Robert O. Becker's concern with PEMF safety

[swim38]

Hi @Bob, I’ve been following your work for a little while and my M1 just arrived last week! I came to be interested in this space through Robert O. Becker’s books The Body Electric and Cross Currents. In those books, Becker expresses a fair bit of skepticism towards PEMF. I think his main criticism is in the magnitude of voltage. ICES is lower voltage than traditional PEMF, but I’m not familiar enough to really have a context for scale of what he’s worried about.

Bob, are you familiar with Becker’s critiques, and do you think he would have the same thing to say about ICES?

Thanks for your time. And I’ve attached the relevant passage starting on the bottom of pg 151 of Cross Currents (though he also speaks to PEMF in The Body Electric).

[Bob]

Yes. I am very familiar with this. In my opinion, this is just marketing. He is trying to justify an approach to profit from a very old 1950-1960 technology by discrediting modern competing approaches that he knows are much safer, more efficient, and more effective than the technology he is committed to. It is all about money.

People can believe him if they want to, but I describe what we know, what we don’t know, how we know what we know, I do not claim to know anything that is unknown, and it is a demonstrable fact that this works without any of the safety issues that he raises. This is just another example of leading people around by the nose through unjustified uncertainty and fear. I have written and posted about these things extensively, and I cannot spend full-time to correct specific marketing untruths and errors.

Perspective: It takes about 5 seconds and costs nothing to tell a lie or make a distortion about biology. It takes about a decade and several million dollars and the better part of a career to find a single truth about biology.

All I can do is tell the truth, keep moving forward, and people need to weigh the evidence and decide for themselves.

[swim38]

Thank you for sharing your perspective; I’m glad to hear that you are very aware of the concern and in your experience it is a non-issue. As I’ve enjoyed his books, it would be disappointing if Becker were trying to tear down technology which he viewed as competing, but I guess everyone has his flaws.

[Bob]

I could always be wrong (and I frequently am wrong), but in the case of these competing technologies, a lot of money is at stake, and many people are in desperate need of help and are financially vulnerable, so there are many bad incentives.

And, keep in mind, I have my biases too. I try to keep them in check, but I am only human.

[Relgie]

I very much appreciate this discussion; thank you both. Thank you Swim38 for taking the time to post the three pages! Based only on those pages I have a critique—the author presents a lot of evidence as scientific, yet, I see no citations for the evidence. This is a big flaw in any presentation of scientific evidence because the reader should be able to go directly to the primary source and review the rigor of the evidence presented. As it is the pages are a secondary source for studies that we cannot evaluate for authenticity. Unfortunately, that makes it hearsay at best.

[Bob]

I agree entirely.

It is only his opinion based, in my scientific opinion, on inference and extension from very old studies published by others in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. As a scientist who specialized in the areas in question, I disagree with his extrapolations and his scientific conclusions and assertions. Perhaps he is correct and I am wrong. But I think it is accurate to characterize his work as speculative, financially-biased, and without a firm basis in data or accepted scientific fact.

But anyone can write a book of opinions.

[swim38]

Interesting discussion, thanks again!

I will ask, just for the sake of argument, I wonder if there is more agreement than we are acknowledging? My understanding is that ICES uses lower power than most PEMF, and even within ICES, it seems like Bob is always stressing that less is more and that it’s unnecessary to use a very high power settings. Maybe (and I’m just giving Becker a bit of the benefit of the doubt because I’ve liked him) he would see ICES as a good middle ground, something that uses external power more tactfully.

[Bob]

That may be true. One thing I can tell you though is that what people believe privately is often quite different from what they express in their public writings or marketing materials. For example, at least two of my competitors in the PEMF arena actually use ICES-PEMF in preference to their own products. Both are excellent repeat customers, but in their marketing materials they make a strong case for the use of their large and expensive systems rather than our portable ICES-PEMF systems. I think they know that they are not doing what is best for their customers, but they know the truth about what works best for them, and I understand their biases even if I do not agree with them.

[flaurel]

I am new here, and I can’t find anything on the website about how you know its safe. I am leery of medical practices (like pharmaceuticals) that find a great idea and the related consequences are ignored. I don’t think this is like that, but then I wonder why we should assume the cells aren’t harmed in any way. Or has this been addressed? Doing something to the way my cells work is a big step. For instance, and this is just a wild example, does DNA or RNA get changed in some subtle way? I mean, who knows? Although I’m looking at this because the way my cells work, they do need some help.

[Bob]

It is not clear to me exactly what you are referring to, so I will try to give some helpful information.

If you want to know for sure that something is “safe”, it turns out that absolutely nothing is absolutely safe. Every object in your environment, even non-objects, such as ideas and opinions, can be very dangerous. It depends on how people use them. Clean, pure drinking water can be lethal if you drink too much at one time (water toxicity).

You can apply the absolute strictest standards for safety testing, and still end up with many things that are definitely not safe. Just look at the many drugs and devices that have been pulled from the market after FDA approval. You can visit fda.gov to see many pages pf dangerous drugs and devices that had been extensively tested and approved previously as “safe”.

So, safety is largely a question of human behavior, not an inherent property of any object.

A better approach is to ask if something is dangerous. Things can be inherently dangerous. This is not so much a result of human behavior. It is inherent to the device itself. When we ask this question: “Is PEMF inherently dangerous”, we find that there are thousands of publications, many clinical reports, millions of people who use PEMF, spanning more than 6 decades, but a startling total lack of any reports of harm being done by PEMF. That does not prove that it is “safe”, that just suggests strongly that it is not inherently dangerous. There do not seem to be any known significant risks with PEMF.

However, the bottom line is this:
All medical devices, procedures, and drugs have risks, some more than others.
If you are not comfortable with those risks, DO NOT USE THEM. That is your decision.

[jody]

I know this is late to the party, but I was very happy when I read “The Body Electric” (in 1985) and the “placebo effect” became concretized (as an artifact of the DC current), as I knew what a huge part emotion plays in life. I don’t believe Robert O. Becker should be thought of as a “marketeer” since his experiments were legitimate and productive. Here are two other great books–“The Spark in the Machine” and “Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine”–all 3 of these books led me to purchase the C5, and I am happily experimenting. When a concrete, directly-attributable result is achieved, I shall let you all know.

[TajD]

Sounds good I can share that in my family’s experience and the multiple extended family members using ICES PEMF, we are definitely not seeing a placebo effect. We are seeing very remarkable, concrete, durable, effects consistent across the board for each use case (bone break, ligament and tendon injuries, pain, gut inflammation, etc). Congrats on starting your ICES PEMF journey and wishing you best of success with your c5! Looking forward to your posts.

[jody]

Thanks for the welcome, TajD!
Guess I wasn’t too clear… Becker said placebo effect is a physical response that is always part of healing…and I’m pretty sure it can be amplified by hope…extra electrical energy going to the injury