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Parent Concerned About
School Wireless Radiation
Cell Tower
Life Bluetube Headsets
Cell Phone Towers Health Effects
EM Field Meter
Cell Phone Sensitivity
It's Statement by Kathy McDermid, occupational therapist and
parent, Peterborough, Ontario
My name is Kathy McDermid, and I am the parent of two
children who attend James Strath P. S. in Peterborough. I am
here to speak to the fact that our school board is
committing grave ethical transgressions in implementing its
plan to install wireless internet, or Wi-Fi, in its schools.
I am not a doctor or a scientist, although I am a health
care professional. I believe my professional background
enables me to speak with some knowledge about medical
ethics. Medical ethics are a set of principles that guide
the practice of medicine and medical research. It is a vast
field, which rests on three pillars: The Precautionary
Principle, Informed Consent, and Transparency.
The precautionary principle is a core value of the health
sciences – we recognize it most readily as part of the
doctors’ Hippocratic Oath, which states “First, do no harm”.
A more technical definition advises that “if an action or
policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or
to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus
that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof
that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.” In
other words, activities that present potential for
significant harm, even if evidence is limited and
contradictory, should be prohibited until the proponent of
the activity can prove that there is no risk of harm. In lay
terms, this means we have a responsibility to err on the
side of caution.
Implicit in this, is that there is a social responsibility
to protect the public from exposure to harm, when science
has found some evidence of risk. The public looks to its
elected leaders to advocate for them, and to provide that
protection.
My second point is around that of informed consent: This
means that individuals can choose to engage, or not engage
in an activity, based on their assessment of the risks and
benefits associated with that activity. As individuals, we
have the opportunity to weigh risks and benefits, and make
informed personal decisions. As parents, we have the
absolute right to do this risk-benefit analysis on behalf of
our children. This right can be suspended only after due
process, by the legal system. School boards do not have this
right: they can’t take my children’s picture, take them on a
class trip, or even take them across the street without my
consent. They most certainly do not have the right to expose
my children to non-ionizing radiation without my consent.
Informed consent is contingent upon a principle known as
transparency. Transparency in health care, as in government,
means that information is shared freely, enabling people to
make their decisions around consent with full knowledge of
the risks and benefits involved. Doctors do not perform
surgery, prescribe a drug, or do an invasive investigation
without fully informing the patient of the potential risks
and benefits of the procedure in question. The same applies
to researchers: In fact, the Nuremburg Code (1947) dictates,
among other things, that voluntary consent of the research
subject is essential, and that the subject must be informed
of any potential risks associated with the research.
All research on humans must be approved by an ethics review
board before it can be conducted. I took the liberty of
consulting with a medical ethicist… I asked him this
question: “Let’s say I proposed a study to examine the
safety Wi-Fi. My plan is to install Wi-Fi in a bunch of
schools, then observe the children to see what, if any,
health effects develop. I plan to do this without informing
the parents of the potential risks of this study. Also, I
would not obtain any parental consent for the children to
participate in this study. In fact, I’m not even planning to
tell the children or parents that I am doing this study
until after the fact.” (This is exactly what our local
school board is doing.) I then asked the ethicist: “Would
this study pass an ethics review?” His response was
“Absolutely not”. Allow me to make this point perfectly
clear: A governing group of doctors and scientists WOULD NOT
ALLOW other doctors or scientists to do what our school
board is planning to do to its students. To my children.
We are fortunate in Peterborough that all four of our local
federal candidates have expressed some level of concern
regarding the safety of Wi-Fi in schools. In addition, our
Conservative incumbent M.P., Dean Del Mastro, has indicated
that he thinks “the school board needs to re-think what it
is doing”. I am hopeful that whichever candidate is
successful in winning the Peterborough riding that she or he
will continue to pursue much stricter federal safety
standards regarding radiofrequency radiation. I also hope
that, at a provincial level, restrictions on the use of
Wi-Fi in schools can be enacted, along with policies put in
place to ensure transparent, ethical process, and adherence
to the precautionary principle on the part of school boards.
These are not the school board’s children we are talking
about. They are MINE. The school board is quite literally
planning to do unauthorized, unethical research – without
transparency, without consent, and completely ignoring the
precautionary principle – on my children, and on every other
child who attends one of its schools. The school board DOES
NOT have the right to experiment on my children. It DOES NOT
have the right to make decisions that may affect my
children’s health, now and in the future. And it DOES NOT
have the right to decide whether the level of risk
associated with prolonged Wi-Fi exposure is acceptable for
my children. Only I have that right. And I say “NO”.
Togo, Lomé
Dubbo, Australia
Angola, Luanda
Bulgaria, Sofia
Goulburn, Australia
Turkmenistan, Ashgabat
Cambodia, Phnom Penh
France, Paris
Timor-Leste, Dili
Tacoma, Washington, USA
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