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Who owns your mind, your brain or just plain you?

Citizens' Initiative Omega | 20.08.2003 16:49 | Anti-militarism | Globalisation | Health | London | World

Electrosensibility and electromagnetic hypersensitivity - Risk from electric current greater than assumed - Electric current perception study challenges electric safety limits - Cell Phones And Cancer - EPIC Accountability Campaign - THANK CANADA FOR PROTECTING RIGHT WHALES - HEAT IS ON IN ALASKA - Human Rights Chief Discusses Prisoners - Support Proper Protections for Airline Passengers

Electrosensibility and electromagnetic hypersensitivity
-------------------------------------------------------
Norbert Leitgeb *, Jörg Schroettner
Department of Clinical Engineering, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

email: Norbert Leitgeb ( LEITGEB@BMT.TU-GRAZ.AC.AT)

*Correspondence to Norbert Leitgeb, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Inffeldgasse 16a, A-8010 Graz, Austria.

Abstract

Electromagnetic sensibility, the ability to perceive electric and electromagnetic exposure, and electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), developing health symptoms due to exposure to environmental electromagnetic fields, need to be distinguished. Increased electrosensibility is a necessary, however, not a sufficient condition for electromagnetic hypersensitivity. At an extended sample of the general population of 708 adults, including 349 men and 359 women aged between 17 and 60 years, electrosensibility was investigated and characterized by perception threshold and its standard deviation.

By analyzing the probability distributions of the perception threshold of electric 50 Hz currents, evidence could be found for the existence of a subgroup of people with significantly increased electrosensibility (hypersensibility) who as a group could be differentiated from the general population.

The presented data show that the variation of the electrosensibility among the general population is significantly larger than has yet been estimated by nonionizing radiation protection bodies, but much smaller than claimed by hypersensitivity self-aid groups. These quantitative results should contribute to a less emotional discussion of this problem. The investigation method presented, is capable of exclusion diagnostics for persons suffering from the hypersensitivity syndrome.

Bioelectromagnetics 24:387-394, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Received: 22 November 2001; Accepted: 2 December 2002

 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/104552494/START

and

Risk from electric current greater than assumed
------------------------------------------------
Leitgeb N, Schroettner J.

Abteilung fuer Krankenhaustechnik Institut fuer Biomedizinische, Technik
Technische Universitaet Graz Inffeldgasse 16a A-8010 Graz.

Despite its importance for the assessment of the effects of electric current and for technical safety considerations, not only does the electric perception threshold remain uncertain, but essential questions are still unanswered and contradictions unresolved. Via measurements at 908 persons randomly selected from the general population, including 708 adults (349 men, 359 women aged between 16 and 60 years), the problems of extrapolation to the general population and adequate statistical representation have now been overcome for the first time.

The results show that existing assumptions about electric current perception need to be drastically corrected. It has been shown that the assumed electric perception threshold has been too high by a factor of 10, and that women are substantially more sensitive than men. This means that present gender-specific differences in electrosensitivity need revising.

On the basis of the evidence of significant underestimation of the reaction variability in the general population, present assumptions on safety limits and safety factors urgently need to be reviewed. By no means can a relaxation of safety regulations be justified.

Biomed Tech (Berl). 2001 Nov;46(11):307-10.

 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=PubMed

and

J Med Eng Technol. 2002 Jul-Aug;26(4):168-72.

Electric current perception study challenges electric safety limits
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Leitgeb N, Schroettner J.
Department of Clinical Engineering, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse 16a, A-8010 Graz, Austria.

Although a key parameter for safety regulations, the electric current perception threshold is not sufficiently established yet. Present knowledge suffers from a lack of women's data, small numbers of data on investigation of men and investigated samples non-representative for the general population. With measurement at 708 adults aged between 16 and 60 years (349 men and 359 women) these deficiencies could be overcome. The results are important. They show that the perception variability among the general population is 100-fold higher than estimated so far and that the currently used estimate of the threshold is more than 10-fold too high. Besides this, it could be shown that there are an over-proportion of more sensitive women compared with men indicating the need for revision of the present assumptions on gender-specific differences in electrosensibility. The results show that the existing assumptions on safety limits and remaining safety factors need serious review. In any case, relaxation of safety requirements is not justified.

Publication Types: Clinical Trial
Randomized Controlled Trial

PMID: 12396332 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 http://tinyurl.com/kh4q

Informant: Reinhard Rueckemann

--------

Cell Phones And Cancer
----------------------

There has been anecdotal evidence for several years associating use of cellular phones, and other sources of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave region of the spectrum, with brain cancers and other cancers.

From police officers who used radar guns to heavy users of cellular phones who have contracted cancer, there has been mounting evidence that exposure to this kind of electromagnetic radiation may not be as safe as advertised. A team of scientists funded by Telstra to investigate claimed links between cellular phones and cancer has turned up probably the most significant finding of an adverse health effects yet. When presented to 'Science' magazine for publication the study was rejected on the grounds that publication "would cause a panic". Three other prominent magazines including 'Nature' also later rejected the report, suggesting that they would not handle such important conclusions without the research being further confirmed.

The study looked at 200 mice, half exposed and half not, to pulsed digital phone radiation. The work was conducted at the Royal Adelaide Hospital by Dr Michael Repacholi, Professor Tony Basten, Dr Alan Harris and statistician Val Gebski, and it revealed a highly-significant doubling of cancer rates in the exposed group. The mice were subject to GSM-type pulsed microwaves at a power-density roughly equal to a cell-phone transmitting for two half-hour periods each day; this was pulsed transmission as from a handset, not the steady transmission of a cell-phone tower.

A significant increase in B-cell lymphomas was evident early in the experiment, but the incidence continued to rise over the 18 months. The implications of the B-cell (rather than the normal T-cell) lymphomas here, is that B-cell effects are implicated in roughly 85 percent of all cancers. The experiment was conducted as a blind trial, using absolutely identical equipment and conditions for two groups of 100 mice. The only difference between handling the two groups was that the power to one antenna was never switched on. Over the 18 months, the exposed mice had 2.4-times the tumour rate of the unexposed - but this was later corrected downwards to a more confident 2-times claim to remove other possible influences.

According to Dr Alan Harris from the Walter and Eliza Institute in Melbourne: "This is important because up until this, there was no convincing evidence that radio fields (in contrast to X- and Gamma-rays, ultraviolet and atomic radiation) can directly cause the changes in genes responsible for cancer development." This experiment also raises questions about the potential for cell-phone handset radiation to effect people nearby (passive exposures) than just the user him/herself. Increased tumours began to be recorded after about 9 months. The total exposure period is very much less than can be expected from human use over a lifetime, so while one of the scientists downplayed the importance, saying, "humans are not rodents" another pointed out that "DNA is DNA". There has been evidence accumulating over many years that the long-term effects of radio-frequency exposures may have serious consequences for a certain percent of the population, but this has been ignored by the industry, by the media, and by the government.

Dr Henry Lai and Dr Singh at Washington State University reported enormous increases in double-strand DNA breaks in rat-brain tissue following cell-phone type microwave exposures of only two hours. The media, the government, and of course the cell phone industry all ignored these findings. The media is essentially silent on this issue now, because they have been bought and paid for by the BIG money behind the cell phone industry. Every attempt has been made to hose down the significance of these reports, and others like them. However, the facts are clear, that people have an increased risk of cancer from the use of digital mobile phones, and there is a deliberate attempt by the industry, media, and government to keep people in the dark about this fact.

 http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/PHONES.html

Informant: Francesco

--------

Who owns your mind, your brain or just plain you?
-------------------------------------------------
Hi Klaus:

As the fast protest for Human Rights and Choice in Mental health continues in Pasadena, CA, (www.mindfreedom.org; archived C.I.O. 31/7/03), it seems apt to call attention to the illusionary nature of the self-autonomy average people think they have in matters concerning their brains and minds.

Take shopping, for instance. Who would have thought that neuroscientists of all people are now guiding market researchers on how to covertly manipulate our responses to various products and get us to buy and buy and buy! In a brief article in THE SUNDAY TIMES ("Admen seek 'buy button' in our brains," August 17, 2003, page 2) Robert Winnett writes:

"Market researchers have come up with a new brainwave: looking into the minds of consumers to see which of our grey cells are most vulnerable to the hard sell. Camelot, the lottery firm, and Ford, the motor manufacturer, are among those who have hired teams of neuroscientists to carry out the analysis. They attach electrode-studded caps to their human guinea pigs and measure their responses as they watch advertisements on a television screen. The ultimate goal is to identify a 'buy button' in the brain which can be targeted and triggered by future commercials.
...
Researchers, using multi-million pound brain scanners, have established that a section of the brain just behind the top of the skull could hold the key to higher profits. This area of the brain is linked to excitement. Brands which are able to stimulate activity in this area are more likely to make a sale."

Winnett concludes by observing that "A trip to the local supermarket or car showroom could soon become a psychological challenge with shoppers fighting subconscious urges that are manipulated by the marketeers."

Eleanor White in a postscript to her 94 page study entitled "The State of Unclassified and Commercial Technology Capable of Some Electronic Mind Control effects" (2001; www.raven1.net/uncom.htm) refers to an article in NATURE MAGAZINE, January 22, 1998 which cautions against threats to Human Rights posed by neuroscience.

In this Jean-Pierre Changeux, then chairman of the French national bioethics committee and a neuroscientist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, observed "that understanding the working of the human brain is likely to become one of the most ambitous and rich disciplines of the future." He cautioned that neuroscience may be a risky business for humanity because "advances in cerebral imaging make the scope for invasion of privacy immense." He also predicted that the equipment could become more easily available and used from a distance and this could lead to "invasion of personal liberty, control of behaviour and brainwashing." How prescient were his words five years ago in the light of neuroscientists current collaborations with market researchers to get us to buy ad nauseum.

And how does the person who has been brain-tweeked/manipulated to buy and buy and buy end up? A shopaholic, of course. And would you believe it? This condition has now also become a lucrative market with a smug little corner reserved in it for more neuroscientists!

Last week I read in an Irish broadsheet that shopaholism--compulsive shopping disorder--will be included as a valid disorder in the next diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Indeed this disorder according to Standford University researchers engaged in finding suitable medication for its sufferers has reached epidemic levels. Most lucrative epidemic levels for scientific researchers, neuroscientists, psychiatrists and other mental health specialists but sublimely lucrative of all for pharmaceutical companies!

In his online article "Selling the Cure for Shopaholism" (www.motherjones.com/news_wire/shopaholic.html) Chris Berdik writes: "It seems that the pharmaceutical companies' quest to cure the effects of excessive marketing may itself be little more than a cleverly-disguised marketing scheme. The Standford study, like many of its kind, is being funded by a pharmaceutical company. The undisclosed drug is an FDA-approved antidepressant, specifically an SSRI--a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor."

Berdix notes that of course profit is the big motivator for pharmaceutical interest in shopaholism. The anonymous pharmaceutical company which is sponsoring the Standford study "presumably hopes to carve a unique slice out of the mental-disorder pie in order to market it together with a ready-made treatment. This is not at all a new strategy for the world's mammoth pharmaceutical firms, as David Healy, a professor at the University of Wales College of Medicine, explains in his book 'The Anti-Depressant Era.' Healy's book describes a process by which companies seek to 'educate' both patients and clinicians about a new disorder, to sell the disorder in preparation for selling its cure. Funding clinical trials is a crucial part of that process."

Clever marketing of "shopaholism" to ensure good sales for its pharmaceutical "cure" is also essential, Berik adds. If the Stanford research for a suitable shopaholics pill proves fruitful the "chances are we'll hear a lot more about compulsive shopping disorder. The extent of this 'hidden epidemic' will be revealed through well-publicized studies, clinical papers, and journal articles. The disorder may even make the pages of the next diagnostic manual. And shopaholics everywhere will be encouraged to make just one more purchase: a little pill to make it all better."

The date of Berdix's article is May 23, 2000. And like the neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, quoted above, how prescient were Berdix's words too: just a mere three years later "shopaholism" is making it into the next edition of the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association! And, as usual, some pharmaceutical companies and their esteemed research employees can laugh all the way to the bank.

Just to end on a cheerful note I'll mention two of the many electronic devices that covertly can play havoc with your brain. One of these costs just under a hundred dollars. It's available for purchase "for non-government sales for the first time" from a Law Enforcement and Military Equipment" website. It's described online as follows: "It provides serious, substantial capability to disrupt and disperse gatherings. Speeches, demonstrations, crowd dynamics--this device has been used to 'influence' more of these in recent years than you might suspect. Or, if planted near the podium, you might just have a case of a speaker with diminished clarity and concentration, or perhaps is even unable to complete his presentation 'due to illness.' This 'illness' might even be contagious, as some of the VIPs up there with him also seemed to have caught the same bug . . . Use with extreme discretion."

Its poorer cousin comes at the bargain price of 39 dollars. And its accompanying blurb reads: "It's a small electronic device which can really turn one's stomach. It generates a unique combination of ultra-high frequency soundwaves which soon leads most in its vicinity to quesiness. It can cause hedaches, intese irritation, sweating, imbalance, nausea, or even vomiting. Hiding this device in your inconsiderate neighbour's house might put an end to their late-night parties. The abusive bureaucrat's office, the executive lunchroom . . . the possibilities are endless for that small portion of inventive payback. The unique soundwave characteristics make directional source determination difficult." And, of course, being ever the moralist, the blurb hack advises: "use with extreme discretion."

Of course these two sonic-harassment items barely make it into low-tech when it comes to mind-control technology!

Would like to know what diagnoses doctors could come up with for victims of the above sonic weapons should they seek medical help.

Best, Imelda, Cork, Ireland

--------

From San Diego
--------------------
You all talk about cell phones try looking up, there’s the key to the EMF and EMR. Its not the cell phones that just a cover first let me state I am not mental although, the sick people in charge would like that, loving dad loved by a lot of people, in the past 2 years and it all started with the ear ring which is not in your ears, but in your head. And it is the same freq as your electromagnetic fields that you have in your brain, EEG most of the time its fake tinnitus. Try looking up mind control and look at some sites and see if any of you find similarities, Cheryl Welshs listing of mind control effects, or just mind control.

I live with these effects and it goes on. In their eyes anybody will do, even children will work. Most of the time it will not be noticed, like all the sudden, someone has cancer or a brain anurizium. These are the same effects that can be caused, if it fits right in, especially in children, because they don’t know there body yet, not as much as a 39yr old, which, if your are in the rang of 35-45, and things just don’t add up.

My 14 year old daughter is also part of this. I captured a tape, it sees from thin air with a parabolic mic, that has voices, but its not the voices, its the effect. My daughters friends wanted to hear it, so I let them, 2 of them got headache and their temporal sounds heard lasted about 2 min.

Is there anyone who can help? Night after night, day in day out.

nabbish65

answer:

My ordeal with this technology that is being used on us began in the Summer of 2000. We're targeted by satellite I believe, and I also believe mobile phones are in some way used to draw the signal.

But for this to happen I believe we must have something on us (implant) to draw the signal. I underwent prolonged dental surgery with deep root fillings which an x-ray show a small triangular shape at the top of one. I believe condoned experimentation is one reason for what we suffer. Gaining knowledge at the price of our suffering which is nothing less than torture.

It's hard I know and painful. You could try wearing a baseball cap lined with thick aluminium foil see if that helps. But as this targeting from my own experience is at different times of the day and night it's difficult. I also believe that electricity grid lines and the way these are being set up can affect us too.

There seem to be a number of things involving electricity one way and another along with radio frequency waves that are being used.

All the best... and prayers for you and your family.

M. A. Norman

--------

RE: Microwave hearing affect
-------------------------------------
I've researched microwave hearing (which can be caused by pulsed RF in about the 300 MHz to 10 GHz range), and there is no chance that the Frey phenomenon could be used to transmit normal speech or music. Thus, the writer is in error above, at the beginning of his message. I have a paper in prep on this, but it is not published yet, so I can't reference it.

Microwave hearing seems to involve direct stimulation of the inner ear, and not sound either propagating in air or in the head.

Microwave hearing might be used to transmit very poor-quality speech, but it could not be mistaken for normal speech and probably the individual words would not be distinguishable. It would sound like someone trying to talk through a kazoo.

However, RF at longer wavelengths has been reported to cause auditory effects, including clear speech, because of being received by house wiring and converted, by unlucky chance, to sound by attached appliances. These appliances may include electric irons and other non communications gear. If RF is responsible, I would guess that this is the cause. There were complaints a few years ago from people living in Rome, that the powerful transmitters at the Vatican could be heard by such means.

Three other possibilities are:

Receipt of RF by poorly installed metallic tooth fillings, which may act as semiconductors (diodes).

Malicious use of ultrasound beaming of audible sound. This could only occur in the open air, with no obstruction (even a window pane would stop it).

Imagination. Some people, normal as well as psychotic, can image words quite vividly. However, the airline message above would not support this idea.

John Michael Williams

--------

EPIC Accountability Campaign
---------------------------------------
August Congressional Action Days

We need your help. The situation in Iraq is getting worse. Several months after President Bush declared combat operations in Iraq over, troops and civilians are dying with unsettling frequency. Chaos and insecurity still rule the streets. Water and electricity have not been restored. The perilous post-war situation, increasing death toll and rising cost of conflict implore us to question the administration’s rush to war. The world deserves answers.

Join us over the next several weeks to hold the Bush administration accountable.

EPIC has partnered with United for Peace and Justice (UfPJ) for Congressional Action Days. During the next few weeks, your members of Congress are in their home districts to meet with constituents like you. Schedule a meeting with them. The power to hold the administration accountable is yours.

Go to our Accountability Campaign webpage for instructions on how to schedule a meeting, important resources and more information on what you can do.


 http://www.epic-usa.org/programs/accountability.php

--------

THANK CANADA FOR PROTECTING RIGHT WHALES

Here's your chance to recognize and appreciate good environmental stewardship by thanking the Canadian government for changing the commerical shipping lanes in the Bay of Fundy, where most of the world's remaining North Atlantic right whales spend the summer.

The move marks the first time shipping lanes have been altered to protect an endangered species.

The change was made after a 4-year effort by World Wildlife Fund and other conservation groups to convince decision makers that moving the lanes would reduce the risk of ship-whale collisions by 80 percent and would not compromise ship safety.

The lane-change effort was bolstered when Irving Oil, which owns the largest tanker fleet using the bay, threw its support behind the move.

 http://takeaction.worldwildlife.org/action.asp?step=2&item=2719

--------

HEAT IS ON IN ALASKA
 http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/6566401.htm

Human Rights Chief Discusses Prisoners
 http://www.photius.com/rogue_nations/prisoner_rights_030314_ap.html

Informant: George Paxinos

--------

Support Proper Protections for Airline Passengers
 http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/Privacy.cfm?ID=13332&c=39

Citizens' Initiative Omega
- Homepage: http://www.grn.es/electropolucio/omega270.htm

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