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Dr M F Levy
Head of Airwave Sponsorship and Radio Planning
Information and Communications Technology Unit
Home Office
7th Floor
50 Queen Anne’s Gate
London
SW1H 9AT
15 May 2004
Dear Dr Levy
Thank you for your letter of 5 May.
I passed your concerns regarding the non-feasibility of double blind trials of TETRA base stations to the Health Protection Agency. Their opinion was that this kind of study on, for example, new drugs, was carried out all the time.
Since your letter, I have been trying to work out why the "weather and exposure to sick friends and family" might cause the reported symptoms of nosebleeds, headaches, migraines or abrupt waking. Nor can I see why, in a double blind trial that could be run both ways, this might be a problem at all. Was this a issue, for example, in establishing the link between prions in cattle and CJD? Or in defining asbestosis? Or in connecting Tartrazine and hyperactivity? Or in any other major health controversy in the field of modern science? I think probably not.
Thank you also for the reference to MTHR studies. I have already corresponded with King's College, Imperial College and Essex University regarding their research programmes, and indeed participated in the last. However, they do all confirm that there is no research, current or planned, into TETRA base station epidemiology.
And that is why we wrote to you in the first instance.
Yours sincerely
Andy Davidson
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