Richard Lear and Camilla Rees posted their report on Feb. 6 as a preprint on ResearchGate. Lear and Rees are business executives and long-time health and environmental researchers.

The report, which Rees called a “discussion and commentary” on published science related to wireless radiation’s biological impacts, is geared toward an everyday audience. It is not intended for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

Lear and Rees posted the report on ResearchGate to make it accessible to the public.

On Feb. 14, Rees shared the paper with attendees of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine’s annual conference in San Antonio, Texas, according to a press release.

Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless called the report an “easy-to-understand distillation of pertinent scientific findings that gives the public a sense of how regulatory agencies ignored earlier science and why agencies need to take protective action now.”

In the report, Lear and Rees discuss how the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute in 1971 issued a report that reviewed 2,311 scientific studies on the biological and health effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR).

Most of the studies examined by the Navy involved low-intensity EMR signals in the 1 to 4 gigahertz (GHz) range, said Lear and Rees. “These types of wireless exposures are virtually identical with those from modern devices and wireless sources such as cell phones, WiFi, Bluetooth, smart meters, GPS, wearables, and wireless infrastructure.”

The Navy’s review found 132 different biological effects, symptoms and diseases linked to wireless exposures.

According to Lear and Rees, 23 of those are among the fastest-growing chronic diseases and conditions in the U.S. today, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, anxiety, asthma, autism, chronic fatigue, diabetes, leukemia, autoimmune disease and celiac disease.

In 2016, Lear examined the growth of chronic disease from 1990 to 2015 and the related economic costs of those diseases. His research found that 36 chronic diseases and conditions doubled from 1990 to 2015.

“Of the 36 chronic diseases and conditions that more than doubled (1990-2015), the U.S. Navy study warned us of the connection between wireless radiation and twenty-three of those chronic diseases, predicting what has indeed happened to the health of Americans,” the authors of the report wrote.

They added:

“By ignoring the earlier science, U.S. regulators failed to protect the American people from the dangers of wireless technologies. In doing so, they imposed millions of unnecessary chronic exposure conditions on the American public.”

Rees told The Defender she hopes U.S. regulators finally take action. “Pressure is needed from all directions to encourage federal regulatory agencies to do their jobs, and to hold these agencies accountable.”

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has not updated its exposure limits for wireless radiation since 1996.

In 2021, CHD and other groups won a lawsuit challenging the FCC’s exposure limits.

The groups filed 11,000 pages of evidence of harm from 5G and wireless technology, which they alleged the FCC ignored when it decided to keep its 1996 guidelines. The pages included evidence of widespread sickness due to wireless radiation exposure.

The FCC has yet to comply with a court-ordered mandate to explain how the agency determined that its current guidelines adequately protect humans and the environment against the harmful effects of exposure to wireless radiation.

Lear and Rees plan to send hard copies of their report to all U.S. Congress members and at least 1,000 U.S. business leaders.

“We want this information to get to people who are courageous enough to make a difference, including government leaders, business leaders, religious leaders and media,” Rees said.

Business leaders need to understand the connection between wireless exposures and their employees’ mood, health and therefore productivity, she said.

Rees is a senior policy adviser for the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy and founder of Manhattan Neighbors for Safer Telecommunications.

According to the report:

“By 2015, the 23 diseases the U.S. Navy predicted may have added more than $2 trillion in annual health care costs to the U.S. economy due to their negligence.”

The authors acknowledged that other factors have likely contributed to the current U.S. chronic disease crisis, such as sugar consumption, glyphosate and other pesticide exposures.

‘We’ve been misled about the benefits of wireless’

In the report, Lear and Rees also cite other scientific reports that have shown a link between wireless radiation and negative health impacts, including the BioInitiative 2012 Report.

The BioInitiative Report, updated in 2017, cites more than 2,200 scientific studies that link low-level EMR exposure to dozens of diseases and biological effects, including neurological effects, brain cancer, fetal effects, blood-brain barrier damage, DNA damage, breast cancer, biochemical imbalances, leukemia, decreased fertility and oxidative stress.

The report also discusses studies that suggested a possible biological mechanism for explaining how wireless radiation is linked to chronic disease.

Rees said, “We have been misled about the relative benefits of wireless.”

Wired connections are far superior to wireless for numerous reasons, including connection speed, according to a 2018 National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy report.

“It is faster, far more energy efficient, higher audio quality, more reliable, more resilient in weather events, more secure, and more enduring, meaning that it is not subject to the costs of planned obsolescence like wireless technologies,” Rees said.

She added:

“We need to start taking responsibility ourselves, and minimize our personal wireless exposure while supporting efforts, such as CHD’s new ‘704 No More’ initiative, to restore local control over cell towers and antennas.”

The 704 No More initiative is raising money to legally challenge Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which prohibits local authorities from denying cell tower applications based on health and environmental effects.

Related articles in The Defender

• New Report Contradicts Telecom Industry Claim That Wireless Radiation Is Safe
• Wireless Radiation Sickness Gets a New Name: ‘EMR Syndrome’
• FCC Limits for Wireless Radiation Exposure Decades Out of Date, Experts Say

WHO’s approval of Bavarian Nordic’s vaccine will help governments and international agencies such as the Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and UNICEF, buy it, MedicalXpress reported.

The MVA-BN vaccine — short for “Modified Vaccinia Ankara-Bavarian Nordic” — is a smallpox/mpox vaccine. It is sold in the U.S. under the name Jynneos.

WHO Assistant Director-General Yukiko Nakatani said, “The decision can also help national regulatory authorities to fast-track approvals, ultimately increasing access to quality-assured mpox vaccine products.”

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker called the WHO’s approval of the shot for infants and children in Africa “a train wreck in the making.”

Hooker told The Defender:

“The safety profile is abysmal in adults (up to 2.1% serious cardiac events in clinical trials) and the vaccine has not been adequately tested for efficacy or safety in pediatric populations.

“In other words, the WHO has no idea whether it will work nor do they know how much damage it will do. The WHO has again abandoned good public health principles and waved their magic vaccine wand on the mpox outbreak.”

Dr. David Bell, a public health physician and biotech consultant, also criticized the WHO for overly focusing on mpox vaccines and neglecting to address broader public health issues in Africa.

“So far this year, about 40,000 children have died from malaria in the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] alone, and similar numbers of people from malnutrition, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDs,” Bell said.

Although these numbers “obviously dwarf” the number of mpox deaths, the WHO is allocating fewer resources to addressing them.

Bell — who formerly served as a medical officer and scientist at the WHO — explained what he sees occurring:

“We have become much better at detecting much rarer diseases such as mpox, and addressing these is certainly more lucrative for the growing industry feeding off the WHO’s misinformation regarding rapidly rising pandemic risk.

“However, it is clear that the people of DRC and Africa in general would benefit far more if WHO returned to impactful public health. There has been a move over recent years to a concentration on addressing the symptoms of diseases of poverty (which mpox is) with Western-developed commodities, rather than dealing with underlying causes.

“This signals a return to colonialist-era approaches rather than evidence-based public health. It presumably reflects the way WHO is now funded, with increasing control from the private sector and a few large Western nations with large Pharma industries.”

No clinical trials on kids

In its press release, the WHO said the MVA-BN vaccine can be administered to adults over 18 as a two-dose injection four weeks apart but can also be given as a single dose “in supply-constrained outbreak situations.”

“While MVA-BN is currently not licensed for persons under 18 years of age,” it said, “this vaccine may be used ‘off-label’ in infants, children and adolescents, and in pregnant and immunocompromised people.”

The WHO called for more data on the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in these situations.

The WHO Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization — which reviewed all available evidence and recommended the use of MVA-BN vaccine — noted in its Weekly Epidemiological Record report that “MVA-BN has not been specifically studied in clinical trials in children.”

However, they said:

“The same non-replicating MVA viral vector is used as a platform for other vaccines that include MVA-filo (Mvabea) against Ebola virus disease (EVD).

“The EVD vaccine is approved by the EU for adults and children aged 1 year and older. Data from 5 published studies on MVA-BN as a viral vector platform for the prevention of EVD, with a total population of 52 229 children, support the favourable safety profile of the product.”

The authors of a new study — published Sept. 11 in The BMJ — presented results on MVA-BN’s effectiveness in adult males but said nothing about children or pregnant women.

In 2023, researchers funded by the UK Health Security Agency looked at the health outcomes of 87 children who received a single dose of MVA-BN.

They reported that the vaccine was “well tolerated” but that larger studies needed to be done to fully assess the shot’s safety and efficacy in kids.

The Defender asked Bavarian Nordic for information about its mpox vaccine in pediatric populations but did not receive a response by the deadline.

The WHO’s process for granting a drug “prequalification” approval for “emergency use listing” requires drugmakers to “commit to continue generating missing information to fulfill prequalification requirements.”

“Once this information becomes available,” the WHO said, “a PQ [prequalification] application should be submitted to complete the full process to achieve  recommendation for international procurement in both emergency and non-emergency settings.”

It is unclear how much pediatric safety and efficacy data Bavarian Nordic has collected so far and what it showed.

Mpox vaccine approved for U.S. kids and teens since 2022

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2022 granted emergency use authorization for the vaccine for “in individuals less than 18 years of age determined to be at high risk for monkeypox infection.”

Jynneos has been licensed for use in U.S. adults since 2019.

The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC)’s mpox vaccination website states that while teens and children at risk for mpox can receive Jynneos, it is not recommended for babies under 6 months.

The CDC also says Jynneos can be given to pregnant or breastfeeding women.

Although it remains unknown if Jynneos may pose risks to a developing fetus if taken during pregnancy, animal studies haven’t shown any harm to developing fetuses when the vaccine was given to pregnant animals, the agency said.