There was a guest on one of my regular podcasts that might be interesting to members of this forum. Her name is Clarice Aiello, and she is a Quantum engineer. She is currently very focused on quantum effects at the biological scale and the impact of weak magnetic fields on physiological activity.
Here’s a link to that podcast and a recent article she wrote on the subject for the American physical society.
@Anomaloid, you beat me to putting up a post about this. I also enjoyed the podcast and thought it would be good to cross-post here. I put a link to Flux Health Forum on the YouTube comments and suggested they reach out to @Bob.
We have known the fact that biology does use quantum effects. For example, bird navigation in some species has been known to involve quantum effects for more than a decade:
So, this is not new.
Also consider the fact that the study of quantum effects is extremely difficult, vastly costly, and takes large facilities. Its not something you can buy or put in your pocket. Think of the resources that have poured into quantum computing over the past 2 decades for modest results. And this does not even include the complexity and nuance of biology.
Let’s fast forward to the bottom line:
Say that we discover quantum effects in some or all disease states for humans.
Then what?
Speaking only for myself, what grabbed my attention in this conversation was the researcher’s position that weak magnetic fields have significant physiological activity, and that this activity is mediated by alteration of electron spin rather than charge. It was my understanding from the conversation that spin is a magnetic property. She mentioned on multiple occasions that a device the size of a cell phone could potentially be used to assess magnetic spin abnormalities (which is how she assumed something like a Star Trek tricorder would work), and that the same pocket-size device that could perform the assessment could also apply the treatment. When she mentioned a pocket-size, low intensity magnetic field generator, I immediately thought of micro-pulse. I can’t speak to the nuances of her perspective on quantum biology.
That all sounds great, but I have some unique insight into this type of thing.
In the late 1990’s, I attended a DARPA-DSO meeting where a “tri-corder like device” was actually demonstrated to us as a ‘functioning physical prototype’. The claim was that it could diagnose disease, non-contact, from a distance of up to 1 meter. Nerds can reference technical details below**
This was of course DARPA-type far-out tech, not really ready yet for commercial use. But that was 25 years ago, and I have been watching for it, and there has not been any mention of it since then. It may still be under development, or it may have failed to function ultimately. But even back then, it was not the first claim of a “non-contacting hand-held diagnostic device”, nor was it the last. This has been a pipe-dream since at least the late 1960’s when Dr. McCoy first displayed his cool Star Trek tech.
So, while I remain a dedicated enthusiast, I am also skeptical. I’d like to see at least a prototype that sort of works. Verbal claims are easy, cheap, and ubiquitous.
Practical opinion: something like that is many decades out. It will be great when it works. But we are just at the beginning of measuring quantum effects, and we have not mastered this by any means yet, and certainly have not correlated it to biological disease states.
** I had a side discussion with the inventors to get an understanding of the technical details. Like all true geeks, they were delighted to discuss their gadget in detail. Upon inspection, it didn’t really function yet, but it was pretty cool IMO. For the physicist nerds among you, the principle was self-capacitance between the device and the test subject (‘patient’). The electronics-side capacitive plate was actually a quadrature-configured 2 x 2 array of squares, 50mm on edge each, separated by 10mm between squares, 1 oz tinned copper on FR-4 PCB, very basic, with the actual driver circuit on the opposite side of the PCB. The driver was hardware, just a 555(!) driving a bank of H-Bridges to charge the plates, with what appeared to be the far-end self-capacitance measure simply made by measuring a free-running inverter gate oscillator which was tuned by the resulting variable self-capacitance. My understanding was that the driving plates were charged and discharged with a frequency sweep, with the Idea of developing a spectral analysis of the self-capacitance measured by coupling to the patient.
But I could be wrong. They were physicists and they were talking fast and that was a quarter century ago. But that’s what I remember.
I don’t have an informed opinion on the science or the state of the art in this area. The reason I originally brought this to the group was because one aspect of this project would require miniaturization of the technology that could be used to generate programmable magnetic fields. It seemed to me that Micro-pulse may have already taken a step in this direction, whereas many other companies are still emphasizing devices ranging in size from a laptop to a television. I think the engineering team at the UCLA lab where Dr. Aiello is doing her work might be interested in what you have developed. I can’t dispute your position that this type of technology may be decades in the future, but as a wise one once said, “the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.”
IMO by the time the science and technology finally emerges to allow a practical manipulation of quantum biology, the work that I have done on PEMF miniaturization will be like miniaturized vacuum tube radios; the techniques and technology of today will be totally obsolete.
The first step of their 1000 mile journey must be this: develop a basic mastery of the science of quantum biology. I can’t really contribute to that in any way.
Note: I know that no one likes it when I answer this way. But my unique job is to be 100% honest about PEMF. This includes being 100% practical about it. It’s fine for anyone else to ponder it in any way they like, but if you @bob me into the conversation, it is my job to reel it back into immediate practical technical reality.
This is how I view my responsibility to each of you:
Many people are injured or in pain right now
Many people need help right now
I need to focus 100% on helping people right now
Everything I do must be able to be reduced to a practical, affordable, safe, effective device right now
I daydream about other things: human evolution and flying cars. The Jetsons had one, where’s mine?!
But I don’t daydream about PEMF: I refine, build, test and sell it, right now.
My thinking in posting this here and suggesting @Bob be willing to be on the podcast is that from an empirical standpoint, IMO, spreading awareness is one of the best ways to help people now and continue learning empirically. I think of understanding the science better in more detail as both an avenue to increase general awareness and perhaps produce beneficial aspects we have trouble imagining until we have the better understanding of the science. The example of Ignaz Semmelweis comes to mind, where his empirical suggestion for surgeons to wash their hands had definite immediate benefits to human well being without the scientific understanding. When that understanding was achieved some years later, other benefits came along, including things we now take for granted in preventing or treating various diseases. Maybe we’ll never understand the science underlying PEMF, but trying may both improve human well being now through greater awareness (and people experimenting themselves) and possibly in the future with greater theoretical understanding. I learned about PEMF from a podcast and Bob’s ICES specifically from another podcast, so I am appreciative of that format for raising awareness/advertising/marketing.
Your example of Ignaz Semmelweis is superbly apt. He eventually made a huge contribution by fighting directly with established science at the time.
But are you aware of how that turned out for Semmelweis? Everyone who wants me or anyone else to take up the charge head on to openly wrestle with established scientific dogma really needs to know how it turns out for our hero Ignaz.
So, since I am a professor, here is your homework:
Read this article, especially the end: “Breakdown and death”:
You might TLDR, which is fine, but then please do not suggest that I or anyone else fight this fight. When you fight it directly the established system will kill you in a slow and cruel way, just as it did Semmelweis. The mechanisms are 21st century, but the outcome is equivalent. He is the example that biomedical scientists tacitly learn from so they never directly confront the system.
I have a family with young children, a life, and a lot of important things left to do, so I will absolutely not make a direct frontal assault on established science in yet another undeveloped discipline. IMO, the only way to move PEMF forward is exactly what I am doing now: Remain below the radar, do the hard work, figure it out, then set it in stone somewhere so society can pick it up and dust it off when they are ready for it.
I really have absolutely, positively, categorically nothing to add on the topic of quantum mechanisms of biological dysfunction. I really do not know where even to start to manipulate these barely understood mechanisms to enhance health. I can not and will not charge down that rabbit hole. My dance card is full, sorry.
I hate to be this way, but I think unless you have been a scientist for a few decades, you really do not know how the culture really works. It is most definitely not a cadre of good-natured, collaborative, open-minded scholars who place truth above all else. If you take the opposite of this description, then you have a much more accurate picture of academic science as it really is.
Thanks for what you do, Bob, the article on Ignaz Semmelweis was eye opening as to how innovative ideas are so often persecuted. I also read a book you once mentioned, Rigor Mortis, also an eye opener and I have become very cautious in believing so called scientific papers and now look for many sources that might duplicate the findings that are reported. The ices-pemf, is something I use daily and my personal experience with that use have been very positive. I’m not a scientist so I don’t make any claims and my record keeping of program used, length of time, power setting, exact changes in positioning, has been sporadic.Thus it is difficult for me to say definitively that the results I have are universal and how I accomplished those results.Plus We all seem to have a difference in how we respond to different treatments.When I mention how Ices has helped me I encourage people to go to your web site, educate themselves and then decide how to proceed in self experimentation. so again thank you for being candid and always providing information that is food for thought and investigation!
I really appreciate your positive feedback. I really do have to stay frosty and sharply focused on the real battles that matter right now.
I am concerned sometimes that my statements on this sound a bit too harsh, as if I am just angry or impatient. But really, the situation in academic science is much worse than I discuss on this forum.
Here is an example of the real fights that take up all of my time and energy, but crucially, I have enough hard data to win the battle if I just stay focused on task:
Without getting into it too much, Mark Tommerdahl and I (he and I developed the Brain Gauge) are in a huge battle with the established academic “brain injury mafia”. They have been black-balling us for two decades, and this has harmed literally millions of people by denying them a safe, effective, and affordable diagnostic tool to detect brain injury and concussion. So now we have teamed up with four retired surgeon’s general and enough retired military generals (52 stars total) and a national non-profit institute to force the issue in the military and VA and ultimately civilian medicine. The simple fact is that we can detect and quantify brain injury and also track the recovery process, but the established academic “brain injury mafia” keeps lobbying congress and the NIH to deny this proven, repeatable, quantifiable, published (dozens of times), FDA-listed, medical insurance approved fact. The established academic “brain injury mafia” just wants to keep pumping federal (taxpayer) dollars to repeat the same, non-functioning, non-productive concussion research “just for 5 more years” until they “figure it out”. They have been doing this since 2004. That is just one example of the real battles that I am constantly fighting.
Basically, any time there is a pool of federal money, you will find a pit of snakes who specialize in finding a way to monopolize it and suck it like a parasite. I am not saying the government is bad. I’m saying there are a lot of bad people out there who abuse anything they can. In academia, this takes the form of small groups of insiders who monopolize the funding and resources and just keep pumping the federal dollars out while never actually delivering any real treatments or cures. They block any competition or junior scientists from ever even getting a start. They dominate NIH funding committees and journals and university administrations. They harm all of us.
Every area of academic research is this way:
Cancer research
Chronic pain research
Nutrition and supplements research
Tissue Engineering
Every major clinical condition…
Frankly, I’d love to work on warp drive or quantum entanglement technology. But we all have children and grandchildren, and I am fighting for their future health.
I forgot to name the new group that I have teamed with. It is the National Foundation for Integrative Medicine:
If you scroll down, waaayyy down, you will see Mark Tommerdahl and me near the bottom of the page. This group has immense prestige in the military (just read the individual credentials), and we are dedicated to bringing forward the effective modern technologies that have been marginalized by mainstream medicine.
The man in charge is Pete Demitry MD, retired flight surgeon and F-16 test pilot and certifiable bad-ass who still runs a clinic to treat individual veterans who have been otherwise untreatable and who have therefore been abandoned by mainstream medicine.
This is a group that I think has a good chance to move the needle. Fingers crossed. Now time to put a shoulder to it and get back to work…
Thank you for sharing this information. It sounds like the NFIM team will do as unbiased as possible research into modalities of treatments that most of the allopathic community have simply decided to ignore or attack. I’m 75 years old and back in the 80’s qnd 90’s I worked as a Registered Nurse. I was also in the holistic nurses organization and a certified Healing Touch practitioner. Somewhat like PEMF, we didn’t know why healing touch was effective but most of the time it was very helpful for patients. As you can imagine, most of the doctors thought it was silly, placebo effects, and some would attach the very idea that energy modulation could be helpful in the healing process. Keep up your most excellent work and thanks for being authentic in sharing the positive outcomes, negative outcomes and that some things are just unknown at this time, also the fact that each person reacts to treatments in a way that isn’t necessarily what another persons response is.
Phillip Saarinen
@Bob,
First of all, I apologize if I implied you should fight the established system or sacrifice any more than you already have in the service of helping others to heal. I’m very grateful for your work and efforts from which I and members of my family have directly benefited. I’ll bet you feel that no one knows how difficult and frustrating your path has been at times with how you were treated at NASA, how PEMF marketers have sometimes treated you, and how the establishment/status quo is treating you now on Brain Gauge. I certainly can’t pretend to know what riding your roller coaster has been like.
Thank you for the homework assignment. I was familiar with Semmelweis’s discovery, contribution, mistreatment, and demise, but there were a number of details and nuances I was not aware of until reading the Wikipedia link you provided. I might have chosen a better example, but perhaps this one has worked out in it’s own way with the further discussion.
My thinking on the suggestion for considering the DemystifySci podcast, was not necessarily to opine on quantum biology, but more seeing it as another avenue for raising awareness of PEMF-ICES in general with another audience. I’m sure there are many demands on your time both personally and professionally and you have to pick and choose where to put your energies. I offered it as a suggestion, and “no thanks,” is just fine and doesn’t need any other explanation from my perspective.
If you think of other ways we can help, besides word of mouth discussion and use and sharing on the forum here (like perhaps helping with your NFIM Team), please let us know. I was laid off a couple of years ago, and had a cancer diagnosis at the same time, so I’ve decided to retire and I’m volunteering with VITAS providing friendly visits to hospice patients and have more time to volunteer depending on the opportunity.
Be well.
@Bob,
No worries. I get wound up a lot myself. Passion is generally a good thing, IMO. Keep doing what you’re doing.