A recent book by Arthur Firstenberg, The Invisible Rainbow, charts the history, spread and prevalence of disease in tandem with the spread of telegraph wires, radio transmission, electricity and cellphones.
Some key points:
- What we call the ‘diseases of civilization’, especially Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer, were rare before electricity and wireless transmission – not just in absolute numbers due to smaller populations, but as a proportion of the population.
- People are living longer, but are more unhealthy. With treatment, many cancers have been turned from acute and fatal into a chronic and manageable – with loss of quality of life.
- 30% of people are sensitive to changes in climate electricity.
- In bioclimatology, we know that atmospheric ions modify the cerebral production of serotonin, the neurotransmitter responsible for mood.
- The acupuncturist’s needles conduct atmospheric electricity to stimulate the meridians.
- The side effects of electrotherapy (confusion, dizziness, headaches, nausea, weakness, fatigue, heart palpitations, nosebleeds, etc.) have been documented since the 18th century.
- The diagnosis of anxiety appeared in 1866 when telegraph wires circled the globe, that 12% of people can hear weak electrical currents, said otologist Auguste Morel in 1892.
- Neurasthenia (nerve weakness), named in 1869 by neurologist George Miller Beard who collaborated with Edison in his discovery of high frequency electricity, was renamed “anxiety neurosis” by Sigmund Freud in 1895; yet the Russians have rejected this redefinition: neurasthenia, still one of the most widespread diagnoses in Asia, is due to chronic chemical and electromagnetic toxicity. It has reached epidemic proportions since electrification in the 1880s and this nervous imbalance is one of the first symptoms of the “microwave disease” discovered by the Russians in 1930.
- A cell phone, which can in particular cause tinnitus in the long run, deposits 360 joules of energy in the brain per hour of exposure, compared to 150 joules for the electric battery with which Volta caused an auditory sensation by attaching it to an ear with electrodes.
- 25% of Americans report symptoms of tinnitus, often bilaterally and without hearing loss, and occurring in young adults and children.
- Animals and plants are as sensitive as we are to EMFs and very weak electric currents alter their growth and functioning.
- The first influenza epidemics occurred in 1889 after the invention of alternating current. Yes, influenza is caused by viruses. The issue is the spread faster than person-to-person contact – incl. on ships that had had no contact with land for several months. Also that there weren’t pandemics and seasonal flu every year before 1889. It appears that it’s more like a lot of people carry the virus, with outbreaks triggered by changes in the external environment.
- Alternating current also transformed the status of diabetes, and heart disease and cancer from rare to common. Both Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell developed diabetes as adults.
