Are cell phones and our Wi-Fi based system threats to our health? Do they cause cancer and other health disorders? Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes so.
“Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier, so all these toxins that are in your body can now go into your brain,” he said in a 2023 interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan—a position he reiterated during his congressional confirmation hearing in January.
He’s been promoting these controversial views for years. “They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior, digital currency that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply,” Kennedy warned during a rally the year before.
A survey indicates that at least 30% of Americans believe his claims—and that was well before he was anointed America’s top health administrator by the Trump Administration. (About 20% have said in a poll that they believe the government was implanting microchips via COVID-19 vaccines)
Only it’s not true.
Evidence-based science
Numerous studies going back to the year 2000 all indicate there is no reason to fear cell phones as a cause of cancer, and a new paper by Li Zhang and Joshua Muscat of the Department of Public Health Sciences at Pennsylvania State University examines the most up-to-date data from the United States to examine this question as if for the first time.
Most studies on this question have been case-control studies. This type of study is subject to biases (information bias and selection bias) because it selects subjects who already have the disease of interest (in this case, brain cancer). Although prospective studies avoid the biases inherent in case-control studies, they are expensive and difficult to carry out, especially for rare diseases such as brain cancer.
But now researchers can take advantage of the exponential increase in exposure to cell phones since their introduction in the mid-1980s. In the space of several decades, humans have gone from having no exposure—zero percent of the population exposed—to nearly universal exposure. This means that we can take advantage of what is referred to as a “natural experiment,” the approach that Li and Muscat take in their illuminating new study.
An earlier analysis of this type was carried out by the National Cancer Institute. That study showed no evidence of an association between cell phone use and cancer, but the data only went up to 2012. Possibly, cell phones had not been in use long enough for an effect to show up. Li and Muscat extend the period of observation by nine years.
The authors plotted the total number of cell phone subscriptions in the U.S. for the period 1985-2024 and used data on brain cancer and brain tumor incidence from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program for the years 2000 to 2021 to calculate the annual percentage change (APC) in the incidence of brain cancer and non-malignant tumors of the brain. The SEER database for this period covers 47.9 percent of the U.S. population.
From 1985 to 2021, there was a 1,200-fold increase in the number of cell phone subscriptions in the United States.
Along with this dramatic increase in cell phone use, a slight decline in annual percent change for malignant brain tumors occurred, and no change in temporal lobe tumors appeared from 2000 to 2021.
There was a slight increase in benign tumors (mainly meningiomas), but this is likely to be due to an increased use of medical imaging during this period discovering tumors that earlier would have gone undetected.
For acoustic neuromas (vestibular schwannomas), malignant pediatric brain tumors, and pediatric temporal lobe tumors, there was no evidence of an increase over the 21-year period.
The authors conclude that “these findings suggest that mobile phone use does not appear to be associated with an increased risk of brain cancer, either malignant or benign.”
Notice how restrained their language is. As the authors point out, their results agree with those from previous studies using different methodologies and carried out in different countries, including the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States. These studies have generally found no evidence of an association between cell phone use and cancers.
The extensive null evidence from epidemiologic studies needs to be seen in conjunction with what is known from biophysics about the effects of exposure to radiofrequency energy emitted by cell phones. Unlike ionizing radiation, such as X-rays, radiofrequency energy has much longer wavelengths and much lower frequencies that are too weak to break chemical bonds or damage DNA. There is no evidence that these waves can initiate cancer.
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Thus, different types of evidence all converge to indicate that cell phone emissions are unlikely to cause cancer.
I have summarized these findings—from the most recent study and from studies going back 25 years—to show how, as more studies are done and attempts are made to improve the quality of the data, we can be increasingly certain that these studies are sound and that we are not missing something.
Science requires discipline
I have gone on at length about cell phones to contrast the slow, steady, and disciplined conduct of science with the corrosive disinformation that is being put out daily by RFK Jr., who leads the largest biomedical agency in the United States and in the world.
As is the case with cell phones, the available scientific evidence indicates that there is no association between vaccines, and specifically the MMR vaccine, and autism. In fact, the evidence for vaccines not causing autism is even stronger than the evidence for cell phones not causing brain cancer. This is because, for vaccines, we have very high-quality data on the exposure of individuals (the type of vaccine, the dose, the date of vaccination). And we have this information on millions of children. This means that we can have very strong confidence that vaccines do not cause autism.
And yet, in the face of this evidence, RFK Jr. insists on propagating this debunked claim, and he is sponsoring a study by a discredited researcher that he hopes will provide the answer he favors. This is an unforgivable waste of money that could be spent on addressing an important health issue. But it is also more than that.
From observing RFK Jr., and those he appeals to, we see a pattern of pseudo-scientific beliefs. Claims that cell phones are linked to cancer or that vaccines cause autism often act as sentinel indicators of broader susceptibility to misinformation—particularly surrounding pesticides and genetically engineered crops. Notably, anti-biotech advocacy groups like the Organic Consumers Association and its offshoot, U.S. Right-to-Know, also pair their rejection of GMOs with skepticism about wireless technology. The OCA, for instance, has promoted the idea that “multiple robust human studies” link cell phone radiation to brain tumors and has called for a moratorium on 5G, accusing regulators of “ignoring health risks.” Kennedy’s Children’s Health Defense has propagated this disinformation for years.
Kennedy and other cell phone hysterics base many of their views on the controversial claims by two hazard-focused agencies— the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the Ramazzini Institute. Both groups have raised alarms about cell phones, citing limited evidence suggesting a possible link between long-term exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation and brain disorders such as glioma and acoustic neuroma.
In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RF radiation as a Group 2B “possible carcinogen” in 2011—a category that includes substances like pickled vegetables and coffee—based on suggestive, but inconclusive, epidemiological data. The Ramazzini Institute echoed these concerns in 2018, citing controversial rodent studies, which were criticized for poor methodology and lack of real-world relevance. Both groups are populated by scientists with links to environmental activist groups and litigators who have initiated multi-district litigation targeting cell phone manufacturers. Their highly suspect conclusions have been weaponized by RFK, Jr. and other fringe activists.
These hazard-based warnings have been roundly rejected by the global medical and scientific establishment, including agencies like the FDA, CDC, WHO, National Cancer Institute, and European Food Safety Authority, which rely on risk-based evaluations—real-world exposures. These organizations find no credible evidence that typical cell phone use poses any measurable health risk, emphasizing that hazard alone does not equal harm.
That has not stopped Kennedy from weaponizing bogus claims. His MAHA Health Commission report identified technology—specifically Wi-Fi radiation and cell phones in schools—among alleged drivers of chronic illness in children. The report contains “citations to at least seven studies that appear to be completely fabricated or misrepresented” including phantom research on screen time and mobile radiation.
These zombie risks never die. It doesn’t matter what the specific risk is. The credulity, the failure to take any commonsense evidence or distillations of the scientific evidence into account, the refusal to value the judgment of experts who have spent untold hours examining the issue, or the conclusions reached by research institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Cancer Society or global oversight groups, like the World Health Organization, undermines the public’s confidence in science.
RFK Jr. appears to have an implacable drive to do away with vaccines by undermining public support, disrupting insurance coverage, and making it too costly for pharmaceutical companies to produce them, as happened in the 1980s. Exposing his lies is a matter of protecting the lives of children and adults from the all-too-real infectious diseases that RFK Jr. doesn’t believe in.
This article is an expanded and edited version of an article that appeared on Reason and is posted with permission.
Geoffrey Kabat is a cancer epidemiologist and the author of Getting Risk Right: Understanding the Science of Elusive Health Risks. Find Geoffrey on X @GeoKabat
