Cross Currents: The Promise of Electromedicine, the Perils of Electropollution

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Overview

What this book is about

Cross Currents is Becker's 1990 sequel to The Body Electric (1985). Later paperback printings swap the subtitle to "The Perils of Electropollution, the Promise of Electromedicine." Becker says the book is about two trends that meet. The first is the rise of "electromedicine," or energy medicine. The second is the rise of "electropollution" from power lines, radar, microwaves, satellites, radio transmitters and home appliances. He argues that both work on the same thing: the body's own electrical control system. His research found this to be a slow, analog, direct-current (DC) system carried by the cells that surround the nerves. He calls it the "dual nervous system," and he argues that it is coupled to the Earth's natural magnetic field. If that system exists, he says, it explains why hypnosis, placebo, visualization, acupuncture, homeopathy, healers and electrotherapy can work. It also means that man-made fields can disturb it.

The book has three parts and an appendix. Part One (Life Energy) retells the history of medicine as three "wrong turns": - Galen's dogma - reducing life to chemical machinery - adopting electromagnetic technology without asking about its biological effects

It then summarizes the "new scientific revolution": the DC control system, and the magnetic sense organs that read the geomagnetic field. Part Two (Electromagnetic Medicine) sorts alternative therapies into three tiers by how much external energy they add, and evaluates each one. Part Three (Electromagnetic Pollution) covers: - the natural field - the evidence on man-made fields: microwave and radar, power lines, broadcast - effects on the mind and brain - a physical mechanism (cyclotron resonance) - "new plagues" that Becker suspects are linked to fields - a practical chapter on what to do at home and in the office, with milligauss (mG) readings for common devices

The Appendix argues that the U.S. military's command, control, communications and intelligence doctrine (C³I) depends on unrestricted use of the spectrum. Becker says the military protected the "heat-only" safety standard through research funding, commissioned reports and "manufactured experts."

How it differs from The Body Electric: The earlier book was a first-person research memoir built around regeneration. Cross Currents restates that work in about 60 pages, then goes in four new directions: 1. Therapy evaluation. It works as a practical guide to alternative therapies, and says which ones Becker trusts, which he distrusts, and why. 2. A physical mechanism. It adds the cyclotron-resonance theory of Abraham Liboff and Carl Blackman, which The Body Electric lacked. The theory explains how very weak low-frequency fields, together with the Earth's steady field, could act on ions in the body. 3. Newer evidence. It adds studies from 1985–1989 that the earlier book did not have: the New York State Power-Lines Project, Arthur Guy's $5 million U.S. Air Force microwave study, the Navy's Project Henhouse, the Kaiser Permanente study of computer screens (VDTs) and miscarriage, and the Winters/Phillips cancer-cell studies. 4. Measurements and a personal limit. It ends with concrete measurements and Becker's own provisional limit of 1 milligauss for continuous 60-Hz exposure.

Becker also corrects himself. He now calls the rule from his own early work, that negative current stimulates growth and positive current inhibits it, "oversimplistic." He warns that the FDA-approved bone-growth stimulators and pulsed-magnetic-field (PEMF) devices that grew out of that work can speed up the growth of cancer cells.

The tone is more polemical than The Body Electric, especially in Chapter 11 and the Appendix. Becker himself calls the "new plagues" chapter "informed speculation." The devices he discusses are from the late 1980s: CRT televisions and monitors, cordless phones, CB radios and early cellular phones. The book predates mobile phones as we know them, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and earbuds.

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Key Ideas

The core frameworks and findings

The dual nervous system underlies "energy medicine."

Becker describes an older analog system of semiconducting DC currents. It runs through the perineural cells (glial cells and the Schwann cells around nerves) and sits underneath the digital nerve-impulse system. It senses injury, controls repair, may act as the "morphogenetic field" (the body's blueprint for growth), and sets the level of consciousness. His evidence includes:

Living things read the Earth's magnetic field through two sense organs

The Earth's field averages about 0.5 gauss and changes by less than 0.1 gauss a day. Its slow "micropulsations" run from about 0 to 30 Hz and are strongest at 7–10 Hz, about the same as the brain's alpha rhythm. Becker cites:

The conscious mind can reach the DC system. Becker offers this as the mechanism behind hypnosis, placebo and visualization

Energy medicine sorted by energy dose, and "more is not better."

Becker sorts therapies into three tiers: He places healers (Olga Worrall, the Polish healer Mietek Wirkus, Chinese Qi Gong masters) outside this scheme. He proposes they work electromagnetically, citing a Chinese NMR experiment. Details for each tier are in the Contents under Chapters 4–6. His general rule is that the body's systems run on tiny amounts of energy:

Becker's own warning about electrotherapy: it can feed cancer

We have caused an artificial "magnetic reversal."

Power grids run at 50/60 Hz, which does not occur in the natural spectrum. Since World War II, our use of the spectrum has grown 5–10% a year until nearly all of it is filled. Studies of sea-floor cores tie mass extinctions to reversals of the Earth's field: at the 1971 Lamont conference, James Hays reported that 6 of 8 extinctions of radiolarians (tiny sea organisms) coincided with reversals. Becker proposed that the damage comes from shifts in the frequencies of the micropulsations. He argues that in about 50 years we have changed those frequencies more than any natural reversal did.

The "heat-only" safety standard was set by calculation, not biology

Evidence on radiofrequency and microwaves: genes, reproduction, cancer

Evidence on power-line fields (ELF, extremely low frequency)

Embryos and genes are the most sensitive targets

Mechanism: the body "demodulates" signals, and frequency matters more than power

One set of effects for all abnormal fields, driven by stress

Becker says that whatever the frequency, abnormal fields do the same things: He stresses the stress model: first an alarm reaction, then exhaustion and falling immunity. This is his answer to studies that found "no effect."

ELF fields and the mind: consciousness, behavior, free will

The "new plagues" (Becker flags these as speculative)

Industry, military and regulators have conflicts of interest

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Chapter by chapter — click to expand

§ Prologue ▾

The two trends and their collision. Becker cites Thomas Kuhn on scientific revolutions and blames the "publish or perish" career system for stagnation in science. He compares the book to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a warning about an invisible crisis.

§ Ch 1 — The History of Life, Energy, and Medicine *(Part One: Life Energy: The Hidden Dynamic in Medicine)* ▾

Two composite patients, "Martha" and "Jerry," to contrast conventional and "energy" medicine.
Energy medicine in early civilizations: the Yellow Emperor's text (chi, acupuncture, moxibustion, lodestones), the Kahun Papyrus, the Vedas.
Thales; Hippocrates ("disease is... a battle" with the body's self-healing); Erasistratus; Galen's dogma as the "first wrong turn"; Paracelsus.
Later figures: Vesalius, Gilbert's De magnete (1600), Descartes, Mesmer's 1784 commission, Hahnemann; Galvani versus Volta; DuBois-Reymond, Helmholtz, Bernstein's 1871 hypothesis; Otto Loewi's 1921 experiment, which Becker repeated as a student; Ehrlich's "magic bullet" (1909), which reduced life to chemical machinery ("second wrong turn").
"The Triumph of Technology": adopting electromagnetic technology without asking about its biology is the "third wrong turn."

§ Ch 2 — The New Scientific Revolution: The Electrical Connection ▾

Biological control systems explained with a thermostat and furnace (negative feedback).
Salamander regeneration: the nerve–skin junction (neuroepidermal junction, NEJ), the blastema (mass of regenerating cells), and cells reverting to an embryonic state (dedifferentiation). The current of injury is negative in salamanders and positive in frogs. Szent-Györgyi on semiconduction.
Bone growth at the negative electrode in dogs (with Andrew Bassett). Frog fracture blood cells reverting to primitive cells (with David Murray). Dedifferentiation at billionths of an ampere; RNA findings (Daniel Harrington). Partial limb regrowth in rats (Joseph Spadaro). Surgically created NEJs in rats (James Cullin).
Acupuncture: work with Maria Reichmanis under an NIH grant. About 25% of forearm points were electrically real; meridians behave like transmission lines; points act as "booster amplifiers." The grant was not renewed.
The closed-loop DC control system for growth and healing.
Cancer:
Cohnheim's theory (1877).
Meryl Rose (1948): frog tumor cells turned normal inside a regenerating salamander limb.
Alexander Wolsky: the "Vietnamization" of the war on cancer.
Coley's toxins: 1975 review found 105 cures in 186 patients.
Tumor necrosis factor turned out to be the same substance as endotoxin/cachexin.
Bailar & Smith: "we are losing the war against cancer" (1950–82 data).
The morphogenetic field. Blastema transplant experiments: before day 10, the tissue becomes whatever the new site dictates; after day 10, it keeps its original identity. An electrical field as positional information.
Analog versus digital control:
Harold Burr's Yale measurements.
Salamander DC map: nerve centers positive, periphery negative.
Hall-effect proof of semiconduction.
Anesthesia from a small current, or a 3000-gauss magnet.
Perineural cells.
Denervated rat fractures healed by a Schwann-cell strand.
Perineural cells in culture appearing to give rise to nerve cells.
Libet's readiness potential.

§ Ch 3 — The New Scientific Revolution: The Magnetic Connection ▾

Primer on magnetic and electromagnetic fields, frequency and the spectrum.
Becker's early-1960s prediction of a measurable magnetic field from the brain was laughed at. It was confirmed after the SQUID magnetometer (1970) made the magnetoencephalogram (MEG) possible.
Biological cycles: Frank Brown's work with Earth-strength magnets.
Magnetic sense organs:
Blakemore's bacteria.
Keeton's pigeons with frosted contact lenses and magnets glued to the head.
Walcott's magnetite in the pigeon brain.
Robin Baker's human ethmoid "magnetic organ" and the bar-magnet-on-forehead experiment.
The salamander's two navigation systems.
The pineal gland as the "master gland": melatonin, serotonin, dopamine; sensitive to both light and geomagnetic cycles. A disturbed biological cycle causes chronic stress and weaker immunity. The timing of chemotherapy changes its effect.
The micropulsation spectrum peaks at 10 Hz, matching the brain's rhythm (EEG/MEG). Diagram of the completed "dual nervous system."

§ Ch 4 — Turning On the Body's Electrical System: Minimal-Energy Techniques *(Part Two: Electromagnetic Medicine)* ▾

The same DC pattern appears from flatworms to humans. Measuring it in humans with physicist Charles Bachman.
Magnetic storms and psychiatric admissions; ward-behavior scores tracked against neutron-flux readings (with Howard Friedman).
Hypnosis measured through DC potentials; hypnotic anesthesia of the left arm. A thyroid operation done under hypnosis alone.
The three types of energy medicine.
Conscious control of the autonomic nervous system: hand warming; a Vietnam veteran who used self-hypnosis to flood a wound with blood. Psychoneuroimmunology.
Profound belief and the placebo: the laetrile case; a skilled surgeon who never spoke to patients had twice the complication rate of one who did; "six-month" prognoses; the Sklar & Anisman and Visintainer rat studies; two leukemia patients with opposite attitudes.
Visualization: Garrett Porter. Rauscher & Van Bise produced images in blindfolded subjects' minds with intersecting weak magnetic fields ("beat" frequencies).
The healer phenomenon:
Olga Worrall.
Mietek Wirkus correctly located Becker's hip arthritis, his colon problem, and low "energy" at the back of the head, where the vision from Becker's glaucoma-damaged eye is processed.
A theater's lights pulsed at 1–5 Hz during one of Wirkus's treatments.
Qi Gong and Jame Ma's nuclear-magnetic-resonance (NMR) hypothesis; the Wuhan NMR experiment.
A request for a $75,000 SQUID magnetometer to study healers was never granted.
Becker recommends these techniques for life-threatening illness after full disclosure of all options, not as a last resort.

§ Ch 5 — Building Up the Body's Electrical System: Energy-Reinforcement Techniques ▾

Homeopathy:
Hahnemann's Organon (1810); "provings"; dilution and succussion (shaking).
David Reilly's 1986 double-blind Lancet hay-fever trial, with half the antihistamine use.
The Benveniste affair (Nature; John Maddox, Walter Stewart and James Randi).
Israelachvili & McGuiggan on surface forces in liquids.
A single pheromone molecule is enough to trigger a moth, as an analogy.
Homeopathic "aggravation": symptoms get worse before they improve.
Homeopathic ointments that Becker used: Arnica for sprains (patients functional in 5–6 days) and Urtica urens for burns. Arnica's pain relief works through the skin, possibly at acupuncture-point structures. Comparison with TPA, the clot-dissolving drug.
Acupuncture:
Chinese electro-acupuncture devices used currents high enough to cause electrolysis.
Traditional needles are safe.
The placebo explanation was used to dismiss acupuncture.
Veterinary acupuncture helped 84% of animals with degenerative joint disease, and helped epilepsy. Animals cannot have a placebo effect.
"The present situation is a mess."
Vitamin C (Linus Pauling): Becker saw useful results in chronic-fatigue patients. Trace elements; manipulation (osteopathy, chiropractic), which he considers purely mechanical.

§ Ch 6 — Adding to the Body's Electrical System: High-Energy Transfer Techniques ▾

History of electrotherapy: Aldini, Birch (1812), Garratt (1860), the quackery era, the FDA's 1978 medical-device law and its "grandfathered" devices.
Physical hazards of passing current through the body: heating above about 1 mA/cm²; toxic metal ions from the positive electrode; electrolysis at about 1.1 V.
TENS pain units: the 1965 "gate theory" (later abandoned); Shealy & Long. Becker found skin irritation, stopped using them, and says they should never be used on the head, neck or spinal cord. Off-label uses included migraine with electrodes on the head, addiction and memory loss.
Drug addiction: Margaret Patterson moved from ear acupuncture to a flat electrode behind the ear. Becker estimates only about 1% of the current reached the brain, yet patients reported personality change over six weeks. "Wire-heading" (DIY brain stimulation); the degaussing-coil psychosis case.
Bone healing:
Piezoelectricity in bone (electric charge produced by bending).
DC stimulation in dogs with Robert Pawluk.
The 1970 fracture-healing control system; why nonunions happen.
Friedenberg & Brighton's 10 µA method; Bassett's PEMF devices; about 80% success rates.
Becker's measurements of electrolysis; his 0.1 µA silver-electrode method.
Currents and cancer:
Becker's 1981 experiment (≥300% faster growth) and the Japanese confirmation.
Liboff (1983): the PEMF effect is magnetic and acts only on cells that are dividing, which explains why success depended on when a fracture was declared a nonunion.
A Japanese PEMF device made cancer cells more malignant.
Becker wrote to the FDA; no action followed.
Electrotherapy history for cancer:
Allison's 1880 Lancet case: a lip cancer disappeared after a lightning strike.
Apostoli's 100–250 mA treatments.
Franklin Martin found 20 mA killed chick embryos.
Humphrey & Seal (1959); Schaubel & Habal (1977); Nordenström's "biologically closed electric circuits."
Kenneth McLean's high-strength magnets.
Whole-body PEMF briefly boosts the immune system, then suppresses it.
Electrochemical (silver-ion) growth stimulation: regrowth in osteomyelitis wounds, even in patients over 50; a wound cancer that appeared to return to normal, with the patient still well at 8 years.
Microwave hyperthermia (heating) for cancer; high-voltage treatment of snakebite (an outboard-motor spark lead, about 20,000 V); electroporation.
MRI: a strong steady field plus radiofrequency, and not proven harmless. Worth it to confirm a specific diagnosis, not as unfocused screening.
FDA warning on electrical muscle stimulators (possible miscarriage). Avoid practitioners who invoke chakras or the "ethereal body," or who promise to "free your body energies."

§ Ch 7 — The Natural Electromagnetic Field *(Part Three: Electromagnetic Pollution)* ▾

The magnetosphere, the Van Allen belts, the solar wind; the 11-year sunspot cycle; magnetic storms and auroras. Becker was a volunteer aurora observer in the International Geophysical Year (1957–58).
Magnetic storms and behavior (1963 report). Hans Alfvén's electromagnetic cosmology.
Reversals and extinctions: radiolarians in sea-floor cores; Newell's list of mass extinctions; Hays's 1971 conference. Becker's micropulsation hypothesis; Liboff's reproductive hypothesis. The Earth's field is weakening, so we may be entering a reversal, "but the problem may very well be academic" given the artificial one we have made.
Origin of life: Cole & Graf's strong 10-Hz Precambrian field; Thiemann & Jarzak's magnetic method for producing molecules of one "handedness" (chirality).

§ Ch 8 — Man-Made Electromagnetic Fields ▾

Edison (Pearl Street, 1882), Tesla's AC system, Hertz, Marconi. Growth of 5–10% a year since World War II. Satellites, military radar satellites passing overhead hourly, CB radios and cellular telephones. "There is no place on Earth that is free from this electromagnetic contamination."
History of microwave effects:
Hosmer 1928; diathermy; the Navy's 1942 and 1945 radar-operator studies.
Cataracts: Northwestern's negative study versus Richardson's latent non-heating cataracts. Military-funded studies were "designed to show" heating as the cause.
Aurell & Tengroth (retina); Birge (retinal chemistry, then classified); McLaughlin at Hughes (1953); Heller & Teixeira-Pinto (chromosomes).
The first heat-based safety standard (10 mW/cm²); the Guy study ("The $5 Million Experiment That Went Wrong"); the second heat-based standard (ANSI 1982).
Microwave genetic effects: the FDA mouse study; Nelson & Holmes (48 malformed infants among 69,277 newborns; 16 had no family history); Down syndrome and radar fathers (Sigler, Cohen); Vernon, NJ.
Microwaves and brain tumors: Lin's re-analysis of the Navy data; Spitz & Cole. U.S. brain-tumor incidence 1940–77 rose from 3.80 to 5.80 per 100,000 in whites and from 2.15 to 3.85 in blacks.
Power lines (ELF):
A 60-Hz wave is about 3,000 miles long, which is why it was declared harmless.
The SANGUINE antenna at Clam Lake, Wisconsin; the 1973 committee; the Navy's denial.
The New York PSC hearings on lines from the James Bay project; the moratorium.
Becker's three-generation rat study: more infant deaths, lower birth weight.
Perry (suicide); Wertheimer (3 mG); the New York project (Savitz, 20%); the PSC's 100 mG level.
Winters/Phillips (1600%); Speers (13×); Brown & Chattopadhyay's literature review.
Salzinger, Sulzman, Wolpaw; the Lancet 1987 serotonin–suicide review.
Battelle's minipigs: the first exposed batch died in an epidemic, and Becker says the researchers "failed to see the significance" (stressed animals get sick).
Developmental defects: Delgado and Leal; Project Henhouse (5 of 6 labs).
Genetic effects: Nordström (switchyard fathers); Nordenson (chromosome damage); Goodman.
The spectrum between: Adey's 16 Hz modulation; the body demodulates signals; Morton in Portland (FM and leukemia); Anderson & Henderson in Honolulu.
"The Hazards Are Real": Becker's 1963 review found 44 papers; by 1990 more than 1,000 a year. The seven-item list of effects; Epstein's cancer figures; fetal exposure; inherited brain-tumor tendency; possible mutation of microbes.

§ Ch 9 — ELF and the Mind/Brain Problem ▾

Consciousness and free will. Friedman & Becker's reaction-time experiments: modulated fields at 0.1–0.2 Hz had an effect, DC up to 15 gauss did not.
Becker's 1962–63 warning that astronauts beyond about 250,000 miles would be cut off from Earth's field. James Hamer (Northrop); Norbert Wiener and the 10 Hz anxiety experiment; Beischer's zero-field chamber.
Delgado: pleasure centers, the bull, Physical Control of the Mind (1969), whose epigraph quotes a subject: "your electricity is stronger than my will." H.J. Campbell's sensory-input pleasure theory.
ELF magnetic fields alone changing behavior in monkeys (reported in Omni, February 1985).
The "hard-wired" brain model cannot explain these fast effects. Standing under a 60-Hz power line produces nothing visible; the only sensations are "hearing the hum of the line" and static on the skin.
1–10 Hz added to a DC current deepens unconsciousness. The analog/digital interface as a possible "home of the mind." Mind-control implications.

§ Ch 10 — Linking Up Inner and Outer Fields: Mechanisms of Action ▾

The 1987 New England Journal of Medicine editorial on "waiting for the bodies to fall" before acting. Becker says the evidence is "as conclusive as the data relating cigarette smoking and lung cancer." He criticizes engineers who model the body as "a water-filled copper sphere."
Ionizing versus non-ionizing radiation; the 27-MHz heating divide; the antenna theory and kT (the body's normal thermal energy). Nobody fully knows how microwave ovens heat food (Jearl Walker).
Non-heating effects: Bawin & Adey's calcium release (1976). Jafary-Asl found yeast grew twice as fast under magnetic resonance.
Cyclotron resonance (Blackman, Liboff), with diagrams; the lithium-resonance rat experiment. Achkasova: bacterial growth tracks solar magnetic-sector boundaries.
Biological resonance as MRI in reverse. Hypotheses:
Healers diagnose by resonance, so they should work best on magnetically quiet days.
ESP is disrupted by magnetic storms (Persinger, Adams, Haraldsson, Krippner, 1986).
Magnetic fields and cell division: David Cohen's magnetic field from hair follicles; Liboff's faster DNA synthesis; Poenie on calcium at anaphase (the stage when chromosomes separate); Faraday's magnetic classes of material.
Kimball's yeast (1938). Becker's 1978 horizontal-versus-vertical DC field experiment: chromosome breaks, rings and fragments, after which the cancer cells died.

§ Ch 11 — The New Plagues ▾

Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: Rea's Dallas Environmental Health Center.
Case "Mary M.": a new computer model brought headache, nausea, dizziness, fatigue, blurred vision and a facial rash. She then reacted to her TV, stereo and telephone, to sunlight and to smells.
She recovered in the countryside, relapsed in the city, and moved abroad.
Common triggers Becker lists: TVs, computers, stereos, fluorescent lights, telephones, heaters, power lines, security systems, and new computerized cars.
Severe cases: confusion, depression, memory loss, sleep problems, convulsions.
Chronic fatigue syndrome: recognized in 1982. In Straus's NIH trial, acyclovir did no better than placebo, but mood improvement tracked clinical improvement. Overlap with hypersensitivity; Silicon Valley (Cone).
AIDS: Overbaugh turned a feline leukemia virus into an immunodeficiency virus through mutation. Lyle: T-cells weakened by 60 Hz. Becker calls for study of energy-medicine techniques that boost immunity.
Autism: first described in 1943. Courchesne found cerebellum defects in 14 of 18 autistic patients. Hansson found delayed nerve damage 2–4 months after brief heating-level microwave exposure, and cerebellum changes in newborn animals from 50 Hz; Ernest Albert found the same. Only 1–2% of autistic people become fully independent.
Fragile X: Reiss found the same cerebellum defect. Newborn exposure in hospital nurseries and intensive-care units; phototherapy's effect on the pineal gland and calcium (Hakanson & Bergstrom); the newborn brain's "plasticity" makes it vulnerable.
SIDS: Sturner's melatonin figures; O'Leary's radar cluster.
Changes in existing diseases:
Alzheimer's: Katzman, St George-Hyslop, Koslov's chimpanzee.
Parkinson's: Calne found up to 50% more cases before age 50.
Melanoma: Greene at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) reported +80% from 1973 to 1980. Lawrence Livermore staff had 3–4 times the expected rate (Reynolds & Austin), with workers exposed to steady magnetic fields of up to 1400 gauss all day.
Mental disease: Regier at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) found about 20% of the population with disorders, and twice the rate under age 45. Eisenberg on adolescent suicide. Åsberg on serotonin and suicide. Becker proposes a second, externally caused kind of depression.
"Where Do We Go from Here?": expand epidemiology to include fields; integrate energy medicine; distrust the NCI power-line study because of its scientists' courtroom testimony; the public must act.

§ Ch 12 — The Risk and the Benefit: What You Can Do ▾

The James Bay project and the Cree. Risk/benefit thinking: it is illogical to fight a power line while sleeping under an electric blanket every night. There is "no place to hide."
Dose rate: electric razors, electric blankets (Wertheimer: more miscarriages), safety razors.
Ambient fields: typical urban, suburban and rural levels; how to measure; aluminum siding does not shield; the 1 mG recommendation.
Personal actions, device by device: TVs (fields in all directions and through walls; the Mikolajczyk rat study); personal computers and VDTs (TEMPEST footnote; DeMatteo's Terminal Shock; Tribukait's mouse malformations; the Kaiser study; IRPA's denial; schools); fluorescent lights (John Ott's classroom observations); electric clocks; hair dryers (hairdressers); electric heaters, ceiling heating cables and stoves; microwave ovens.
Personal radio transmitters: CB radios, cordless phones, cellular telephones, security systems, radio-controlled toys. "The antennas of most CB radios and cordless telephones are only an inch or two away from the side of the user's head." Power limits exist "to prevent interference... not to protect the user." "The same field is present in your brain when you press the 'transmit' button." There are no brain-tumor studies; Samuel Milham found more leukemia among amateur radio operators.
Nothing on headphones, earbuds, hearing loss or tinnitus. The book predates them. The only hearing references are the hum under a power line (Ch 9) and the military's testing of "auditory effects" of pulsed microwaves (Appendix).
Measuring fields yourself (Edward Long's AM-radio method); ambient fields from TV, FM and AM towers; EPA's roughly 200 "hot spots"; microwave relay dishes and their side lobes; satellite-TV receiving dishes versus uplink dishes.
Long-term RF/microwave solution: Becker opposes setting a federal standard before the data exist, because it "would convey a false sense of security." Engineering fixes: lower transmitter power, repeaters, direct satellite broadcast.
Long-term power solution:
The 3 mG action level.
Utilities overstate demand: Marlay (DOE) found 1983 energy use below 1973 despite growth; Lovins on efficiency; the Union of Concerned Scientists reported a 52% reserve margin in 1985.
Replace large central plants on 765-kV lines with dispersed generation, including water, wind and solar; solar panels become competitive at 15% efficiency.
Industry risk/benefit analysis versus citizen action: counting "Nobel Prize winners on each side"; expert testimony slanted toward the funder; Becker's proposal that citizens receive equal funding for their own experts; organizing through the press and the ballot box. "The only persons who can make the final decision... are those persons who would be at risk."

§ Epilogue ▾

The new paradigm is scientific, not mystical. Becker says the mechanistic idea "has done almost irreparable harm to medicine" and fostered a profit-driven web of doctors, manufacturers and regulators. He calls military establishments the main force suppressing public knowledge, and says an informed public is the only defense.

§ Appendix — The Hidden Hand on the Switch: Military Uses of the Electromagnetic Spectrum ▾

C³I as a "military organism" with a nervous system of radio and microwaves; Vietnam as the first all-electronic war.
The Tri-Services Program (Rome Air Development Center); 10 mW/cm² adopted on calculation alone.
"The Conspiracy": the tactics listed in Key Idea 15. The official position moved from total denial, to "unimportant and transient" effects, to "more study needed," with that study run by the Defense Department or industry.
GWEN (Ground-Wave Emergency Network): 150–175 kHz, about 300 towers 300–500 ft tall spaced 200–250 miles apart, covering the whole population, intended for nuclear-war communication. Becker worries it could in principle be tuned for cyclotron resonance to local field strengths. Electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Electromagnetic weapons: non-nuclear EMP; high-power pulsed microwave (HPM), 1.2–35 GHz at up to 1000 MW. A Walter Reed Army Institute of Research report says microwaves at 1–5 GHz "penetrate all organ systems." Its test program (begun 1986) includes "prompt stimulation through auditory effects." A 1982 Air Force review lists ELF uses for "crowd control" and "antipersonnel techniques."

§ Glossary, Resources, Index ▾

Definitions (ELF, VLF, RF, microwave, cyclotron-related terms, etc.). A per-chapter reference list (key papers, Microwave News, Steneck's The Microwave Debate, Marino & Ray's The Electric Wilderness). Late-1980s suppliers of field meters: Integrity Electronics, Monitor Industries, Narda, Holaday.

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Practical Takeaways

What to actually do with this

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Aim for no more than about 1 mG of continuous 60-Hz magnetic fieldwhere you live and sleep. He treats 3 mG as the level linked to childhood cancer; applying the usual tenfold safety factor would give 0.3 mG.

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Measure the ambient fieldwith all devices in the house off and the meter about 5 ft from anything. His typical readings: urban often above 3 mG, suburban 1–3 mG, rural below 1 mG. Aluminum siding does not shield.

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If the house averages around 10 mG because of an existing transmission line, his honest advice is to moveLawsuits against existing lines are "costly, prolonged, and fruitless." Organized opposition to a proposed line can succeed.

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Use the dose-rate rule: field strength × distance × hoursBrief, strong exposures (razor, hair dryer) matter less than weaker exposures that last for hours close to the body (blanket, bedside clock, computer screen).

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Test a device yourself with a cheap AM radioTune it between stations at full volume and move away from the device; where the buzz disappears is roughly 1 mG. Rotate the radio for the loudest reading. This works for devices that give off radio frequencies (TV, computer, stereo), not for plain 60-Hz devices (stove, hair dryer).

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Before buying any field-emitting device, ask "Do I really need this?" and "How long will I be exposed to the field it produces?"

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Cordless phones, CB radios, cellular phones and walkie-talkies:the antenna is 1–2 inches from your head, and the field is "present in your brain" while transmitting. Use them only when necessary, for the shortest time possible.

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Electric blankets(50–100 mG, held against the body for hours): use ordinary blankets, or preheat the bed and then unplug the blanket; switching it off is not enough, because many still give off an electric field while plugged in. This matters especially in pregnancy: Wertheimer found more miscarriages among women who used them.

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Electric razors(200–400 mG half an inch from the blade, if plugged into the wall): the brief use is "probably safe," but a safety razor removes even the theoretical risk. He advises against electric razors for men with pigmented facial moles, because of melanoma risk.

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Hair dryers(1200 W model: 50 mG at 6 inches, 10 mG at 18 inches): acceptable for occasional home use. He sees a possible hazard for hairdressers who aim them at the same part of the body all day.

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Bedside plug-in electric clocks(5–10 mG at 2 feet, for 8 hours a night): switch to battery clocks.

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Computer screens (CRT monitors):use a detachable keyboard and put the computer, screen and disk drives at least 30 inches from the keyboard. That gives about 1 mG at the head; wear reading glasses if needed. He advises that a pregnant operator be taken off computer work until delivery. In offices, space machines and rows so nobody sits in a neighbor's field. In schools, keep daily computer time short and avoid pre-1983 donated machines. (Kaiser 1988: more than 20 hours a week at a terminal went with about twice the miscarriage rate of similar non-users; the book also quotes the team's "40 percent increased incidence.")

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Televisions:the field comes from the whole set, in all directions, and through walls. For a 13-inch set, sit at least 42 inches away for 1 mG, and farther for bigger screens. Never put an infant's or child's bed against the wall behind a TV.

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Fluorescent lights:a 10 W tube gives 6 mG at 2 inches and 1 mG at a foot, at least 20 times a 60 W incandescent bulb. Beware circular fluorescent desk and floor lamps near the head, and banks of ceiling tubes over desks. He thinks the energy savings do not justify the risk.

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Electric heaters:a baseboard heater drops to 1 mG at about 3 feet, so keep cribs away. Plug-in portable heaters are worse because they are used closer to the body. Ceiling heating cables fill the whole room with about 10 mG; Wertheimer found more miscarriages in such homes. An electric stove gives 50 mG at 18 inches above a large burner, but exposure is brief.

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Microwave ovens:the permitted leakage is up to 1 mW/cm². Have a qualified serviceman check the oven every year. Do not use it with a damaged door gasket until it is repaired. Do not stand in front of it while it runs, and choose where you put it with care.

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Broadcast towers:he would want to be about half a mile from high-power TV/FM towers unless a hill is in between, and sees a "real risk" within about 100 ft, especially for children. Towers cluster on hilltops and tall buildings into "hot spots" (EPA identified about 200). AM stations sit in valleys, often close to houses and schools.

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Microwave relay dishesare not "pencil beams": side lobes spread radiation over 180°. Add up all the sources at your location. He considers more than 0.1 mW/cm² in total likely hazardous for a home. Satellite-TV receiving dishes are passive and safe; large transmitting (uplink) dishes are not.

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Get an MRI to answer a specific diagnostic question, not as a general screening test

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TENS unitsonly for chronic pain that nothing else has relieved, and never on the head, neck or spinal cord. Do not use home-made brain stimulators ("wire-heading") or strong magnets or coils on the head.

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Electrical bone-growth stimulators and PEMF devicescan promote the growth of any undetected cancer in the current's path. Weigh the risk against the benefit, and prefer the lowest effective dose.

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Electrical muscle stimulatorssold for weight loss and body shaping: the FDA warned against them, and they should not be used in pregnancy, cancer, epilepsy or heart disease.

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Acupuncture:confirm the diagnosis and the conventional options first. Then choose a traditional acupuncturist, and avoid practitioners who rely only on electronic point-finders or electrical stimulation.

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Healers and "energy" practitioners:avoid anyone who claims mystical forces, chakras, an "ethereal body," or to "free your body energies."

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Serious or life-threatening illness:get full disclosure of all options, conventional and alternative, then decide for yourself. Becker supports hypnosis, visualization and biofeedback early, not as a last resort after treatment has worn down the body's defenses. He advises taking as much control of treatment as possible, since control reduces stress, and warns patients to beware of doctors' fixed "time left" predictions.

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Minor injuries (Becker's clinical experience):

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He reports useful results with moderately high-dose vitamin C in chronic-fatigue patients. This is anecdotal; he says no valid trial had been done.

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Organize with neighbors against proposed lines or towersKeep the story in the news and use the ballot box. Insist that the people who bear the risk make the risk/benefit decision. Treat industry-paid experts and "risk/benefit" statistics skeptically.

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Cross Currents: The Promise of Electromedicine, the Perils of Electropollution

Overview

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