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 December, 1973, during a conversation with Robert O. Becker, M.D. Dr. Becker was my mentor when I was a graduate student (1963–68) and my boss for 12 years thereafter.
Between October, 1974 and February, 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 this did not prepare him for the contentiousness that subsequently developed regarding powerline EMFs. The consequences of the stand that Dr. Becker took regarding health risks of powerlines were catastrophic for him. By 1980 he lost his NIH grants, his Veterans Administration grant, his laboratory, and he was forced to retire at the age of 56.
I too lost my NIH grant, and my Department of Energy contract. We were both attacked by the Chairman of Biology at Harvard University and by the President of the National Academy of Sciences. Contracts were awarded to investigators for the specific purpose of performing research designed to contradict the results of our research. In the short period between 1974–80 I came to be regarded as a serious enemy by an uncomfortably long list of scientists, corporations, agencies, and their lawyers.
Personal Crisis
We saw the end coming as we lost our grants, one by one, and the pressure against our laboratory mounted steadily. It became difficult to do research, and we began to focus on a book we agreed to write dealing with the biological significance of electromagnetic fields. We wrote the book during the last year that the laboratory existed.
Our interests had already begun to diverge, and the book contract created considerable tension in our relationship. Dr. Becker is the originator of the stressor theory of EMF bioeffects. As best I can remember, he first told me about it in detail in 1974. That conversation affected me profoundly. It provided professional focus and direction. If the stressor theory were true, it could be important because it suggested a previously unrecognized role of the neuroendocrine system in human disease.
After I met Dr. Becker, there was never any doubt about what I would do with my life—research. I realized early that it was necessary for me to first decide whether research that I might do had a reasonable possibility of being relevant. I did not have a mathematician’s outlook on life. I once knew a mathematician who spent his whole career trying to prove an obscure point. When I asked him why he devoted his life to such a project, his answer was a paraphrase of the well-known response given by the mountain-climber who was asked why he climbed the mountain. Fine, if that’s the way they look at things. For me, if I am going to climb a mountain, then I must have a reasonable expectation of finding something worthwhile on top of it. Now, if disease was really mediated by an aberrant response in the neuroendocrine system, caused in part by apparently innocuous factors in the environment like powerline EMFs, that would be important.
My concept of our book was that it should be focused on Dr. Becker’s exciting insight into the possibility that EMFs were stressors. I wanted to marshal all the available scientific evidence and document the affirmative case. But Dr. Becker saw things quite differently. Although he was proud of his discovery of the effects of environmental EMFs, he seemed to regard it as one of the lesser of his insights into biology. Early in his career, before I knew him, he conducted a stunningly successful series of studies dealing with the biological effects of electrical energy, particularly effects involving bone. Those early studies led him to three somewhat related theories. First, that bone changes mechanical energy into electrical energy, and thereby regulates its own growth, development, and healing. A key element in this theory was the precise anatomic arrangement between the mineral and protein phase of bone, which he analogized to a PN junction, as described in solid-state physics.
Second, he concluded that the nervous system transmits information in two ways, not in one way as is described in standard neuroscience texts. According to Dr. Becker, in addition to spike-potential propagation, the nervous system is also capable of transmitting information in an analog fashion via the movement of electrons in nerves, roughly akin to the way copper wires carry electrical current.
Finally, Dr. Becker believed that the focus of orthopaedics on joint replacement using metal and plastic prostheses was entirely misplaced, and that the goal should be to regrow new functional tissue, and not to cut out diseased tissue and replace it with artificial materials. He theorized that mammals, like amphibians, also possessed special cells that could respond to appropriate signals and transform themselves into specialized cells capable of performing whatever biological function was required. For example, growing a new joint. Dr. Becker actually identified the universally adaptable cell in amphibians that was intrinsically capable of sustaining a regenerative response to injury—the nucleated erythrocyte. He theorized that mammals, like amphibians, also possessed such a totipotent cell. Finding the cell and learning how to communicate with it ought to be the goal of our research, he said. We would then know how to grow a new joint and repair a damaged spinal cord.
Dr. Becker’s theories, all four of them, presented me with a dilemma. I personally believed that the weight of the evidence was against his theory about PN junctions, that his theory about nerves was wrong, and that his theories about regeneration and stressor effects of EMFs were problematical. Actually, I thought the stressor theory was problematical, and the regeneration theory was very problematical. Consequently, at least for the book, I thought we ought to concentrate on the stressor theory. But the prospect of appearing disloyal to Dr. Becker, to whom I owed so much, was particularly disturbing.
I approached Dr. Becker with a proposal that I thought reflected the wisdom of Solomon. All four theories would be treated in the book, and the presentation would be organized in a four-step process. The theory itself would be stated and the evidence in favor of it produced in our laboratory would be described. Then the evidence published by others that supported the theory would be presented. The next section would contain an analysis of the reports that tended to contradict the theory. The last section would show why these reports could be dismissed or discounted, leading to the overall conclusion that Becker was correct.
I know how to find evidence, and I know how to analyze it. I was trained to do exactly that in physics and in law. I am good at it, and I was good at it in 1980. Dr. Becker knew that and frequently complimented me regarding this ability. My thinking was that if he agreed to my proposal and it turned out that the evidence weighted against one of his theories, he would then take that theory off the table, and its associated evidence would be de-emphasized in the book. I thought that we might discount two or even three of his hypotheses by following this procedure. I hoped that I would be wrong because nothing would have pleased me more than to write a definitive analysis that defended Dr. Becker’s views. It would be a small payback for everything he had done for me. Dr. Becker knew that in analyzing the evidence I would give him, not his critics, the benefit of the doubt.
Dr. Becker rejected my proposal. It wasn’t even close. What he wanted to do was simply describe his theories and the evidence that he produced to support them, as well as other evidence that fit with them. Because I would not have a warrant to search for all the evidence and to probe for the weakness of all of the studies, including those by Dr. Becker, it would be impossible for me to adequately evaluate his theories. Thus, there would be no possibility that we could discover he was wrong. The book would, therefore, contain all four theories, pretty much presented as fact.
I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. Ultimately, after painful discussions, we agreed to write two books. He would write about his three favorite theories, and I would write about the EMF hypothesis. That’s what we did. His three theories are contained in the first four chapters of our book, each of which designates him as the sole author. My analysis of the EMF issue is contained in the subsequent seven chapters, each of which designates me as the sole author.
Sorting Things Out
When I wrote my chapters I saw that the scientific evidence showed that environmental electromagnetic fields were potential health risks. But I also saw many uncertainties and multi-faceted scientific and sociological conflicts regarding that issue. It was going to be necessary to deal with these problems. I was willing to deal with them. I was wanting to deal with them. I felt that I had paid my dues, that I had learned the territory, and that I had something to contribute to EMF biology. I turned down the jobs that were offered to me in New York, but I found a job in Louisiana, which is where my wife and I and our four kids moved in 1981.
The Chairman of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, LSU Medical School, Shreveport, Louisiana, hired me as an Assistant Professor. He is probably the greatest man I ever met. One of the things I learned from him was the importance of staying cool. Emotion is the enemy of rational thought, I came to see.
I had become angry over the question of health risks from powerline EMFs. I was angry because the power industry had hired scientists specifically to attack me. I was angry because there were scientists who didn’t work for the industry who disagreed with me. I was angry because, as a consequence of telling the truth as I saw it, I lost my grant, my contract, my job, and, I thought, my heritage. I grew up in Pennsylvania and New York. I was a Yankee, Italian, Catholic, Ph.D., lawyer, and I never imagined living in a town in Louisiana where even one of these characteristics was a bit strange.
The thing that most made me angry, however, was what I saw as a simple injustice. An unfairness. I never practiced law. Consequently, in many respects, I still harbored the law-school notion that the goal of the law is to facilitate justice among people. It is sometimes difficult for practitioners in the hurly-burly world of courtrooms and clients to remember or even recognize what justice is in particular contexts. I lacked practical experience about the law, but the absence of this experience allowed my notion of justice to persevere.
I constantly receive phone calls from people who are worried about health risks from environmental EMFs. Someone who read one of Dr. Becker’s books, or one of my books, or who saw one of us on 60 Minutes or read about us in Reader’s Digest or saw our name quoted in the National Enquirer or somewhere else calls me and asks: “I live next to a powerline; is it safe?” My heart goes out to those people because, but for the grace of God, there go I. At least that’s what I thought initially. Subsequently, I began to see that they are me. Not with regard to EMFs, because I know enough about that subject to prevent making the mistake of exposing myself or my family to powerline EMFs. But the situation regarding EMFs has been cloned in our society. There are many examples in which physical factors are present in the environment by virtue of the same process that led to the presence of powerline EMFs. I know the EMF literature well, but I don’t know the literature in myriad other areas. In an important sense, I am as ignorant as the general public because the evidence of risk was hidden, or because I bought the company line that the evidence did not indicate a risk.
What exactly is the injustice regarding powerline EMFs that I perceived? The power company says that the EMFs from the powerlines are safe. If they are right, the power companies do not have to spend money to include safety features that would protect against exposure to EMFs. Under this assumption, there is a trickle-down benefit to homeowners living beside the right-of-way in cases where their electrical service is provided by the same company that owns the powerline, because all of the company’s customers, including the resident near the right-of-way, presumably pay less for their electricity. If the power company is wrong, however, their benefit remains the same but the risk-benefit analysis for the resident is shifted enormously in one direction. Some of them will develop diseases that were partly caused by the powerline EMF.
Many factors have been implicated as causing cancer in people. But EMFs were different. It was not the case that the exposed subjects were almost all healthy men who voluntarily chose to work in a profession that resulted in their exposure. It was not like smoking, where mostly adults voluntarily chose to engage in an activity for which the potential link with cancer was known. Instead, it was often the young or old who were unknowingly and involuntarily exposed to EMFs.
What is the just responsibility of the power industry and its trade associations, particularly the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)? I think it is to “lay bare the truth, without ambiguity or reservation.” What occurred, however, was the opposite—a consistent pattern of obfuscation, misrepresentation, mischaracterization, and hiding data by EPRI and the power companies, motivated, as best I can tell, by simple greed.
EPRI and the power companies seemed to have limitless resources, and they bought whatever they needed to perfect their position. They entered into contracts with various companies to produce favorable research and other reports. Sometimes the companies were large established research organizations which had pre-existing intricate contractual relations with the power industry that involved far more dollars than called for in the EMF bioeffects research contracts. In other instances EPRI and the power industry simply created companies whose major asset was a contract for research or analysis regarding powerline EMFs. The results produced by these contracts and released to the public never concluded that they had found evidence suggesting that powerline EMFs might be a health hazard. Thus, the situation was that almost everyone who didn’t work for the power industry and EPRI was almost always finding evidence that suggested that powerline EMFs were health risks, but essentially everyone who did work for the power industry or EPRI was failing to find such evidence.
The industry was always well represented in all legal proceedings involving powerline EMF health-risk issues. In the legal dispute in New York, the power industry was represented by a disparate group of attorneys headed by a lawyer from Rochester and the Dean of the Albany Law School. The industry fared poorly in that dispute, but it learned from its mistakes and entirely shifted its strategy. An integrated strategy was formed that would permit the industry to protect its interests wherever they might be jeopardized, either in court or in the court of public opinion. The lynchpin in this strategy was a lawyer, Tom Watson. Through him, power company experts spun trade-association science in court and before various blue-ribbon committees to justify the conclusion that it is acceptable and reasonable to expose the public to powerline EMFs, even when the residents have no conscious awareness of the presence of electromagnetic fields, and have never voluntarily consented to be exposed.
I thought the situation was unfair. I wouldn’t want my family exposed to powerline electromagnetic fields based on the present evidence, Watson’s family isn’t exposed to electromagnetic fields and the Board members of the Electric Power Research Institute and the nation’s power companies don’t live beside powerlines, but their spokesmen maintain in every available forum that it is appropriate for you and me to do so.
Changed Purpose
More and more, in the early 1980s, the things that previously made me angry came to be a source of motivation rather than anger. Some people want to save the whales, some want to fight breast cancer or AIDS. Some people are passionate about abortion, or creation science or saving the redwoods. I have always welcomed this form of passion because I like to see people fight for what they believe. It means they care about society. These people are generally not in it for money or fame, but rather to encourage the ascendency of their ideas. The rest of us are free to accept or reject the reasoning and values of the proponents of the various causes. For me, the task would involve every aspect of the relation between electromagnetic fields and biology—from soup to nuts.
I planned to study the point-of-view of different kinds of scientists in relation to how they approach the powerline EMF issue. The legal dispute brought me into direct conflict with scientists who seemed to have quite a different view than me regarding how scientific facts should be established. This perception was subsequently reinforced as I progressively came into greater contact with biologists. Their facts generally didn’t involve mathematical equations whereas those of the physicists (which was the larger part of my experience at that time) seemed always to involve equations. Were there different ways of establishing scientific truth? If so, which was was applicable to assessing powerline health hazards?
I began a study of the cellular biology of how stimuli in the environment are detected by the body. Both in my own research, and in the research of others, I planned to learn where and how the body transduced electromagnetic fields. Although this question was important, it was not the first question to be considered. The question how the body detected EMFs would not be ripe until the fact that the body could detect them was first proven. Schwan confounded the issues of detection and mechanism and argued that absence of knowledge regarding mechanism of detection of powerline EMFs was evidence that no such mechanism existed. To me that view was illogical, and the Siren song of mechanism was best avoided until the phenomenon of detection of powerline EMFs was established.
I also planned to study how alterations in the neuroendocrine system could lead to disease. Dr. Becker never restricted his concern about the health effects of EMFs to cancer. He thought it might have a role in all human diseases, even AIDS. He was mocked for this suggestion, but that response only intensified my desire to pursue inquiry into the effector systems in the body whose alteration by EMFs could be linked to disease. Early in this quest I settled on the immune system as a likely target for EMFs in relationship to inducing disease. No other possibility even comes close to being able to explain the range of empirical data that has been adduced regarding the biological effects of EMFs. If the efficiency of the immune system were reduced by EMFs, then it is easy to see that the probability of disease would be increased.
I planned to study epidemiology. That gray science does not permit deductions nor provide explanations like physics, and it is methodologically incapable of demonstrating cause-effect relationships, as biology can. Nevertheless, epidemiological studies strongly influenced perceptions regarding powerline EMF health risks, and it would be necessary to be able to distinguish a good EMF epidemiological study from a bad one.
As I saw it, the question whether powerline EMFs were health hazards was only partly a scientific question. Even unlimited research funding given to the brightest scientists with the highest degree of integrity would never lead to an answer. If the question were, for example, whether under a particular set of conditions a particular EMF applied to a given strain of rats would produce a statistically significant change in a particular dependent variable, that information could be obtained with enough money and the right investigators. But the question of EMF-induced health risks was not that kind of question. Its resolution would involve the use of scientific data, but scientific data alone was not enough. There was a need to focus on the process by which, as a society, we make decisions regarding matters that involve scientific data.
Finally, I would study and document the strategy of the Electric Power Research Institute and the power industry generally as it went about the business of defending its interests. It was not that I had a historian’s interest or that I merely wanted to chronicle their activities. And I didn’t really intend to offer interpretations and characterizations to try to prove that they were bad guys. What I was mostly interested in was encapsulating their activities for the purposes of posing the question Is this what we want? Given the importance of electricity in daily life, the economic aspects of the industry, the various stake-holders in the dispute, is the present system for resolving the dispute what we want, or not?
My EMF epiphany occurred after I arrived in Shreveport. It didn’t occur instantly, but rather slowly, like the coming of spring in the South which develops imperceptibly and then, one day, is simply there. One day I realized that my real goal was not to prove that I was right and EPRI was wrong. Rather, it was to find the truth about the relation between environmental EMFs and human disease, regardless of who might be hurt or displeased.
The ultimate issue would be whether EMFs affect human health. If the answer was yes, why was it yes? If the answer was no, why was it no? I started my career by studying how electromagnetic fields could be used to treat diseases. Maybe they could be used to regenerate missing or diseased organs and tissues, as Dr. Becker believed so passionately. It was clear, however, that there was a problem. The Food and Drug Administration said (in 1979) that EMFs, when carefully and precisely administered by a physician under controlled circumstances, could be used to treat specific bone diseases. But, the Electric Power Research Institute said that essentially the same kind of EMFs, when administered involuntarily in a completely uncontrolled fashion, even for a lifetime, had no effect whatever on human health. Somebody was wrong.
No matter what answer lay at the end of the inquiry, knowing the answer would be a public benefit. If powerlines were safe, the homeowner could turn his attention to other areas and worry about other things. There are a lot of elephant traps in life, but at least powerline EMFs would not be one of them. On the other hand, if powerline EMFs were a health risk, then people affected by them needed to know about it. The information needed to be presented in an honest and forthright fashion, “without ambiguity or reservation.“
Congressional Interest
While I was attempting to understand the EMF health-risk dispute, a remarkable thing happened. In the 1970s, when the issue first surfaced, most scientists, and I think essentially all laymen, had no conscious understanding or awareness of what an electromagnetic field is. By the 1990s, almost everybody had heard that powerlines give off something that might be bad for your health.
Throughout the 1980s pressure continued to build on Congress to do something about the potential problem of powerline EMFs. It took a long time for the pressure to develop. I think the chief reason was that there was a kind of basic unfairness on both sides of the dispute, and for a long time these two conditions balanced out one another rather evenly. The proponents of the powerline-EMFs-are-safe view had all the money on their side. They completely controlled the targeted research and the public spin involving powerline EMFs. Research that had the potential to yield results that implied powerlines caused health risks was not funded, and opinions that powerline EMFs were health risks were infrequently voiced in high government or industry councils. What was funded was usually irrelevant. The industry viewpoint was over-represented on each blue-ribbon committee, with the unsurprising result that their conclusions were broadly reassuring to the public and supportive of the industry.
On the other hand, it was distressingly easy for a print or media journalist to do a powerlines-cause-cancer story that distorted or misrepresented the nature of the risk and that overemphasized the reliability of the evidence that was discussed in the story. I do not mean to say that all industry-supported research was without value or that most media reports were not accurate. My point is that the money factor cut in one direction and the publicity factor cut in the opposite direction, and that consequently the EMF issue simmered in the ’80s.
A prominent aspect of the Congressional interest in the powerline EMF issue was the distrust that developed regarding whether the industry would honestly evaluate the health risks of powerlines. An indication that the problem was serious for the industry was the position taken by their representatives during Congressional hearings which eventually created the law that set up the federal program to evaluate the health implications of powerline EMFs. In those hearings, high-level officials from the power industry strongly urged Congress to enact legislation aimed at determining whether powerline EMFs affected human health. This was a major shift in strategy on the part of the power industry.
The law that mandated the federal EMF program was one of the provisions in the 1992 Energy Policy Act. The law called for research to determine whether powerline EMFs “affect human health,” and it required that this issue be addressed directly in a report to Congress by the Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).
The Director’s report to Congress is due in November, 1998. In response to the question Do powerline EMFs affect human health? I think the Director will effectively say “I can’t tell for sure.” The reasons why this will probably be the bottom line go deep into the nature of science, and into the relationship between science and the larger society of which it is a part. Those reasons are the subject of this report.
Why Continue?
Public and Congressional interest in the powerline EMF issue may have crested and started to diminish. It has been argued that the inquiry should be abandoned in favor of consideration of other issues. But if the EMF issue dies following the Director’s report in November, 1998, then the insights into the nature of science and its relationship to society that can be gleaned from an analysis of the issue will be lost. The reason that this loss would be serious is that the underlying problems that gave rise to the EMF dispute are structural. Hence they will persevere and be re-fought in other contexts, again requiring the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars in public money, and the occurrence of avoidable levels of disease.
I think, therefore, that the common good would best be served if the issues were considered in detail and evaluated on their merits. It seems to me that the time has come for us to establish a set of rules by which it can be determined objectively, without resort to idiosyncratic judgments of ad hoc experts, whether or not environmental factor X affects human health. Then, and only then, could a disinterested judge ascertain the correct answer in the context of the available scientific evidence in the particular case X = powerline-EMFs. A further set of rules is needed to determine what it means to say that factor X caused a disease in a particular individual.
The EMF dispute can be dispassionately analyzed to show that rules are needed, and that in their absence, there can occur only intentional neglect or interminable controversy. The former is unjust because it amounts to involuntary human experimentation and the latter is needlessly wasteful and corrosive.
Tom Watson and the Rules of the Contest
My view is powerline EMFs do affect human health. Tom Watson defends the opposite conclusion on behalf of his clients. I have seen him and his experts make many different arguments. I think he has neither a single valid scientific argument, nor the majority of the evidence on any legal point pertinent to the EMF health-risk issue. Despite this, he usually wins.
How can Watson consistently win before various tribunals when he is wrong? Watson has won, at least up until now, because he is a consummate professional at organizing information created for the purpose of defending the power industry, and at orchestrating that information in an effective manner. Considered purely as Theater or as a law-school-evidence-class example of how to marshal evidence in support of a client’s position, he is the best I have ever seen. This, roughly, is what he does.
He presents evidence showing that calculations indicate that powerline EMFs are safe. If the calculations are not persuasive he shows that there are no mechanisms of interaction between EMFs and biological tissue. If that line of argument is breached he argues that the animal studies are unreliable or inconsistent. If that strategy fails he urges that effects found in animals cannot necessary be imputed to human beings. If he loses this argument he claims that the epidemiological studies show no consistent pattern and have serious methodological flaws, and thus that there is no evidence that actual harm to human beings has occurred from powerline EMFs.
He says that the only acceptable evidence that a human being got cancer from exposure to powerline EMFs is an uncontroverted series of animal experiments in which only 60-Hz electromagnetic fields were applied to animals with the result that the animals subsequently developed cancer via a specific and established series of mechanistic steps involving the proven activity of particular oncogenes and their protein products. In addition he demands the existence of epidemiological data from studies in which subjects were exposed to powerline EMFs and no other potential risk factor for cancer. The studies must involve only a single histological subtype of cancer exhibited by the patient. All data must meet the scientific standards of certitude, 5% or better.
Watson likes to hire experts from famous institutions like Yale, Cornell, the National Cancer Institute, and Roswell Park. He maintains a separation between the investigators who do research on behalf of the power industry, and experts who testify for him in court. Consequently, because the investigators are not offered as expert witnesses, Watson’s opponents cannot dig into the contractual details between the power industry and the investigators that resulted in the data relied on by Watson.
Probably the single most important reason that Watson has done so well thus far is not that he is an able lawyer or has an unlimited budget. Mostly his success is a result of the continuity of his work on powerline EMFs. Since the 1970s, he has acquired an enormous data bank of scientific reports, testimonies, and other pertinent documents. Watson knows the EMF scientific jargon and he understands how differently different kinds of scientists look at the same issues. He skillfully exploits these differences. In contrast, Watson’s opponents in particular disputes are invariably new to the issue of EMF bioeffects. The difference between knowing the territory and not knowing the territory is the difference between winning and losing.
Well…what Watson urges as the standard of evidence needed to conclude that powerline EMFs affect human health or that powerline EMFs caused cancer in a particular case could be the rules if that is what we want. I do not think that most people want them to be the rules, but I could be wrong. This is really the heart of the issue regarding whether powerline EMFs affect human health. What are the rules for answering the question?
Ultimate Goals
The EMF dispute has been generally styled as one involving only scientific knowledge, that should be decided by scientists, all of whom are idealized as using the same methods and models and assumptions. It seems to me that Congress essentially adopted that viewpoint when it told the Director of the NIEHS to assess whether powerline EMFs affect human health. The facts that any answer to the question posed would be heavily value-laden, and, that non-representative blue-ribbon committees are intrinsically invalid tools for making public policy were not appreciated by anybody in 1992. But, today, I think that these facts can be seen.
I want to show that the question whether powerline EMFs affect human health is not an abstract scientific question capable of resolution via a self-extracting procedure. Rather, it is a mixed question of science and sociology whose resolution must be based partly on scientific knowledge and partly on values, and pursued within a determined procedural framework where pivotal terms are defined and the rules for deciding are established. It is a question like: Are nuclear plants safe? Is cisplatin effective for treating cancer? Do the preservatives in bread have any side-effects? Do insecticides adversely affect the ecosystem? Such questions cannot be answered with laboratory and epidemiological data alone.
Resolution of a mixed question of science and sociology requires that the available evidence be compared against a standard, it requires a set of rules, and it requires a disinterested judge. But whose values? and whose judgment? The powerline-EMF question must be distinguished from those where values play no significant role and where who should decide the issue is clear. For example: How much fuel is needed to send a spaceship of mass m to the moon in time t? How much current will flow in a particular circuit when it is energized with a given voltage? What is the melting point of iron? Does release of freon into the atmosphere cause a hole in the ozone layer? Is cold fusion real?
EPRI and the power industry claim that the values which necessarily enter into the resolution of whether powerline EMFs affect human health ought to be the values of scientists, particularly the scientists that are associated professionally with their industry. But I think this is wrong, and that the values incorporated into the decision ought to be those of society, not those of any particular group of scientists. The opinion of scientists, as distinct from their knowledge, is not important except in proportion to their numbers in society. It’s a case of one man, one vote.
These issues may be difficult to appreciate because they require a new look at science and at the relationship between science and society. This may be troublesome. But I will show that this relationship must be rethought and then defined before it is possible to answer the question Do powerline EMFs affect human health? I suspect powerline EMFs are not the only problem whose existence forces us to look more closely at exactly what science is, and who and what it serves.
To accomplish my goals, I wrote this report as a series of separate Sections, starting with the most basic issues involved in the EMF powerline dispute, and then progressing toward the more concrete issues that animate the controversy. I am aiming to be understood by both scientists and laymen, and this presented a difficulty because the kind of detail needed to persuade both groups sometimes differed. In most instances where the inclusion of additional detail would have buttressed my point but at the expense of clarity and succinctness, I chose to foster clarity in my presentation. My thinking was that if the only objection to my analysis was the absence of detailed proof, then I could supply it later. Even so, I tried to provide the supporting evidence or citations in those instances where I thought they were important to sustain or explicate my point.