My earliest exposure to the idea that electricity, and particularly radiated electricity, might be harmful came through a Robert Heinlein short novel I read in the sixties. Written in the 1940's and set in the 1980s, it was based on the idea of power being broadcast through the air to vehicles and appliances. This idea came from Nicholas Tesla, the Serbian genius who invented alternating current. Tesla expected that, by the mid 20th century, all power could be broadcast and not require wires. Heinlein jumped on this notion, among several others, and wove a fascinating study of power, self-discovery, and a world consisting of two superimposed universes, each having a slightly different physics.
In Heinlein's 1980's, humans are suffering from progressive physical weakness and neurological impairment...including a foreshadowing of what is now called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. A key character retains his health into his 80s by wearing a lead-lined overcoat to protect him from the radiant energy. To our cynical thinking, this invokes the aluminum foil hats that stereotype the fringe and wacko paranoids of pop culture.
Some very non-wacko researchers and scientists are interested in these issues, however.
"Fifty-two years ago in 1948, Robert Becker graduated from New York University's College of Medicine. Later, he became a certified orthopedic surgeon and spent thirty years as Director of Orthopedic Surgery at the Veterans Hospital in Syracuse as well as Professor of Medicine at New York University's Upstate Medical Center there. During those decades, Dr. Becker pioneered laboratory research in the field of regeneration of bone and muscle after injuries using weak electrical currents. In his 1985 ground-breaking book, The Body Electric, Dr. Becker described the exciting progress in his regeneration research while simultaneously warning the public about the growing electromagnetic pollution in the environment which could do harm. Twice Dr. Becker has been nominated for a Nobel Prize in Medicine."
"There are now, he says, too many industrial and political interests vested in the exponential growth and profits of the global telecommunications industry, regardless of the impact on cancers and neurological disease. I asked him what his current perspective is on the controversy surrounding the safety of cell phones and electromagnetic pollution."
Becker is a courageous man, and has the freedom to say what he thinks about these things. His position gives me a clue, if not an answer, to the relative silence on these issues over the last decade.
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