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Vaticancer FM

Vatican attempts to thwart cancer investigation

5th May 2000 / Squall Download 4, May-June 2000, pg. 14.

The Vatican is refusing to entertain an official investigation into the possibility that its communications transmitters are causing cancer.

Italian doctors examined 7,500 deaths over six years in Cesano, the northern suburb of Rome where a cluster of Vatican radio transmitters broadcasts to the world. The official investigation was ordered after the study revealed the incidence of tumours to be 30 per cent higher than the national average.

However, official paperwork sent to Vatican representatives by the investigating magistrates was returned on the grounds that the Vatican's extra-territorial status renders it immune from judicial prosecution and that there was no legal precedent for electromagnetic radiation being held responsible for cancers.

Concerns over the health affects of electromagnetic radiation have reverberated for years but have never been firmly proven or disproven. A recent report commissioned from 12 "independent experts" in the UK concluded that mobile phone masts and units were no cause for health concern. However, scepticism remains after the inquiry's conclusion were announced at the same time as the UK government trumpeted the £22 billion its made from auctioning off mobile phone licences in the UK.

Despite concluding there was no harm from mobile masts, the Stewart Inquiry still recommended that emissions from the UK's 20,000 masts should be brought down to the European standard and that the tens of thousands of new masts due to be built this year should not be cited near schools.

Meanwhile in Italy, the investigating magistrates have approached their Foreign ministry so that some deal with the Vatican can be negotiated allowing their investigation to go ahead.