It is difficult to understand why Emile Therien, President of the Canada Safety Council, is so vigorously opposed to cell phone regulation.1 His objections appear to be based on 2 reports not published in peer-reviewed journals, to which he attaches the same weight as the report in the New England Journal of Medicine2 that prompted CMAJ's editorial on the subject.3
Therien implies that the report by Claire Laberge-Nadeau4 reached conclusions that “contrast” with those in the CMAJ editorial and that it is more credible than the New England Journal of Medicine report because it had a larger sample. Apart from the fact that more subjects do not necessarily mean better science, Therien provides no data from the Laberge-Nadeau study to help readers draw their own conclusions. Instead, taking a page out of the National Rifle Association's book, Therien concludes that it is not the phone that is the problem, but the user.
The other report he uses to support his position showed that over 10% of crashes caused by distracted drivers involved the use of cell phones.5 Therien glosses over this startling finding by focusing on the 11.4% of crashes in which the driver was distracted by adjusting a radio or cassette and the 30% that involved distraction by “an outside person, object or event.” Unfortunately, we cannot regulate all possible sources of distraction, but we can do something about a device whose lethal effects may reach epidemic proportions when it becomes as ubiquitous as radios or cassette players.
This is not the first time the Canada Safety Council has taken a position that runs contrary to the evidence; it also did so when it opposed changing the permissible blood alcohol limit for drivers from 0.08 to 0.05. One cannot help, therefore, but wonder what would motivate the Canada Safety Council to take such irresponsible positions. Canadians need to know more about this organization, but its Web site gives no clues as to how Therien decides on the positions he takes, whether he is counselled by colleagues and, if so, what their competence is to judge scientific issues. A request for such information yielded a large packet of press releases and — the coup de grâce — comic books featuring Elmer the Safety Elephant (another unproven safety measure).