The on-going debate about how to manage the so-called childhood obesity crisis by clamping down on the easy availability of sugar in our diets is unfolding in a fascinating but somewhat disturbing way.  There are parallels with this story to the EMF story, though sugar is probably about twenty years ahead of EMFs.

It is now obvious that people are dying as a direct consequence of consuming too much sugar and the NHS is straining at the seams to cope.  The Select Health Committee met last week to take statements from witnesses and set out advice for government in respect of the obesity strategy which is due for release early next year.  Because I had signed Jamie Oliver’s petition for a tax on sugar, I was sent a link of footage from part of this Committee meeting.  With an intuitive sense that these debates and dilemmas are not as open and transparent as the government would have us believe, here was the evidence that this is the case.

At the time of the hearing Duncan Selbie, the chief executive of Public Health England (PHE,) squirmed in his seat trying to justify the fact that the report into evidence and recommendations was going to be released at the same time as the government strategy was made public, and not a moment before.  Presumably the government don’t want the various pressure groups and us public muddying the water with comments and debate when they have already made up their minds about their strategy.  By the end of the week however, the PHE report had been released.  Then the headlines turned to the fact that although the Prime Minister had received a copy he had not read it and was not intending to comment upon it.

So here we have one of the greatest threats to public health in what appears to be part cover up of facts and part foregone conclusion.  How is that democracy?!  The same will be, and is, true of EMFs.  Already there is a wealth of evidence that we are in trouble if we keep proliferating wireless radiation in our environment and using our devices as though they are benign gadgets and yet this is not making the news.  I have contacted the BBC or national newspapers a number of times with a comment related to the negative side of wireless communication and either got no response back or one telling me ‘it was OK and nothing to worry about’.  Staggering.

I will finish with the words of Jamie Oliver last Monday: “The public generally make good choices about their health if they are given the information”.  Sadly, the information about EMFs is not yet widely available.  Where it has got into the public domain it is generally seen as propaganda pushed by obsessional cranks, with most people choosing the ‘la-la, fingers in ears’ way of responding to it.  And they will continue to do so until it is mainstream and preferably fashionable information.

In the words of someone else whose name I won’t cite: “People need to start dying before this is taken seriously”.  How tragic that that is true.  Actually, people are dying as a result of EMFs, but not visibly enough.