Cross Currents by Robert O. Becker Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cross Currents
Book Review: The unseen dangers around us
Summary: 5 Stars
The NASA, supposed to hire the "crème de la crème" of the scientific intelligentsia, aren't getting any further than declaring that "life is a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution". For a start, Johnjoe McFadden shows in his book Quantum Evolution: How Physics' Weirdest Theory Explains Life's Biggest Mystery (Norton Paperback) that the Darwinian evolution, guided by chance and chance only, can't be demonstrated by simulations nor experiments.
On the other hand, insisting that life is a "chemical system" is completely besides the point. Dr. Robert Becker, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, nominated twice for the Nobel Prize, discovered that curing injuries and broken bones is a process guided by electrical currents. Following those early discoveries, he went further on to find out how our bodies are able to detect that's something wrong in the first place. He found that our autonomous nervous system relies on pain impulses to trigger the curing process, and that those pain impulses run through acupuncture meridians discovered in China thousands of years ago. Dr. Becker says : "Input DC electrical signals carried the information that injury had occurred along the acupuncture meridians to the brain, where part of this group of signals reached consciousness and were perceived as pain. The remainder went to more primitive portions of the brain, where they stimulated output DC signals that caused the cells and chemical mechanisms at the site of injury to produce repair. This is a complete closed-loop, negative feedback control system..."
Dr. Becker didn't rest his case here. He continued his search for the scientific truth and considered that if our bodies produce electromagnetic fields, those will probably suffer when exposed to external electromagnetic fields. Now, the natural geomagnetic field of our planet oscillates at about 10 Hz. In the 20th century, humanity built enormous power distribution networks around the earth, and choose arbitrarily oscillations of either 50 or 60 Hz, 5 to 6 times above the natural geomagnetic field. This means, in the words of Dr. Robert Becker, that: "the entire population of the world is willy-nilly the subject of a gigantic experiment. Daily exposure of nearly everyone is a fait accompli". He calls this "electro pollution".
This isn't without consequences. Tests on animals show that electro pollution produces stress. People living close to high voltage power lines have also more chance of suffering depression. And to make things worse, human cancer cells exposed to 60 hertz electromagnetic fields for just twenty-four hours, result in a six fold increase in their growth rate. This has been confirmed in real-life situations. Dr. Marjorie Speers of the University of Texas showed that workers in electrical plants where EM fields are very strong have 13 x more chance of brain tumors than a control group. Dr. Becker says : "We are constantly exposed to cancer causing agents in our environment, ranging from carcinogenic chemicals to cosmic rays. As a result, we are always developing small cancers that are recognized by our immune systems and destroyed. Any factor that increases the growth rate of these small cancers gives them an advantage over the immune system, and as a result more people develop clinical cancers that require treatment."
Electricity producers and cell phone operators aren't very interested in this kind of scientific investigation. In this era we are living in, where science has been privatized, those studies are being blocked. However, Dr. Becker has always put the scientific truth and the interest of the general public above his personal career or salary, and therefore helped testify in several committees against new power lines and new antennas. That's how he finally got fired. Dr. Becker is a great scientist and a brave man, a rare combination in the dark ages we live in.
Book Review: Thought provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
This book, by a prominent medical researcher and practitioner, is one of the most well written and interesting of it's type. In fact, I was unable to put it down once I started reading. Initially interested in possible hazards of electropollution, and also medical uses of electric current, I learned quite a bit from Dr. Becker's book; and I found myself asking more questions, and looking for other sources. Written for the layman, this book is authoritatively referenced with all the professionalism you would expect from a man of the author's caliber. Highly recommended!Book Review: What medicine should have been
Summary: 5 Stars
and with any luck, will be in the future. Robert Becker is an M.D. and research scientist with impeccable credentials--he discovered the minute electric currents, applied to bone fractures, will heal breaks that weren't knitting (and before his treatment, amputation was the only alternature for non-unions.) As noted below, this book is illumating. The author goes a long way toward finding a scientific basis for acupuncture, homeopathy, and 'faith' healing--at the very least, they involve the electromagnetic field in and around the body. He details the opposition he has encountered through the years from the close-minded, who, through the all-too-human combination of ignorance, arrogance, blindness and politics, have hindered his work (and 'scientists' are always extolling the open-minded superiority of science over all else!) He makes no secret of his disdain for the likes of self-appointed witch-finders like James "the Amazing" Randi. In the last half of the book Becker discusses electropollution, the possible harm it can do to people, and how to reduce or elimate your exposure. An eye-opening book that will be enjoyed by those interested in the failures of modern medicine (and 'failure' is indeed the right word, since the medicine profession has had to admit that doctors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S.)