences between individual committees. But the defining characteristic of the blue-ribbon-committee approach to the evaluation of EMF health hazards was the goal of seeking a consensus among the committee members regarding the meaning of the scientific evidence.
The first EMF blue-ribbon committee was appointed by the United States Navy to evaluate potential health implications of animal studies conducted to assess the impact of a large antenna proposed for construction in Michigan. The antenna’s EMFs were similar in some respects to those of powerlines, although far weaker. The committee, which included Dr. Becker, met in Washington, DC on December 6 and 7, 1973, and then issued a report evaluating the data provided. The general tone at the meeting was surprise at the many different kinds of biological changes apparently caused by the EMFs used in the studies. The committee reached no conclusions regarding the safety of the antenna’s EMFs, but it was concerned about the health implications of EMF exposure, particularly with regard for what it said was a large population at risk because of powerline EMFs.
In 1976 a second committee was appointed under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to evaluate the health implications of the same antenna. The NAS committee, whose most prominent member was Herman Schwan, concluded that the antenna’s EMFs would not cause a significant and adverse biologic disturbance. The committee said it could not identify with certainty any specific biological effects that would definitely result from exposure to the antenna’s EMFs.
In 1984, the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), Arlington, Virginia, conducted a third review of the potential health risks of the antenna's EMFs. The AIBS committee unanimously agreed that EMFs can cause a variety of biological effects, but that it was unlikely that the antenna’s EMFs would lead to adverse public-health effects. Also in 1984 a blue-ribbon committee connected with the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a report dealing with health hazards of powerline EMFs which concluded that it was not possible to make a definitive statement about health hazards of powerline EMFs.
In at least two instances, the health risks of powerline EMFs were evaluated by self-organizing committees. In 1995, the American Physical Society (APS) issued a press release that said there existed no consistent, significant, and causal relationship between exposure to powerline EMFs and cancer.
The second instance occurred during a lawsuit in California where the San Diego Gas & Electric Company was being sued by a plaintiff who alleged that his cancer was caused by EMFs produced by the company’s powerlines. Fourteen physicists, including 6 Nobel Prize winners, intervened in the case and submitted a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the position of the power company. They concluded that the scientific evidence strongly indicates that it is not scientifically reasonable to believe that powerline EMFs increase the incidence of cancer.
In 1997, a 16-person committee sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that there was no conclusive and consistent evidence of health hazards from powerline EMFs.
The most ambitious attempt, by far, to extract consensus regarding the health hazards of environmental EMFs was carried out by the NIEHS. The effort consisted of multiple tiers of blue-ribbon committees that evaluated specified areas of EMF bioeffects studies, and a super committee, the Working Group, that provided an overall assessment of all possible health effects of powerline EMFs. Based largely on this report, the Director of the NIEHS shall inform Congress by November, 1998, whether powerline EMFs affect human health.
The activities of the EMF blue-ribbon committees frequently generated interest and awareness among scientists and the general public regarding man-made electromagnetic fields in the environment, and their potential health consequences. The 1973 Navy committee report was publicly released on the floor of the United States Senate. The 1977 NAS committee was the subject of a report in Science and was featured on two episodes of CBS’ 60 Minutes. The press release of the APS was widely reported in the New York Times and other prominent newspapers. The 1997 NAS report was also widely covered in the media, and it seems certain that this will also be the case for the soon-to-be-released NIEHS report.
Partly as a result of the EMF blue-ribbon committees, whether intended or not, the public profile regarding environmental EMFs continued to rise and led directly to the NIEHS RAPID program, which for the first time made funds available for research by independent investigators to evaluate potential EMF health risks.
But, in several important ways, the blue-ribbon-committee approach to evaluating EMF health risks failed. First, no EMF blue-ribbon committee delineated the limitation of the physical thought-style as a method for evaluating evidence and reaching an overall decision. In most cases, the role of physical theory was over-emphasized and disproportionate to its probative value.
Second, the committees failed to recognize the basic nature of the EMF-induced bioeffects that are pertinent to the issue of health hazards from environmental EMFs. By adopting a too-narrow view of what could occur, the committees simply looked past what was actually occurring in the reported studies and thus failed to see the pattern of consistency that is manifested in the pertinent literature.
Third, the committees failed to identify decisional standards and to define dispositive terms. It is simply not possible to ascertain the meaning of committee reports because of the idiosyncratic reasoning principles and standards that were applied by individual experts, and the vague language that was used to state their findings.
The reasons why the EMF blue-ribbon-committee approach failed merit consideration so that a reliable mechanism for making good public-health decisions regarding environmental EMFs can be designed at some future time. My goal in this Section is to explain the failure of the EMF blue-ribbon committees. This requires discussion of (1) the process of appointment of committee members, and (2) the methods and procedures used by the committees to reach decisions.
The Appointment Process
If all the experts qualified to answer the EMF question were identified and polled, then the majority vote would be the consensus regarding the issue among those qualified to offer an opinion. Such an opinion would be the most reliable consensus obtainable. But most reasonable definitions of a qualified expert would result in too many individuals to appoint to one committee or assemble in one place at a specific time. Consequently, the only practical means of obtaining the opinion of all qualified experts is to estimate it, based on representative sampling of the population of qualified experts. If the individuals whose votes were to be counted were truly representative of the population, then it would be reasonable to impute the results of the poll of the limited group to that larger population, thereby resolving the technical problem of having too many experts to assemble at one time.
On the other hand, if the individuals polled were not representative of all qualified experts, then a generalization of the committee’s vote would not be valid. It is easy to see why this is the case. If members of the Sierra Club concluded that cutting redwoods would adversely affect the environment, or members of the National Rifle Association concluded that banning guns would adversely affect personal freedom, these conclusions might not easily generalize to the general population. The opinion of non-representative committees simply represents the opinion of that group of experts.
Representative sampling can occur only if the qualifications of the experts were first identified. It would then be possible to randomly choose persons for appointment to the committee. Although the details of how the EMF blue-ribbon committee members were appointed were not disclosed, it seems certain that none were chosen on this basis.
Paul Tyler, then a commander in the United States Navy, chose the 1973 Navy committee members on the basis of who he knew and who he thought knew a lot about the biological effects of EMFs. I was present when Tyler explained the committee to Dr. Becker, and asked him to serve on it. The 1976 NAS committee was appointed by Phillip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences. He refused to tell me how he chose the committee members, but the presence of three power-company experts made it clear that the selection process was not random. The members of the 1984 WHO committee were nominated or appointed by the power companies of the countries that had representatives on the committee. As best I can tell, the 1984 AIBS committee was appointed by H.P. Graves, the committee chairman. At least he was the one who contacted me and asked me to write a paper for submission to the committee. The 1997 NAS committee was almost certainly not chosen randomly from a defined pool of experts because too many of the members of the committee were publicly associated with an ambivalent or negative attitude toward the possibility that powerline EMFs could affect human health. The plethora of NIEHS blue-ribbon committees were probably chosen by Christopher Portier on the basis of his perception of their special competence. I do not believe that he would even claim that they were chosen randomly or were representative of an identified class of experts.
In each case, therefore, the EMF blue-ribbon committees consisted of people who were not representative of a defined group of experts whose collective opinion or consensus would be the proper one for resolving the question of whether powerline EMFs affect human health pursuant to a consensus process. In each case, therefore, the conclusion represented only the view of that ad hoc committee, and does not generalize in any reliable manner.
Qualifications
The officials who appointed the EMF committees must have had reasons of some kind for appointing those whom they appointed. For example, Handler maintained that Schwan was chosen for the 1976 NAS committee not because of his views but because of his expertise, indicating that Handler had an idea of what a suitable EMF expert was. Similarly, when Portier appointed the NIEHS Working Group, he must have had in mind what he thought an expert in EMFs was. But neither Handler nor Portier, nor any official who appointed an EMF blue-ribbon committee, disclosed these qualifications. Consequently, it is impossible to independently assess whether the people chosen were qualified to opine to the American public regarding powerline EMFs.
The NIEHS Working Group report, for example, tells us that one person was Division Leader, Molecular and Structural Biology Division, University of California, and that another person was Professor, Northwestern University Medical School, Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry. But academic rank and job titles do not entail expertise in the biological effects of electromagnetic fields.
Each of the members of the 1998 NIEHS Working Group was an expert in some area of science, as attested to by the listed academic achievements and job titles. But common sense tells us that if scientific facts are to be established by a committee vote, then each person with a vote ought to consider all the available evidence. However, this principle conflicts with NIEHS’ apparent goal of creating a committee whose members each had expertise in a specific area arguably pertinent to the issue. Thus, the Working Group undoubtedly were experts, but their expertise probably did not extend to all of the evidence presented. What is a professor of molecular pharmacology supposed to know about cancer or suicide or electromagnetic fields? What is a division leader of structural biology supposed to know about the immune system?
Expertise is a special competence in a particular area. It allows the expert to more reliably resolve some issues than would otherwise be the case. But expertise does not elevate the reliability of an expert’s opinion regarding all issues. Expertise does not create an aristocracy whose members simply think better than others. Consequently, when experts make decisions regarding questions outside their expertise, the basis for accepting their opinions as scientific facts is destroyed. For example, nineteen members of the NIEHS Working Group voted to say that powerline EMFs were “possibly carcinogenic” to human beings, and 17 members voted that the evidence was “inadequate that they cause suicide or depression,” and that there was “no evidence in experimental animals for powerline EMF effects on the immune system.” It is difficult to see how, even in principle, the best decision or even a good decision can emerge from a process in which all committee members have limited expertise but are given equal voice in all component judgments related to the basic issue. Consequently, no reliable meaning can be attached to the committee voting.
The Politics of Appointment to EMF Blue-Ribbon Committees: A Case Study
In early 1976, after Herman Schwan had filed his testimony on behalf of the power companies in the legal dispute, I learned that he had been appointed to the 1976 NAS EMF blue-ribbon committee, along with other powerline experts from the same dispute. It was difficult for me to understand how the power company experts could possibly have been appointed to the NAS committee, considering that they had already said that EMFs up to 100,000 times stronger were safe. What disturbed me was not that these men had pre-formed opinions, but rather that opposing opinions were not represented on the committee. The other members of the committee appeared to be distinguished scientists in their respective areas of expertise. But I could see no nexus between their expertise and the question of whether the antenna's fields would be health risks. Few of the members of the committee had any connection with EMF biology studies, and those that did had opined publicly in general support of Schwan’s approach to the issue.
In January, 1976 I called J. Woodland Hastings, Head of Biology at Harvard, the committee chairman, and complained to him about what I perceived to be the unfairness and lack of credibility of the committee. Hastings was surprised to learn of the appointment of the powerline experts. He told me that he just assumed that everybody on the committee was an unbiased expert because “that’s the way the NAS works.” I learned from Hastings that the committee members had been picked by Phillip Handler.
I thought that Handler had erred badly in appointing the powerline experts to the committee, and this suggested to me that his other appointees might also have problems, in particular, they might not be qualified to render public-health opinions about EMFs. Hastings did not see it that way. He assumed that the other committee members were qualified because they were appointed by Handler, and Hastings’ focus was on the 3 powerline experts. He told me that he would seek either to have Dr. Becker and me appointed to the committee for the purpose of balance, or have the powerline experts removed from the committee.
As I saw it, EMF biology itself hung in the balance. The use of electromagnetic fields to treat human diseases and to control human development and physiology was an area that was just developing in 1976. The first FDA approved application of these techniques was still almost 3 years away, but work toward that goal was well underway in several laboratories, including our own. What concerned me was not only that bad advice might be passed off to the American public as good science because it was channeled into the public domain by the NAS. I was also concerned about the implications for potential EMF therapies. The gist of the power companies’ position was that EMFs produced no effects. If they produced no effects, they couldn’t produce good effects. End of story. End of a new area of biology.
Over the next 2 months, Hastings dealt with the National Research Council (NRC), and in particular with Samuel Abramson, the project officer who was managing the committee. Hastings’ naÏveté about the NAS committee seemed real. He was surprised to learn from the NRC that one of the power company experts was a major stockholder (“more than $10,000”) in power companies (actually, the same power company for which the expert was testifying in the legal dispute).
But by March, 1976, I think Hastings realized that he had hit a brick wall in his attempts to revamp the NAS committee, because he refused to take my telephone calls or respond to my letters. At that point I resigned myself to the inevitable and turned my attention back to the legal dispute which had begun to consume my professional career. As a final, ending statement, however, Dr. Becker and I sent a statement to the NAS committee in April that formally stated our experiences and our opinions (because my contacts with Hastings had been off the record).
I did not realize that our statement to the NAS committee would be a public document. Even if I had, I would not have guessed that anyone would be interested in it. However, a writer for Science obtained the statement and wrote a report that described our criticisms of the NAS committee. The Science report appeared in June, 1976. Soon thereafter, we were contacted by CBS’ 60 Minutes, and Dan Rather came to our laboratory and interviewed Dr. Becker regarding his criticisms of the NAS committee.
In February, 1977 the CBS’ 60 Minutes interview with Dr. Becker aired. In a letter published in the Detroit Free Press, Handler said that our charge that the NAS committee was stacked was “laughable” and “intolerable.” The letter suggested that the antenna was safe, even though the NAS committee, which was supposed to be evaluating the question, had not issued its report.
The first semester of my personal experience with the NAS EMF blue-ribbon committees ended, or so I thought, with the 60 Minutes piece. The depth of the antagonism that we had engendered merely because, from my point of view, we had told the truth and called a spade a spade did not become apparent to me until two years later. In September, 1979 the April, 1976 Science report was re-told in an article in the Saturday Review. Handler went ballistic. He wrote the Saturday Review that the article was “willful and venal” and “insulting to several distinguished scientists and to the National Academy of Sciences.” The letter included a manuscript that he demanded be published, in which he called me everything but decent. I thought that publishing the manuscript was a good idea, because the manuscript supported my contention that the NAS committee was pre-programmed to reach the conclusion it ultimately reached. But, in the end, the editors decided not to do so.
What is the point? When Handler appointed the 1976 NAS EMF blue-ribbon committee, he fully expected that the committee would ultimately reach the conclusion that they did reach. Not only was the conclusion foreordained, so was the evidence that would be considered, the evidence that would be ignored, and the reasoning that would be followed. The same was true of the 1997 NAS EMF committee, and the 1998 NIEHS EMF committee, and each of the other EMF blue-ribbon committees, with the exception of the first one.
What makes the 1976 NAS EMF committee unique is that I had a window into the appointment process, and thus saw first-hand its essential unfairness. Handler would have never reacted as he did if he was really right and Dr. Becker and I were wrong. The take-home message is that no one can be trusted to appoint the judges who will decide an important public-health issue such as the potential health hazards of powerlines in a secret process pursuant to undisclosed criteria, because even prominent men have biases and make mistakes. If secret appointments are made, that result is tantamount to allowing the appointer himself to decide the ultimate issue because the people appointed will opine in predictable ways. That’s what happened in the case of the 1976 NAS EMF committee, and I think that’s what happened in the other cases.