All deductive conclusions regarding the interaction of EMFs and biological systems made within the physical thought-style are arbitrary. Consider, for example, attempts to calculate electromagnetic fields present in the body of animals and human subjects exposed to environmental fields of predetermined values, and to interpret the significance of the calculations with regard to health risks (1). There exists a correct calculation for any given set of assumptions, but no correct calculation in the sense that its results are more justifiably true than the results of other calculations that employ different (but equally valid) assumptions and yield different results (2). Numerous equally valid calculations are always possible because measurements of internal fields, needed to verify which calculations are correct, cannot presently be performed. Calculations, therefore, have no practical utility with regard to determining internal fields in relation to health risks.

Even if calculations of internal fields could be verified (and hence were not arbitrary), calculations would still be useless in evaluating whether the fields were health risks because the biological significance of the presence of given levels of fields in tissues cannot be ascertained deductively (3). If it could be shown, for example, that a human exposed to powerline EMFs experienced 0.000001 V/m in the hypothalamus, it could still not be predicted whether that exposure level was a health risk because there exists no deductively certain knowledge regarding the effect of 0.000001 V/m in the hypothalamus on the physiology of that region of the brain, much less on the biological system as a whole.

The session will likely be filled with much mathematical mumbo-jumbo, but even its proponents will concede, if asked, that the calculations are neither unique nor verifiable.

1. Kaune, W.T.: Coupling of living organisms to ELF electric and magnetic fields, In Biological and Human Health Effects of Extremely Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields. Post-1977 Literature Review, Report of the Committee on Biological and Human Health Effects of Extremely Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields, American Institute of Biological Sciences, Arlington, VA, March, 1985.

2. Marino, A.A. and Reichmanis, M.: The Battelle studies: an analysis. in Proceedings of the 6th Annual Meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, p. 15, 1984.

3. Marino, A.A. and Ray, J.: Electric Wilderness. San Francisco Press, San Francisco, 1986, p. 45-46. Cross-examination of H.P. Schwan.

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