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Belmont's Ethical Malpractice

Posted by Jay Sinn on December 3, 2010 at 7:16pm
ResearchZachary M. Schrag, 11/30/2010Belmont's Ethical Malpractice(Research) Permanent link“The language of the biomedical model lends itself to ethical malpractice." With these words, Albert Reiss condemned the 1978 Belmont Report. The report, he complained in a 1979 essay, reduced "people" to "subjects" and required procedures – such as risk-benefit analysis – that were inapplicable to research that did not resemble medical experiments.Reiss was not a random critic. Rather, he was a prominent sociologist who himself had participated in the 1976 conference at Belmont House that would give the report its name, and who had been hired as a consultant by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, the report's creator. But throughout the discussions that led to the report, the members of that commission ignored objections put forth by Reiss and other social scientists. The result was a report that is a notable achievement in the exploration of the ethical challenges raised by medical research, but which serves as a poor guide to research in the social sciences and humanities.There is nothing grossly wrong with the Belmont Report's "basic ethical principles": respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. But, as bioethicist Albert Jonsen – one of the authors of the report – told me in a 2007 interview in San Francisco those terms are "fairly vapid . . . [They] hardly rise above common sense notions." Rather, the problem lies in the meatier "Applications" section, which demands informed consent, an assessment of risk and benefits, and fair outcomes in the selection of research subjects. Drawn from the traditions of medical research, these terms are often inappropriate or simply inapplicable to much research in other areas. Yet the Belmont Report does not explicitly limit the application of those terms to medical and psychological experimentation.The reasons for this mismatch lies in the history of the National Commission, which I discuss in my book, Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009. Congress established the commission with eleven members, five of them researchers. Of these five, three were physicians, two were psychologists, but none were scholars in the social sciences and humanities. As a result, the commissioners did not themselves explore the ethics of those fields, and they were slow to heed the advice of their own expert consultants who challenged the concepts that would eventually appear as the Belmont applications.In his report to the commission, Reiss warned that many of the assumptions of the "bio-medical model" did not apply to sociological work. For one thing, that model assumed that investigators were in full control, something much truer in a medical clinic than in a telephone survey, where the subject could always hang up. Second, it assumed that the investigator began with a fixed list of procedures, hardly the case in much of social science. Third, it assumed that all harms were to be minimized, not the case in "muckraking sociology or social criticism."Another consultant, law professor Charles Fried, insisted at the Belmont conference that "freedom of inquiry" should be a “very important, basic underlying principle” in any report. Other social scientists, not employed by the commission, offered their own warnings. For example, sociologist Carl Klockars described the writing of one of his books and noted, "I am not aware of any . . . weighing of risks and benefits ever occurring."The commissioners and their staff ignored such arguments throughout their monthly meetings in 1976 and 1977, while the Belmont Report was being drafted. Only in 1978, in the last months of the commission’s four-year existence, did they voice their own doubts about the universal applicability of their work. At the February 1978 meeting, Jonsen commented on a near-final draft: "There is nothing in here that tells us why we are about to make a great big step which we have made from the beginning. Namely, why ought the thing that we are calling research be subject to what we call review?"At the next month’s meeting, Chairman Kenneth Ryan, a physician, noted that the commission's September 1977 report on research involving children had been "worked out – largely in a biomedical model, if you will, biomedical and behavioral model," and now federal officials were unsure if it was supposed to apply to education research. Robert Cooke, another physician, confessed his own uncertainty: "I think that some things are applicable, and I suspect some are not." In the April meeting, Ryan lamented that "The Commission, over its long time, has not really had an opportunity to spend adequate time, on the social science research problem."Donald Seldin, the third physician-commissioner, argued at the March meeting that the Belmont Report should be a "document which deals with handling specific human beings from a medical point of view." He was supported at the same meeting by staffer Stephen Toulmin, who argued that "the basic idea that we are concerned with [is] the protection of individual research subjects, who, after all, are the people who are exposed to the experimentation," and by staffer Bradford Gray, who warned against forcing sociologists to "respect" noxious groups like the Ku Klux Klan. But by the time these debates took place – in the spring of 1978 – the commission was closing up shop, its staff departing. No one had the time or energy to rewrite the report.The result was a report that is maddeningly imprecise in its intended scope. True, the report offers a definition of research: "an activity designed to test an [sic] hypothesis, permit conclusions to be drawn, and thereby to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge (expressed, for example, in theories, principles, and statements of relationships)." But that definition appears in a section devoted to allowing physicians to offer innovative therapies without running into regulatory requirements. It does not distinguish scholarly research from journalism (as Gray repeatedly begged the commission to do). Nor does it distinguish behavioral science from social experimentation; a hastily drafted footnote to the report concedes that the commissioners were stumped by that one.Indeed, the definition of research in the Belmont Report does not even match the definition in the commission's report on institutional review boards, which does not mention the testing of hypotheses. This latter version became the definition used by today's regulations.In the absence of an adequate definition, one must find the true meaning of the Belmont Report in the medical language it uses. It mentions Nazi biomedical experiments, "medical or behavioral practice," the Hippocratic Oath, childhood diseases, poor ward patients, the Tuskegee syphilis study, the withdrawal of health services, "populations dependent on public health care," and vaccination as areas of concern. It cites work in medical research ethics: a statement by Claude Bernard, the Nuremberg Code of 1947, and the Helsinki Declaration of 1964. It also cites the ethical code of the American Psychological Association. By contrast, the report makes no mention of the research or ethical standards of fields outside of the therapeutic areas of medicine and psychology, or any examples of ethical missteps in social science.In a 2007 interview with me in his Georgetown University office, Tom Beauchamp, a commission staffer and one of the key authors of the Belmont Report, conceded that the commission had failed to explore the ethics of research outside of medicine and psychology. "You cannot do good work in [professional ethics] unless you have a pretty good understanding of the area that you're concerned with,” he said. “For example, if you're into the ethics of genetics, if you don't understand genetics, you can't do it. And so on. Did we do that [good work] on the commission when it came to the social sciences? Absolutely not."Albert Jonsen concurred, telling me in San Francisco, "We really should have made much clearer distinctions between the various activities called research." He explained that "the principles of the medical model are beneficence – be of benefit and do no harm. I simply don't think that that applies to either the intent or the function of most people doing research."It is not surprising that the National Commission paid so little attention to such fields as sociology, anthropology, linguistics, political science, history, and journalism. Aside from a few brief remarks, Congress had not taken testimony about or expressed interest in these disciplines, nor had it required the commission to investigate them. It is surprising, and disheartening, that the commission did not acknowledge its lack of expertise in the problems of social science research and decline to make recommendations not grounded in careful investigation. Sound ethical advice requires some humility.Zachary M. Schrag is an associate professor in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University and author of Ethical Imperialism: Institutional Review Boards and the Social Sciences, 1965-2009.http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethicsforum/Post.aspx?id=4999&blogid=140Because sharing is caring.
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“Radiation Research” and The Cult of Negative Results

Posted by Jay Sinn on December 2, 2010 at 12:09pm
Radiation Research is a scientific journal whose primary focus is on ionizing radiation, with only a minority of papers devoted to the non-ionizing side of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its June issue, however, features five papers, all of which claim to show that EMFs of one type or another have no biological effects.To account for this departure from the norm, Sara Rockwell, the editor-in chief, Bruce Kimler, an associate editor, and John Moulder, a senior editor, have offered an apologia, under the title, "Publishing Negative Results." (In this context, "negative results" refers to studies that show no effects.) The editors want you to believe that they are offering this bumper crop of negative papers as a public service. They are on a mission, they say, to allay "widespread concern" over power lines and cell phones by giving a voice to those who, despite great effort, could not substantiate previously reported findings of "deleterious health effects."The editorial tacitly concedes that Radiation Research only rarely publishes papers showing any type of EMF effects by failing to cite a single example from its own pages. At the same time, it fails to mention that other journals, for instance Mutation Research and Bioelectromagnetics, have had no trouble finding high-quality papers with "positive" results —that is, those that do show biological effects.Many of the negative EMF studies that have been published in Radiation Research were paid for by industry and the U.S. Air Force, both of which seek to control EMF research (often by stopping it) and to show that microwaves are essentially harmless except at high exposure levels. Promoting no-effect studies has long been part of their strategy to keep a lid on the microwave-health controversy.Wireless companies like Motorola have fostered the spurious view that negative studies cancel out positive ones. Their strategy is this: First, seed the journals with no-effect papers that run counter to previously published work which does show biological changes. Then argue: "If we couldn't replicate the effect, it cannot be real." The assumption here is that industry science is superior to everyone else's. They make no effort to resolve inconsistent results.Another important fact goes undisclosed in the editorial: One of its authors, John Moulder, a professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, has a lucrative consulting practice on EMFs and health. Over the years, Moulder has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars disputing the existence of adverse EMF health effects, even those accepted by most other members of the EMF community.To explore the potential biases at work, Microwave News investigated a subset of health studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. We selected papers on microwave-induced genotoxicity; that is, microwave effects on DNA, the genetic blueprint inside every living cell. With the generous help of Henry Lai of the University of Washington, Seattle, we identified 85 radiofrequency (RF)/microwave-genotox papers published since 1990. Of these, 43 found some type of biological effect and 42 did not. (You can download a complete list of references and abstracts.)Lai is an interested party to this controversy. Together with N.P. Singh, Lai made RF/microwave genotoxicity a major concern when, in the mid-1990's, they were the first to report that microwaves could lead to DNA single- and double-strand breaks. As you can see in Table 1, Lai is the lead author of four of the 43 "effect" or positive studies.[Click on table to download a pdf]There is just about an even split between effect and no-effect papers. But look what happens when we superimpose the funding source for each study (where available): Those sponsored by industry are in red and those sponsored by the U.S. Air Force are in purple in Table 2. (Papers with no declared funding source are in green.)A clear —and disconcerting— pattern emerges: 32 of the 35 studies that were paid for by the mobile phone industry and the U.S. Air Force show no effect. They make up more than 75% of all the negative studies. You don't need to be a statistician to infer that money, more often than not, secures the desired scientific result.One of the three industry studies that did find an effect nearly failed to make it into print. It was carried out by Jerry Phillips under a Motorola contract. Motorola opposed Phillips' decision to write up his positive findings and, according to Phillips, the company tried to stop him. Phillips resisted and succeeded, but it was the last piece of original EMF research he ever completed.A similar loss of balance occurs when you look at only the papers published in Radiation Research. These are colored orange in Table 3.Over the last 16 years, only one positive paper on microwave genotoxicity has appeared in Radiation Research. During the same time, the journal has published 21 negative genotox papers. (Australia's Pam Sykes, the lead author of the lone positive paper, was denied money for a follow-up and soon moved on to other research areas. )When Tables 2 and 3 are combined, you can see that 80% of the negative papers (17 out of 21) published in Radiation Research were paid for by either industry or the U.S. Air Force. These are in red in Table 4.And of these 17, most are associated with a single lab: Joe Roti Roti's at Washington University in St. Louis. Roti Roti's principal funding source is Motorola. The 10 Roti Roti–Motorola papers on RF/microwave genotoxicity are in pink in Table 5.In addition, many other Roti Roti papers on other types of microwave effects, also paid for by Motorola, have been published in Radiation Research. With respect to microwave radiation, it almost appears as if Radiation Research is a house organ of the Motorola Corporation.Who Picks the Peers for Peer Review?Is it possible that all these imbalances can be explained by the fact that only sloppy studies show positive effects and that the superior peer review process at Radiation Research weeds out the chaff leaving only the well-controlled and well-executed negative studies fit for publication? The three editors suggest that this is so: "Negative studies are held to considerably higher standards than positive studies," they write.To refute this line of argument one needs only to look at the now-infamous "dead-mice-walking" study by Tim Kuchel and Tammy Utteridge published in Radiation Research in 2002. That paper appears to have been rushed into print in order to nullify an earlier study, which found that microwaves could promote cancer in mice. (Motorola supplied the exposure equipment for the new experiment.)http://www.microwavenews.com/news/backissues/n-d01issue.pdf As we commented when Kuchel's paper first appeared, it signaled a "massive failure of peer review" (see MWN, S/O02 p.19). There were many errors in the paper, but the most obvious and egregious one allowed two figures to appear on the same page in open contradiction to each other. Mice that were shown to have died in one figure were still being counted, picked up, and weighed in the other. Even Q. Balzano, a former senior Motorola executive, told us at the time that, "The paper is chock full of contradictions." Whatever its shortcomings, the Kuchel-Utteridge study continues to be touted by Motorola and Moulder as a key indicator that wireless radiation is harmless.Peer review is only as good as the reviewers. A flawed paper can be published, if the supervising editor selects sympathetic reviewers who will be likely to overlook them. This is what appears to have been going on at Radiation Research.John Moulder: Industry ConsultantWe suspect that much of Radiation Research's bias against EMF effects can be attributed to John Moulder, who came on as an editor in 1991 and was promoted to senior editor in 2000. For this whole time —during which the microwave–genotox controversy became more and more contentious— Moulder has been a consultant to the power, electronics and communications industries, as well as for anyone, it seems, who disputes the existence of EMF-induced adverse health effects. For years he posted his skeptical views on the health impacts of cell phones, base stations and power lines on his Web site, and these serve as lures for potential like-minded clients.Last year, for example, Moulder testified against the family of Richard Beissinger, a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago who died of a brain tumor in 2003. His widow and five children were seeking worker's compensation for what they believed was an EMF-induced cancer. Beissinger taught and worked in rooms near electrical transformers. His magnetic field exposures are uncertain, but very high, ranging from 10 mG (1 µT) to 820 mG, and at times probably more than 1 G.At a hearing held in 2005, Moulder stated under oath that, in his opinion, "power-frequency magnetic fields do not cause any kind of brain cancer under any exposure, intensity and duration" [our emphasis].Moulder was no doubt aware that the California EMF program had previously concluded that magnetic fields are a likely cause of adult brain cancer. And that many years earlier, a team coordinated by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) had reported that, taken together, epidemiological studies of workers exposed to magnetic fields pointed to a statistically significant elevated risk of brain cancer.While electric utility industry operatives may have conceded that there may well be a link between long-term exposure to magnetic fields and brain cancer, that did not deter Moulder. He made $10,000-$12,000 trying to deprive the Beissinger family of a small pension. On May 23, at about the same time that the "negative effects" editorial appeared in Radiation Research, an arbitrator rejected Moulder's argument and ruled in favor of Beissinger's family. The decision is under appeal.In the course of his testimony, Moulder acknowledged that he had earned approximately $300,000 in litigation-related fees, on power-frequency EMFs. This probably represents a fraction of Moulder's earnings, since litigation services represents only one part of his consulting practice. For instance, in 2001 Moulder testified at a hearing on behalf of the Minnesota Power Co. and Wisconsin Public Service Corp., which had applied to build a new transmission line. In that testimony, Moulder revealed that he would be paid about $35,000 for this case alone.Nor is Moulder's consulting limited to power-frequency EMFs. In 1999, he prepared a report for the U.K. Federation of Electronic Industry (now called Intellect), which was submitted to the Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones, better known as the Stewart panel. And the following year he wrote a report for the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, which was submitted to the Australian Senate. He has not disclosed how much money he was paid for these opinions, but in March 2001, Moulder told an Australian senate committee that, on average, 8-10% of his income was from the telecommunications industry alone.Those Reporting Positive Results AttackedBack in 2001 after Moulder had moved up to senior editor, he recruited Vijayalaxmi of the University of Texas in San Antonio to join the Radiation Research editorial board. A couple of years earlier they, together with some colleagues from Washington University and the U.S. Air Force, had published a review paper that dismissed any possible connection between cell phones and cancer. This too was published in Radiation Research.As shown in Table 2, Vijayalaxmi is the lead author on seven of the microwave-genotox papers. All were funded by the U.S. Air Force, Motorola or a combination of the two.Last year, while she was still an associate editor at Radiation Research (she stepped down soon afterwards), Vijayalaxmi together with Sheila Johnston, a long-time consultant to the mobile phone industry based in London, launched an aggressive assault against Lai and Singh and their work on genotoxicity. In an e-mail accompanying their analysis of Lai–Singh's research, Johnston wrote: "Lai's science has failed CONCLUSIVELY" [her emphasis]. The Vijayalaxmi–Johnston rant was so amateurishly written that it was largely ignored. What's harder to forget is the virulence of their attack. "They are not scientific statements," Singh told us at the time, "they are personal attacks. They do not want to solve problems, they want to eliminate us."James McNamee of Health Canada in Ottawa is the new EMF specialist on the editorial board of Radiation Research. He has published three negative papers on microwave genotoxicity in Radiation Research. McNamee also has written a review paper with Moulder on cell phones and cancer.Earlier this year, Vijayalaxmi, McNamee and Maria Scarfi, a researcher based in Naples, Italy, wrote an angry letter to Mutation Research warning of the questionable nature of two positive genotox papers —one by Elisabeth Diem (Diem 05) of the University of Vienna and another by Sabine Ivancsits from the same lab on power-frequency EMFs. Vijayalaxmi, McNamee and Scarfi are authors on 14 of the 42 negative genotox papers, as well as one positive one. Ten of their 14 negative papers were published in Radiation Research, as shown in Table 6.The microwave-genotoxicity controversy is a mean and nasty business, made meaner and nastier by the unrelenting attacks on those who dare claim that such effects do exist. But with John Moulder at Radiation Research, the playing field is hardly level, especially when the journal does not disclose its senior editor's ties to industries whose fortunes depend on assuring the public that microwaves have no effect whatever on DNA.At a time when potential conflicts of interest among authors of medical and scientific papers are front page news (see, for instance, the July 11, 2006 Wall Street Journal on a paper published by the Journal of the American Medical Association), and more and more journals are requiring full disclosure of ties to industry, it is surprising —no, astonishing— that a leading radiation journal allows such obvious conflicts to remain unacknowledged. An editorial in the Sunday New York Times on July 23, said that the "best hope" for the credibility of medical journals is for them "to try much harder to find authors free of conflicts." Surely the situation is even worse when a journal's editor, who serves as the guardian charged with ensuring that contributors' potential conflicts are fully disclosed, is mired in his or her own conflicts.Why Don't the Rules Limiting Industry Influence Apply to EMFs?What is it about EMF–health research that allows people to ignore the rules that govern other areas of biomedicine and public health? Why, for instance, did the World Health Organization turn a blind eye when told that Mike Repacholi was taking money from the wireless industry to pay for his EMF program in violation of the WHO rules? Was it really enough that Repacholi had engineered a scheme to launder the funds in Australia before they were forwarded to Geneva?Similarly, Sara Rockwell of Yale medical school, the editor-in-chief of Radiation Research, and the officers of the Radiation Research Society, its publishers, must be aware of the conflicts posed by Moulder's extensive consulting for industry. Yet Rockwell had no qualms about signing Moulder's self-serving editorial, and none of them has felt the need to disclose Moulder's long-standing ties to industry.Radiation Research has become a repository for negative papers and thus an important part of the industry and military strategy to neutralize those who dare to challenge the no-effects dogma. Their work had been made much easier with John Moulder on the inside to ease industry papers into print.Download a pdf of this commentary© Copyright Microwave News 2006-2010. All Rights Reserved.source:http://www.microwavenews.com/RR.htm
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New Study Proves EMF Affects Living Things, Discovers Electro-bonsai Effect

Posted by Jay Sinn on December 1, 2010 at 6:33pm
"There has been much discussion at TreeHugger about the danger of Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) generated by cellphones, routers, power lines and microwave ovens. Some people think it is a serious issue; WIFI is banned at Lakehead University, and in Scandinavia there are cellphone-free beaches for people with electro-hypersensitivity. Clarins even makes a spray to protect your skin from it. Other people feel that it is not a problem.Treehugger Labs wanted to determine this once and for all, and has spent the past year studying the issue. We wanted to pick a life form that would not move around a lot so that we could ensure that there were no other factors, and we are, of course, against animal testing, so we chose trees as our subject. We searched for trees that grew near power lines to see what the effect of the EMF was on the form of the tree.We were surprised to find that maple trees growing up under power lines were profoundly influenced by the lines. They tended to develop a bifurcated "Y" formation as the limbs seemed to grow away from the lines themselves. We call this effect "electrobonsai" because it looks like it might have been shaped by humans.tree3.jpgIn tree after tree, we saw the electrobonsai effect. The limbs clearly are trying to move away from the power lines. They appear healthy and have been around for a long time, but definitely try to keep a safe distance away from the EMF.treebig2.jpgThe wires are rated at 22 KV, 60 Cycle. Most of the city was rewired from 4Kv over the last few years so it appears that there is no relationship between the voltage and the electrobonsai effect.treecontrol.jpgAs you can see from our control group, normal maple trees do not take the bifurcated Y shape but branch randomly.The team concluded that there is no question, tree limbs are distorted by the power lines, and the only thing that could be emanating from the lines is the EMF. Sometimes we have seen that where they could not grow away from the lines, limbs are sheared off as if by a chainsaw, and then exude a brown protective coating to seal the wound. Who knew that plants could develop such sophisticated mechanisms for dealing with EMF.Judging from the average distance of limbs from power lines,(2.4 metres or 8 feet) we have concluded that it is probably prudent to keep transformers, routers, cell phones and hair dryers eight feet from your head at all times."by Lloyd Alterhttp://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/new_study_prove.phpOne of the many tangilble things you can measure concerning EMF.Source: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/new_study_prove.phpAnd remember you too can measure EMF by tuning a portable transister radio to AM 530 to pick up on EMF. Or better yet start doing some study of this on the internet. Don't forget to learn about electrosensitivty.
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Alaska Supreme Court Upholds Award for RF Radiation Injury Below Thermal Exposure Level

Posted by Jay Sinn on November 30, 2010 at 12:28pm
"Posted by LBAShareThe Alaska Supreme Court (Court) upheld the decision of the Alaska Workers’ Compensation Board (Board) awarding an AT&T equipment installer 100% disability as a result of his workplace electromagnetic field exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation at levels slightly above the FCC RF limit. The award was based on the psychological and cognitive effects of RF radiation and over-exposure. This decision is significant because the FCC RF limit is designed to keep people from being heated and ignores evidence of other adverse biological effects at much lower levels.The RF radiation exposure level in question was well below the FCC’s recognized level of “thermal” harm. The FCC contends that there are no scientifically established harmful health effects below the thermal threshold. The Board decision agrees with the medical experts who found adverse health effects from this RF radiation exposure which occurred above the FCC safety limit but below the thermal threshold. This decision could have a very significant financial impact on the wireless industry going forward.The Alaska Supreme Court found that:Because substantial evidence supports the board’s findings and because the board’s procedural decisions did not deprive AT&T of due process, we affirm the superior court’s judgment that affirmed the board’s ruling.This precedent-setting case opens the door for any wireless industry or maintenance worker who has been exposed to antenna arrays on the job site that have not been shut off to file disability claims should they suffer similar cognitive and neurological symptoms. US wireless service providers are not required to document compliance with FCC RF safety limits by on-site radiation measurements. Millions of workers occupy worksites on a daily basis where operating antenna arrays are camouflaged and where no workplace RF safety program is carried out.BACKGROUNDAT&T worker John Orchitt suffered a slightly elevated RF exposure while installing new computer equipment at a job site where he believed that the amplifier had been turned off before he and his co-worker entered the job site. When the co-worker’s safety meter registered its highest level of RF exposure the two workers realized that there was a problem. They discovered that the engineer who had provided the specifications for their job had misidentified which amplifier needed to be turned off. Orchitt was exposed to a six gigahertz signal operating at approximately 90 watts.Immediately after the accident, Orchitt experienced headaches and eye pain. Later he reported complaints of “mental slowing.” His neurologist ordered an MRI examination which showed “tiny areas of hypersensitivity in the frontal lobes.” The neurologist referred Orchitt to Dr. Marvin Ziskin, professor of radiology and medical physics at Temple University. Dr. Ziskin is also a member of the IEEE”S International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety (ICES). Using information that Orchitt provided, Dr. Ziskin concluded that Orchitt had been overexposed to RF radiation.Orchitt sought treatment at the Brain Injury Association of Alaska. His care provider there issued an opinion stating that he was suffering from a cognitive disorder due to his RF radiation exposure. She provided him with ongoing rehabilitation therapy to address his continuing complaints of mental slowing and mood changes. She also referred him to Dr. Daniel Amen, psychiatrist, who performed a SPECT scan with measures blood flow in the brain to identify functional changes. Dr. Amen concluded that Orchitt had some decreased brain activity as well as depression, and given the history, attributed these neurological impairments to Orchitt’s RF radiation exposure.Numerous subsequent examinations were carried out by the panel of doctors retained by AT&T and also by independent experts retained by the Board, including computer modeling of Orchitt’s RF exposure by Dr. Arthur Guy, professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of Washington. Guy has done extensive work in the area of the biological effects of RF radiation. Guy’s comprehensive calculations of the “worst case scenario” produced an exposure that was approximately 9.5% over the FCC’s exposure limits, but “not enough to cause biological effects.”At the conclusion of the hearing process the Board’s decision and order found that Orchitt had been exposed to excessive amounts of RF radiation. The Board decided that Orchitt’s mental deficits and depression were the result of the overexposure. He was awarded temporary total disability and medical benefits.AT&T appealed to the superior court which affirmed the Board’s decision, finding that the decision was supported by substantial evidence and that AT&T’s due process rights had not been violated.AT&T appealed the superior court’s decision to the Alaska Supreme Court. Along with arguing that it was not accorded its due process, AT&T argued that none of the experts upon which the Board relied had sufficient expertise in RF radiation exposure to be able to connect Orchitt’s overexposure to RF radiation.The Alaska Supreme Court decision cites previous case law and states: The board has the sole power to determine witness credibility and assign weight to medical testimony. When medical experts disagree about the cause of an employee’s injury, we have held that as a general rule “it is undeniably the province of the Board and not this court to decide who to believe and who to distrust.’The Court concluded that: The board did not abuse its discretion in its procedural rulings; it therefore did not deny AT&T due process. Because substantial evidence exists in the record to support the board’s findings, we AFFIRM the superior court judgment that affirmed the board’s rulings.*Source: EMR Policy Institute press release (August 20, 2007)NOTE: The EMR Policy Institute has been and advocate for recognition of non-thermal effects of RF radiation, effects not generally accepted by regulatory agencies or “mainstream” RF safety scientists and engineers. This article is provided for information, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the LBA Group companies. "http://rfblog.lbagroup.com/alaska-supreme-court-upholds-award-for-rf-radiation-injury-below-thermal-exposure-level/If you could establish that EMF causes harm IE radiation sickness in the long term, anyone who would contribute to your EMF, RF exposure could be held to at least account for this. This could include people directly involved with say ...faulty wiring.
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EMF (electromagnetic fields) can be introduced into a building though faulty wiring

Posted by Jay Sinn on November 29, 2010 at 5:50am
"Building wiring can be, and often is, responsible for high electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in the home, school and workplace. High levels of EMFs can aggravate, or even cause, a number of chronic health problems.""llnesses such as cancer and depression, are associated with living in electromagnetic fields above 0.2 microtesla (magnetic field) and ME has also been linked with high electric fields (measured in volts per metre)."http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/elf/wiring.aspThe Russians call this "microwave sickness". The faulty wiring part, I think, is crossing the hot wire with a neutral. This can induce many of the health problems many TIs experience. This could be a large part of the "crazy making" part of the program. What it really is is an induced electromagnetic sensitivty.The way to test for heavy elctromagnetic fields is to use a transistor radio set at AM 530 with the volume set high, this will give you an audio representation of the potential EMF found in your living space.
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