Temporally-Controlled Treatment of Joint Disease

A composition and method for treatment of osteoarthritis is disclosed. The composition includes at least one soluble injectable biocompatible carrier having a viscosity within prescribed limits and an amount of a calcium-channel blocker chosen in relation to the viscosity of the carrier. The concentration of the calcium-channel blocker in the joint synovial fluid is controlled according to the invention whereby effective treatment of osteoarthritis is provided.

Download a copy of the PDF of the patent application.

 

Method for Detecting Changes in Systems Governed by Nonlinear Laws

A serious impediment to recognition of the impact of environmental EMFs on human health involves the cognitive structure within which most studies are designed. Typically, investigators assume that any real response triggered in a subject exposed to an EMF must be reproducible. Reproducibility is indeed the imprimatur of causality in science. But what must be reproduced?

A common assumption is that the numerical value of the measured effect is the requisite reproducible observation. If a putative effect is +50 units, “reproducibility” is taken to mean that +50 units must be observed when the putative cause is reproduced or, allowing for the apparent stochastic variability exhibited by living systems, at least something close to +50 units. Under this assumption, an observation of 0 units or −50 units counts as evidence against a causal link, and observation of −50, 0, and +50 in three independent trials would be interpreted as strong evidence against the reality of the effect, based on averaging. But adoption of this assumption in a one-size-fits-all manner emasculates our ability to understand nonlinear biological phenomena, for example those caused by EMFs. To see this, suppose that +50 and −50 were each observed five times in ten independent trials, an entirely permissible result in a fully deterministic system governed by nonlinear laws (nonlinear differential equations). Under the common assumption, a strong inference against the existence of an effect would arise because the data averaged to zero. Nevertheless the results were reproducible in the sense that they were consistently non-zero. Suppose the analytical method used to evaluate the data obtained in the ten trials returned a positive value each time the putative cause was applied, regardless of whether the measurement yielded +50 or −50. In this case the cause-effect relationship would be captured by the analysis and the scientific requirement of reproducibility would be satisfied. The biological effects of environmental EMFs must be viewed from this perspective of nonlinearity. Otherwise the chronic error of the power and cell-phone companies—the false negative result—will continue to occur, with all the harm that the error entails. The nonlinear perspective would permit rationalization of causality based on the frequency of the kind of observation made (consistently non-zero), not on the arbitrary (and certainly wrong) assumption that a non-zero average of the magnitude of the observation is a necessary property of reproducibility.

I developed and patented a method for analyzing data reveals effects even when traditional linear methods fail to do so. The method applies to any nonlinear time series data obtained from any biological source. I used it principally to detect the effects of EMFs on brain electrical activity as measured using an electroencephalogram.

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Scientific Evidence in Cases Involving Electromagnetic Fields

Historically, the law has struggled to formulate rules of evidence for governing scientific testimony. The issue was resolved at the federal and, in many cases, state levels when special rules of evidence were adopted and then interpreted by the Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrill Dow. Unfortunately, the problem is still unresolved at the effector level, where cases are tried and decisions are made that involve scientific issues. Firms that represent power companies and cell-phone companies adopted an organized, coherent strategy and database for attacking scientific testimony offered by plaintiffs. The plaintiffs’ bar, in contrast, is disorganized, incoherent, and capable only of ad hoc strategies that invariably make little sense, either legally or scientifically. Plaintiffs’ mega-firms have sometimes succeeded in high-profile cases, such as those involving cigarettes and asbestos, but they have failed even more spectacularly in other cases because their strategies were inconsistent with modern scientific jurisprudence. I discussed the underlying issues in a law review article entitled “The Scientific Basis of Causality in Toxic Tort Cases.” The analysis and conclusions reached there are as applicable in 2011 as they were in 1995 when the article was published.

EMF plaintiffs are still waiting for an economically powerful lawyer who understands how to use the post-Daubert rules governing scientific evidence. The rewards for the plaintiffs, lawyers, and society will be great. The losers will be the companies. For a deeper discussion of what the lawyers must do to win, see chapters 28 and 29 in Going Somewhere.

Read the full article.
Download the PDF.

 

Hazards of High-Voltage Powerlines: The Beginning

In July, 1974 I was asked by the state of New York Public Service Commission (PSC) to testify in a hearing on the safety of high-voltage powerlines regarding what I perceived to be their health risks. Dr. Robert Becker, who was my chief, and I submitted written testimony that was served on the power companies in October, 1974 (Read testimony Becker-1; Marino-1).

The reports of experts hired by the power companies were distributed in November, 1975; at the time the PSC served the companies with an updated version of our testimonies (Read testimony Becker-2; Marino-2).

In 1976 Dr. Becker was cross-examined by the companies for 4 days and I was cross-examined for 10 days. The companies then served rebuttal testimony in which their experts attacked our testimonies. In response, the PSC served the companies with my rebuttal testimony in which I attacked their experts (Read testimony Marino-3). I was cross-examined for 3 additional days.

After the testimony phase of the hearing was finished, lawyers for the power companies and for the staff of the Public Service Commission filed legal briefs in an attempt to persuade the Commission that their respective views of the evidence were correct. The brief of the staff of the PSC argued that powerline electromagnetic fields would affect human health, but I thought a stronger position was warranted. Consequently, representing myself, I submitted a legal brief in the summer of 1977 in which I summarized the scientific evidence and drew legal conclusions (Read brief Marino-4).

The lawyers for the companies submitted a brief in which they attacked my brief. Consequently, in September, 1977 I submitted a reply brief which attacked their brief (Read brief Marino-5).

The PSC procedure allowed still another round of briefs, so in February, 1978 I submitted a brief on exceptions (Read brief Marino-6).

 

Michael Repacholi: SOB at WHO

In 1996 the World Health Organization began what it said was a project “to assess the scientific evidence of possible health effects of EMFs in the frequency range from 0 to 300 GHz‚” (EMF Project). But the project was corrupted from the start because it was controlled by the power- and cell-phone companies in the industrialized countries. The companies designated Michael Repacholi as the project head. For many years he had been a consultant and spokesman for power companies, so it was not realistic to expect that he would conduct an open and honest inquiry. But his performance in office was even more miserable than could have been anticipated based on what had been known about his personal opinions when he was appointed.

During the time he headed the EMF project at WHO, Repacholi dealt almost exclusively with experts on the payroll of cell-phone and power companies. He produced a series of reports and evaluations that exonerated these industries from any responsibility for human disease produced by the EMFs they generated and dispersed into the environment. Scientists who disagreed with the viewpoint of the EMF companies were systematically excluded from the WHO EMF adjudicatory process. The general public, a major stakeholder in the EMF debate, had no representation at the table when Repocholi’s committees broadly sanctioned widespread EMF exposure. Instead, the WHO scientific reviews of EMFs were star-chamber processes in which only pro-industry spokesmen were heard, and the results of the processes were foreordained.

Repacholi gave many speeches but was never held accountable in any serious dialogue or debate, and was never required to justify his extreme positions. He invariably appeared in forums that were friendly to his mission, and under conditions that insulated him from the necessity for reasoned discussion. I saw him at the Annual Meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) in Cancun, Mexico, in June, 2006. The Mobile Manufacturers Forum, which consists of the world’s major manufacturers of cellular telephones were “Gold Sponsors” of the BEMS meeting, and the leaders of BEMS had invited Repacholi to give a talk entitled “Results from 10 Years of WHO’s International EMF Project,” which he delivered at a plenary session at the meeting. Only children can believe that the invitation to Repacholi to present the talk was unrelated to the “Gold” sponsorship of the meeting by the companies that Repacholi had so vigorously supported for the last decade.

Unsurprisingly, his talk was a paean to the activities at the WHO that he had guided and controlled. He was proud of having successfully stemmed the tide of concern regarding the propensity of environmental EMFs to produce cancer and other human diseases, and of having defended the principle that man-made environmental EMFs were harmless. He touted model legislation that he had drafted, and said that he hoped it would be enacted by various governments so that the fact that environmental fields were safe would be enshrined in law.

At the end of his talk I rose and said, “Dr. Repacholi, I’m Andrew Marino from Shreveport, Louisiana. When you say that WHO assessed research about EMFs, can you tell us exactly who at WHO did that assessing?” He began his answer by describing a formal process for considering scientific evidence, but without naming names. I interrupted him. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear. I didn’t ask what the process was from a procedural point-of-view. I would like to know the names of the human beings who make the judgments regarding the safety of environmental EMFs.”

Again, his answer was evasive in the sense that it dealt with process and did not name names. I interrupted again and said, “I am trying to get at the names of the individuals, the human beings who made the judgments of EMF safety that are contained in the WHO reports. Will you please tell me their names?”

For a third time, he refused to answer, and for good reason. Any names he listed would have been immediately recognizable as paid consultants or employees of the EMF-producing industries, including himself.

Using his bully pulpit at WHO, Repacholi encouraged human beings, including young children, to chronically irradiate their brains with electromagnetic fields by falsely proclaiming that they were safe. He therefore bears direct personal responsibility for many cases of human disease. He is not the most evil man I met in my life, but he is in the top three.

For a detailed analysis of each of Repacholi’s sophistical EMF arguments, click here to read my detailed comments regarding testimony he gave in Australia concerning the health hazards of high-voltage powerlines.

 

Health Hazards of Powerline Electromagnetic Fields: A Mid-Career Memoir Written in 1995

Origins

The question whether powerline electromagnetic fields (EMFs) affect human health originated in the 1960s in the United States, and some time earlier in the Soviet Union. I first became aware of the question in late 1973, during a conversation with Robert O. Becker, M.D., who was my mentor when I was a graduate student (1963–68) and my chief for 12 years thereafter.

During 1974–1978, Dr. Becker and I were deeply involved in a long legal dispute in New York regarding whether powerline EMFs were a potential health hazard. In the subsequent quarter century, concern regarding health risks of powerline EMFs grew and expanded to other sources of electromagnetic fields in the environment including cellular telephones, microwave ovens, electric blankets, microwave towers, and television and radio antennas.

I did not anticipate the firestorm of controversy that was birthed by our testimony in New York nor, I think, did Dr. Becker. I was a young Ph.D. in biophysics, and a still younger lawyer, largely inexperienced in the intricacies of both professions. Dr. Becker had been involved in scientific arguments but that experience did not prepare him for the contentiousness which subsequently developed regarding powerline EMFs.
Read more…

 

The NIEHS RAPID Program: Anatomy of Failure

The NIEHS RAPID program was created by Congress to assess whether the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) from high-voltage powerlines caused or contributed to cancer in people exposed to the EMFs. Dr. Kenneth Olden, the Director of NIEHS, assigned the task to Christopher Portier. In 1998, I served on three of the NIEHS blue-ribbon committees at a meeting he held for the ostensible purpose of helping him identify the correct answer to the question posed by Congress. During and soon after the meeting I dictated notes to capture how the committees functioned and how decisions were being made. The notes contain my opinions because their incorporation was integral to the process by which I made meaning of what I saw.
Read the notes.