The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation Of Life

This book is more history than current practice or understandings. Dr. Becker’s curiosity of salamander regeneration in the 1960’s opened the field of human regeneration of damaged bones and limbs. He was not heralded for his experiments and fought the medical establishment for decades to use electric currents to heal human bones. He was allowed to use his techniques to repair bones so damaged beyond normal pins and casting. His electrical stimulation is used only on the most severely damaged limbs.The book describes in much detail the laboratory experiments with salamanders and rats that developed the regeneration techniques.I admired Dr Becker’s spirit to pursue his dream against overwhelming obstacles, no funding, no peer support with little scientific recognition. Only decades of effort yielded success and recognition he deserved and got.The book is easy reading with little jargon or trade words. The diagrams make explicit the experiments discussed. Last chapters (pg 227-326)in the book wonder off into odd subjects like physic phenomenon, ELF fields effects on the body. The first 226 pages was enough for me.

Paradigm shifting research.It got me thinking on how humans may be more capable of self healing than previously thought.This book features a lot of medical jargon, but as the author mentioned in the beginning, do not get too worked up trying to understand all the medical/science related concepts. There is a lot to gain from just getting through the book!

Among other, the book is exceptional good concerning the explanation, with many detailed drawings, about the return of missing bones for salamanders and frogs. And it was fantastic interesting in the book to read about how 2 patients with destroyed and rather missing bones were cured by the use of electricity.Personally, I suffer from osteoporosis, and have read many books about bones, but rather unexpected, in this book I learned more about bones.Among other I like to read history, and historically the book is god when going in detail by looking at discoverers, and forgotten pre-discoverers. And how, for many persons by logical thinking, like Ignaz Semmelweis, who told to was hands, then by being prior to the orthodox unions, was punished.Besides it’s interesting to read about their research concerning acupuncture. I have tried it many times, and it worked. But I found that for me it actually hid the case. During months I in the skin on the right-side upper leg suddenly had it like hundreds of needle stings, sometimes resulting in jumping out of the bed to stand up. I thought that it was caused by cut over nerves, and pain in the right arm, when I started getting acupuncture, and the needle stings disappeared! But then by coincidence I was scanned, and it turned out that I suffered from osteoporosis, which had resulted in the stings. But acupuncture is fantastic in helping many unsolvable problems, instead of by using bad drugs. But it looks like that in some cases the result only last 2 – 3 months.In the start of the book we read about faith, magical healing and shamans. And where as a result of faith, we by research always see some of the persons, who actually did not get the real pill, also were cured. And we read about testing the Hungarian Oskar Estebany, who first by an accident discovered how horses he groomed faster recovered from illnesses. But on these sides Rasputin ought to be mentioned. Especially he is known for how he stopped the bleeding for the Russian Tsars son, who suffered from bleeding, one time even by telephone. As a remark, he tried to stop Russia going into the First World war.

Taming Heavenly FireWilson L.Thompson, Ph.D.Independence Day fireworks pale in comparison to thunderstorms that regularly rip our skies. Since Benjamin Franklin’s daring kite experiment with lightening, Americans have sought to tame electricity. More recently, Dr. Robert Becker reviews some twenty years of pioneering medical research that drives his electrotherapy in The Body Electric (William Morrow, NY, 1985). Readers learn of research-backed efforts to stimulate bone healing with low-level electric current. Still, advanced surgical skills must be augmented by the body’s healing response. The Body Electric is indexed, well illustrated and has a helpful, technical glossary.Much of Becker’s research addresses regeneration of limbs in salamanders. But, Dr. Becker is concerned, as an orthopedic surgeon, with regenerative growth needed to repair patients’ broken bones that too often fails to take place. Since there are “electrical currents in salamander limb regeneration, it was at least plausible that similar factors controlled the mending of fractures.” (p 137).Indeed, Becker reports using silver electrodes in his experimental electrotherapy to stave off amputation for first a Vietnam vet and then a muskrat trapper. He finds that electrified silver is “especially well suited for use against several kinds of bacteria simultaneously. It kills even antibiotic-resistant strains.” (p 167). His research targets “a cure for two of an orthopedist’s worst nightmares -- nonunion [of fractures] and osteomyelitis (bone infection)” (p 168).Becker’s salamander- regeneration research opens the door for correcting our understanding of cancer. He questions the dogma that a cancer cell cannot be dediffferentated and reprogrammed back into a normal cell. Becker notes Merl Rose’s hypothesis that “regeneration’s guidance system could control cancer, too” (p 217). Further, Austrian cancer researchers have found that induced salamander tumors revert to normal skin after tail amputation. “The salamander ended up with a new tail and no cancer” (p 220).Becker also probes the impact of earth, moon, and sun’s electromagnetic fields upon human life. He finds relationship between sun’s magnetic storms and the rate of psychiatric admissions. In a sample of 28,000 patients in psychiatric state hospitals, “Significantly more persons were signed in to the psychiatric services just after magnetic disturbances than when the field was stable” (p 245).Not surprisingly, Becker is also concerned about hazardous biological effects of electropollution radiating from electromagnetic sources in our wired industrialized society. He cites research of Lester and Moore who found cancer incidence in Wichita, KS “was highest where the residents were exposed to both [airport tower] radar beams ... [with death rates] twice that of the area’s nursing homes. It was lower where only one beam penetrated but lowest where the population was fully shielded behind hills” (p 300).Nevertheless, grants have been restricted for scientific study of dangers noted above, that is needed to refute “the oft repeated claim that these are just coincidences” (p 303). Was it really a coincidence that a “1979 study of Swedish high-voltage substation workers [found] an 8-percent incidence of genetic defects” among employees’ children (p 302)? Was it happenstance that raised birth defect alarms at Sears Dallas headquarters? Among their female staff exposed to emissions from video display terminals (VTDs) in newly computerized offices, “only four of twelve pregnancies ended normally” (p 302).Becker criticizes technological medicine for over-reliance on petri dish experimentation. This fosters a fragmented reductionist understanding of the body’s neural system. Such an “approach ultimately fails in the study of living things – hence the widespread demand for an alternative, holistic medicine – for life is like no machine humans ever built” (p 230). Robert Becker is implicitly at odds with the reigning evolution paradigm in medicine and biology. “There’s no room in technological medicine for any presumed sanctity or uniqueness of life. ... no need for the patient’s own self-healing force nor any strategy for enhancing it” (p 19). He views denigrated placebo effect as “a physiological effect of mind on body, just as real as the effects of wind on a tree” (p 231).For Becker, the advanced research findings recorded in The Body Electric “presage a revolution in biology and medicine ... [in which] whatever we achieve pales before the self-healing power latent in all organisms” (p 21). But, as Thomas Kuhn tellingly observes, “a scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place.” (p 77) 1 . Accordingly, support for the failing evolution paradigm in medicine is not driven by scientific research. Rather, non-scientific matters of bureaucratized research and political correctness combine to prop up the theoretical status quo against assault of irreverent facts. In fact, a secular theorist, Carl Becker, has been emboldened to parody Psalm Eight in the Bible. “What is man that the electron should be mindful of him! Man is but a foundling in the cosmos, abandoned by the forces that created him”(p 15) 2 .Sadly, soaring medical costs, a rise in degenerative diseases, and routinization of medical care have intensified since Becker voiced his concerns (p-19). Medical care is further eroded by an abortion industry that supplies body parts and euthanasia coming online. God’s people are directed to Choose Life. We are committed to the Creation paradigm within which to expand our understanding of the body’s electrical grid. Dr. Becker’s findings are congruent with faith-induced strength that postmenopausal Sarah received to conceive Isaac (Hebrews 11:11) and the Psalmist’s observation that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (139:14). Yes, truly!1. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1962).2. Carl Becker, The Heavenly Cities of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1932).