Becker Robert Otto - The body electric. Authors : Becker Robert Otto - Selden Gary.
Title : The body electric Electromagnetism and the foundation of life. Year : 1. 98. 5Link download : Becker.
I remember how it was before penicillin. I was a medical student at the end of World War II, before the drug became widely available for civilian use, and I watched the wards at New York's Bellevue Hospital fill to overflowing each winter. A veritable Byzantine city unto itself, Bellevue sprawled over four city blocks, its smelly, antiquated buildings jammed together at odd angles and interconnected by a rabbit warren of underground tunnels. In wartime New York, swollen with workers, sailors, soldiers, drunks, refugees, and their diseases from all over the world, it was perhaps the place to get an all- inclusive medical education.
Bellevue's charter decreed that, no matter how full it was, every patient who needed hospitalization had to be admitted. As a result, beds were packed together side by side, first in the aisles, then out into the corridor. A ward was closed only when it was physically impossible to get another bed out of the elevator. Most of these patients had lobar (pneumococcal) pneumonia. It didn't take long to develop; the bacteria multiplied unchecked, spilling over from the lungs into the bloodstream, and within three to five days of the first symptom the crisis came. The fever rose to 1. Fahrenheit and delirium set in.
The Body Electric / Cross Currents. The Body Electric explains in detail many experiments Becker carried out that seem to show. The Body Electric (PDF) – Dr Robert O. The Body Electric (PDF) – Dr Robert O. Becker; Exposure Guidelines; Appeals by medical doctors, scientists and. The Body Electric tells the fascinating story of our bioelectric selves. Becker, a pioneer in the filed of regeneration and its relationship to electrical. Shop The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life Books by Robert Becker. Becker; Born May 31, 1923 River. Becker mentioned in The Body Electric that this may have been because the devices as eventually used were not. Robert Becker, Gary Selden The Body Electric.
At that point we had two signs to go by: If the skin remained hot and dry, the victim would die; sweating meant the patient would pull through. Although sulfa drugs often were effective against the milder pneumonias, the outcome in severe lobar pneumonia still depended solely on the struggle between the infection and the patient's own resistance. Confident in my new medical knowledge, I was horrified to find that we were powerless to change the course of this infection in any way. It's hard for anyone who hasn't lived through the transition to realize the change that penicillin wrought. A disease with a mortality rate near 5. Americans each year, that struck rich as well as poor and young as well as old, and against which we'd had no defense, could suddenly be cured without fail in a few hours by a pinch of white powder. Most doctors who have graduated since 1.
Although penicillin's impact on medical practice was profound, its impact on the philosophy of medicine was even greater. When Alexander Fleming noticed in 1. Penicillium notatum had killed his bacterial cultures, he made the crowning discovery of scientific medicine. Bacteriology and sanitation had already vanquished the great plagues. Now penicillin and subsequent antibiotics defeated the last of the invisibly tiny predators. The drugs also completed a change in medicine that had been gathering strength since the nineteenth century.
Before that time, medicine had been an art. The masterpiece—a cure—resulted from the patient's will combined with the physician's intuition and skill in using remedies culled from millennia of observant trial and error. In the last two centuries medicine more and more has come to be a science, or more accurately the application of one science, namely biochemistry.
Becker with Paul Becker developer of EarthPulse. Robert Otto Becker, MD (1923. Becker y Gary Selden.
The Body Electric By Robert Becker.
Medical techniques have come to be tested as much against current concepts in biochemistry as against their empirical results. Techniques that don't fit such chemical concepts—even if they seem to work—have been abandoned as pseudoscientific or downright fraudulent. At the same time and as part of the same process, life itself came to be defined as a purely chemical phenomenon. Attempts to find a soul, a vital spark, a subtle something that set living matter apart from the nonliving, had failed. As our knowledge of the kaleidoscopic activity within cells grew, life came to be seen as an array of chemical reactions, fantastically complex but no different in kind from the simpler reactions performed in every high school lab. It seemed logical to assume that the ills of our chemical flesh could be cured best by the right chemical antidote, just as penicillin wiped out bacterial invaders without harming human cells. A few years later the decipherment of the DNA code seemed to give such stout evidence of life's chemical basis that the double helix became one of the most hypnotic symbols of our age.
It seemed the final proof that we'd evolved through 4 billlion years of chance molecular encounters, aided by no guiding principle but the changeless properties of the atoms themselves. The philosophical result of chemical medicine's success has been belief in the Technological Fix. Drugs became the best or only valid treatments for all ailments. Prevention, nutrition, exercise, lifestyle, the patient's physical and mental uniqueness, environmental pollutants—all were glossed over. Even today, after so many years and millions of dollars spent for negligible results, it's still assumed that the cure for cancer will be a chemical that kills malignant cells without harming healthy ones. As surgeons became more adept at repairing bodily structures or replacing them with artificial parts, the technological faith came to include the idea that a transplanted kidney, a plastic heart valve, or a stainless- steel- and- Teflon hip joint was just as good as the original—or even better, because it wouldn't wear out as fast. The idea of a bionic human was the natural outgrowth of the rapture over penicillin.
If a human is merely a chemical machine, then the ultimate human is a robot. No one who's seen the decline of pneumonia and a thousand other infectious diseases, or has seen the eyes of a dying patient who's just been given another decade by a new heart valve, will deny the benefits of technology. But, as most advances do, this one has cost us something irreplaceable: medicine's humanity. There's no room in technological medicine for any presumed sanctity or uniqueness of life.
There's no need for the patient's own self- healing force nor any strategy for enhancing it. Treating a life as a chemical automaton means that it makes no difference whether the doctor cares about—or even knows—the patient, or whether the patient likes or trusts the doctor. Because of what medicine left behind, we now find ourselves in a real technological fix. The promise to humanity of a future of golden health and extended life has turned out to be empty. Degenerative diseases— heart attacks, arteriosclerosis, cancer, stroke, arthritis, hypertension, ulcers, and all the rest—have replaced infectious diseases as the major enemies of life and destroyers of its quality. Modern medicine's incredible cost has put it farther than ever out of reach of the poor and now threatens to sink the Western economies themselves.
Our cures too often have turned out to be double- edged swords, later producing a secondary disease; then we search desperately for another cure. And the dehumanized treatment of symptoms rather than patients has alienated many of those who can afford to pay. The result has been a sort of medical schizophrenia in which many have forsaken establishment medicine in favor of a holistic, prescient type that too often neglects technology's real advantages but at least stresses the doctor- patient relationship, preventive care, and nature's innate recuperative power. The failure of technological medicine is due, paradoxically, to its success, which at first seemed so overwhelming that it swept away all aspects of medicine as an art. No longer a compassionate healer working at the bedside and using heart and hands as well as mind, the physician has become an impersonal white- gowned ministrant who works in an office or laboratory.
Too many physicians no longer learn from their patients, only from their professors. The breakthroughs against infections convinced the profession of its own infallibility and quickly ossified its beliefs into dogma.
Life processes that were inexplicable according to current biochemistry have been either ignored or misinterpreted. In effect, scientific medicine abandoned the central rule of science—revision in light of new data. As a result, the constant widening of horizons that has kept physics so vital hasn't occurred in medicine. The mechanistic assumptions behind today's medicine are left over from the turn of the century, when science was forcing dogmatic religion to see the evidence of evolution. Some fields, such as parapsychology, have been closed out of mainstream scientific inquiry altogether.
Even the genetic technology that now commands such breathless admiration is based on principles unchallenged for decades and unconnected to a broader concept of life. Medical research, which has limited itself almost exclusively to drug therapy, might as well have been wearing blinders for the last thirty years.
It's no wonder, then, that medical biology is afflicted with a kind of tunnel vision. We know a great deal about certain processes, such as the genetic code, the function of the nervous system in vision, muscle movement, blood clotting, and respiration on both the somatic and the cellular levels. These complex but superficial processes, however, are only the tools life uses for its survival. Most biochemists and doctors aren't much closer to the . As Albert Szent- Gyorgyi, the discoverer of vitamin C, has written, .
We know little about the way every organism regulates its metabolic activity in cycles attuned to the fluctuations of earth, moon, and sun. We are ignorant about nearly every aspect of consciousness, which may be broadly defined as the self- interested integrity that lets each living thing marshal its responses to eat, thrive, reproduce, and avoid danger by patterns that range from the tropisms of single cells to instinct, choice, memory, learning, individuality, and creativity in more complex life- forms. The problem of when to . Mechanistic chemistry isn't adequate to understand these enigmas of life, and it now acts as a barrier to studying them.
The Body Electric - Cross Currents. Electromagetism and Regeneration. Dr. Becker, an orthopedic surgeon — which means he works with bone, the only part of the human body that can regenerate itself — examines the role electric currents play in making living cells. In The Body Electric, we learn of his research, working with salamanders exploring how and why these animals can grow new limbs. Why can't humans be more like salamanders? Becker discovered that at the site of a wound, there is a .
He worked with application of electric. He. thinks the answer to regeneration of limbs lies in how cells can return to. These. cells multiply and become arm or leg or blood or bone or whatever is. This kind of regeneration actually happens in young children. If a. finger is cut off just beyond the fingernail, the rest of the finger will.
The Body Electric explains in detail many. Becker carried out that seem to show that knowledgeable use of. Becker had in pursuing this line of research, which is not in favor with the mainline medical establishment. Mainstream medicine has become mainly surgery and drugs.
Electrotherapy, the use of electrical currents in healing, has surfaced in the past, but because the mechanism by which it works was not understood, it has tended to be debunked by the establishment. This kind of alternate method of treating diseases like cancer would also threaten the huge profits from the drug therapies currently in favor.
The Body Electric examines the roles of spontaneous healing, shaman healing, and faith healing. Because it is established that humans can affect the functioning of their bodies, if the mechanism involved is the body's electrical systems, we might be able to control and use this mechanism to help more people. For example, Becker describes how a patient, an average businessman who had been trained in yogic methods, could lay on a bed of nails with no pain, and when informed that a nail had penetrated his body, was able to instantly stop the bleeding through mental control.
Biofeedback of various types has been used successfully for years to help people lower blood pressure and alter heart rates. More research into the exact way these feats work could bring about new ways to maintain good health. The Dark Side of the Force.
But Becker also sees the dark side to this unseen force. Our bodies also produce. These are natural fields that work with. But the author notes that . Most indoor environments are also. Yet no one has really studied.
There is a certain amount of anecdotal evidence of adverse effects. People living near radio towers were found to have more incidence of leukemia. Studies have shown that men whose occupation exposes them to electromagnetic fields not only were at risk themselves, but so were their children, indicating genetic damage. There are other sinister effects as well. The author says satellite measurements have shown that energies from power lines are amplified high above the earth. This more active energy could be giving us more severe storms. Controlling this phenomenon could be used as a weapon.
In Cross Currents, Becker explores further the negative effects of electromagnetic fields and his findings are pretty alarming. He begins with an interesting tour of medical history and the use of electricity in healing. Becker explains that there are two opposing views of what life means, the vitalists believing in some substance that makes a thing alive, while the mechanists believe that life is just about chemical reactions — bring together the right chemicals and you have life. Gradually the vitalist idea lost out to the mechanist and Becker feels this set medical practice on the wrong road.
While he feels the vitalists were correct that life is more than a chemical reaction, he does not buy into the idea that there is a substance involved. Rather he sees the vital part of life as energy. Could it be electrical energy that makes us alive?
He calls it a remnant of the mystical . He postulates the pineal senses and works with the earth's electromagnetic field. Migrating birds also use their magnetic organ to find. Becker uses a lot of space in this book to warn us of what he feels are the.
The electric power industry claims the fields created by their generating stations are not harmful, and people generally don't worry about any harmful effects from their TV set or their electric blanket. But Becker says the industry, and the government, have failed to heed the research that shows such fields can be harmful, that even small currents have effects on living tissue. More common is the worry about use of cell phones, which are held right next to the head and emit microwaves. If Becker is right, regular use of these phones could be damaging brain cells and could lead to cancer or brain tumors. Conspiracy to Mislead the Public. Worse, Becker thinks a host of new diseases ( AIDS, SIDS, and Alzheimers, for example) and a new virulence in old diseases (Cancer, Parkinson's) could be the result of our constant exposure to electromagnetic fields.
He also thinks the government and industry have conspired to create their own cadre of . I wondered, though, as I read both books, why Becker makes no mention of Royal R. Rife and his work with frequencies as a way to kill harmful viruses (see my review of The Cancer Conspiracy). I also found a web site with articles by a former associate of Dr. Becker's who does not agree with all his conclusions.
It's difficult for the average person to sort this out, but Becker's case is convincing enough to have affected my personal choices. I've always loved electric blankets; I live in a cold climate and sometimes being really warm on a freezing cold night is just a wonderful luxury, but after reading these books I unplugged my blanket and put flannel sheets on the bed and piled on an extra (non- electric) blanket to keep warm. The most frightening aspect of the issues raised by Becker is that the military rely on electromagnetic fields for much of their work and are not likely to be honest with the public about harmful effects of their various use of electrical technology for defense and weapons systems.
They can be expected to rationalize that national security is more important than . These are particularly harmful to humans and have been shown to cause mental confusion in people exposed to them (see my review of Angels Don't Play This HAARP). And I found this interesting item in the January 2. Discover magazine.
Will The Navy's New Sonar Harm Whales? In a test of sonar equipment near the Bahamas, its use was implicated in the death of 6 whales. Three had ear damage and one had bleeding around the brain. These were with a group of 1. As a result, some restrictions have been placed on the use of the sonar equipment which uses sound waves. It shows the disregard on the part of the military to harm to living things by their technology. In a strong warning, Becker says in his Epilogue.
Without this capability, sophisticated weapons systems are useless. As a result, any attempts to acquaint the general public with the potential hazards of electromagnetic fields are viewed by such forces as inimical to state security and so are ruthlessly suppressed. Becker died in 2. Other writers have discovered this topic, but Becker's words continue to resonate. These books give you plenty to think about. Buy The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation Of Life. Cross Currents. at amazon.
See also my reviews of these books. Vibrational Medicine Richard Gerber MDOverhauling America's Healthcare Machine by Douglas A. Perednia MDThe Cancer Conspiracy by Barry Lynes. Read my personal Healthcare Rant, What's Wrong With American Health Care?