Bioelectromagnetics

I apologize for my mucked-up HTML. Here is the corrected version, as this is far too important for people to miss because of a formatting error;

Let us pause here to consider the monumental stupidity of this statement. Chromosomes, when coupled to the cell's machinery, are an excellent and faithful reproductive system. They make copies of themselves with extraordinarily high fidelity. How high? The error rates are of the order 10<sup>-4</sup> to 10<sup>-6</sup>, typically. What happens with a carcinogen is the carcinogen manages to force a significant alteration of the blueprint code. Once such a genetic copy error has been made, and in the absence of more carcinogen, the error is reproduced with high fidelity. The error rates, again, are of the order 10<sup>-4</sup> to 10<sup>-6</sup>. (Anybody needing to look this up is encouraged to google on "forward mutation rate" and "backward mutation rate." The broader categories include molecular genetics and theoretical population genetics.)

Once the mutation has occurred, there is no need for more carcinogen. The cellular machinery simply copies the error, over and over and over again.

Rogbot, you have now clearly revealed yourself to me as an absolute poseur. There is NO way any person got through any biology curriculum without understanding this fundamental fact. [/B]

1. Roger, I want you to address the above.

I also want everyone to be aware of this site, which should put Koch in perspective.

2. Now, roger, I also want journal article citations for Koch's work and for Szent-Gorgyii's work. Not any old work, sir, but work that supports your claims.

Rogbot, I will now begin to compile a list of questions for you. Be a good, scholarly person and address them, please. I will begin with these two, and peruse the thread for the dozens of questions you have hitherto dodged. I will eliminate a question only upon you directly answering the question, and acknowledging the truth, or demonstrating that I am wrong. My future posts will each contain the questions, grouped by "On the Table" and "Off the Table". The "Off the Table" list will, unfortunately, contain a running tally of your nonsense, such as humans not being mammals and worms not being animals. Each post will also contain links to pertinent references demonstrating the paucity of your acumen.

Play commences, poseur...
 
Its quite late and i'm tired, but you do not seem to have dealt with the fundamental questions i asked for example you say that

The idea that carcinogens caused faulty metabolism was later taken up by Otto Warburg, and after that by Szent Gyorgii, who proposed in the early 1960s that the only way to deal with the cancer problem was to restore metabolism and that this could be achieved using quinones

yet you do not have the evidence to back this up. Instead you produce the avemar study, which a) has not been replicated, and b) operates satisfactorarily within the standard model of carcinogenisis anyway. That the quinones have an anti cancerous effect does not support the idea that carcinogens cause faulty metabolism. The whole idea is wrong, a cells metabolism is controlled by expression of its genome. This includes a number of mechanisms to prevent the cells becoming cancerous.

Additionally you have not addressed what i consider to be a major concern with your model, ie that in the absence of the carcinogen the cancer should not occur. As i said easy to test in-vitro. Has this been done, and if not why not?



All the theoretical biochemistry in the world is irrelevant if your initial hypothesis is wrong.

.
ilser, J.G., P. Jung, and H.M. Bolt. (1982). Increased acetone exhalation induced by metabolites of halogenated C1 and C2 compounds. Arch Toxicol 49:107-116.

I fail to see how this supports your position. If you are saying that these are cacinogenic and that they are metabolised in some way, therfore the carcinogenic properties must be due to metabolism, i suggest read this:

http://www.fau.edu/polsci/3936/causation.htm

with respect to point 3, perhaps a chemical can have a metabolic effect and a carcinogenic effect.

Vinyl Chloride:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=14979067

Is interesting because vinyl chloride chloride exposure is associated with antibodies to p53. p53 is the textbook tumour suppressor gene.

more about vinyl chloride : http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/pim558.htm#SectionTitle:7.1 Mode of action

This describes the metabolic pathways and the sepearate mutagenic pathways for vinyl chloride.

So lets see some real science, experimental and theoretical please.

night all!
 
A final thought which i just had to post.

1) Mr Coghill claims that EMF can cause cancer (ie it is carcinogenic)
2) Mr Coghill claims that carcinogens induce cancer via their induction of faulty metabolism


Would it not therefore follow that it would be possible to cure cancer caused by EMF by simply moving away from the EMF source?

No? so there are permanent changes in the cells ? And how do you effect a permanent change in a cell, that carries over to its daughter cells (should the cell divide). Yes through its genetic material.

We're giving the answers yet you're the one with the case to prove Mr Coghill.
 
cogreslab said:
Briefly, on your other point, if the electric power utilities had to acknowledge their product was hazardous to health they would face huge lawsuits from victims and owners of property near lines, (because it can be shown they were aware of this hazard and deliberately covered it up, so they cannot plead a "state of the art" defence, Cleopatra) and enormous costs of resiting lines or buying wayleaves. I thought that was obvious: they have the example of the tobacco companies staring them in the face.

Roger: You seem to keep confusing me with other people - no matter - but maybe you need to ease up on the magnetized water? :)

Your statement above appears to make sense superficially but just doesn't stand up to logic if your other claims are true.

For example, given the current evidence for and against the harmful effects of EMF's, yes, there is evidence suggesting possible correlations, and that's all. The evidence doesn't PROVE that EMF's are harmful in any way at all, it just suggests that they MAY POSSIBLY be harmful.

Secondly, if these people are so powerful (and they must be intelligent too to manage it) and capable of running such a widespread conspiracy, then they are doing a very good job of making sure that no evidence is taken to constitute a serious risk.

On that basis, they could simply announce tommorrow that although there is not any PROOF at all of any danger, that solely on the basis of their personal concern for the wellbeing of the public, yada, yada, yada....that they have decided to lower exposure limits to whatever you want. And in doing so, they are automatically the "good guys". The moment anyone TRIES to sue or demand compensation, they simply fall back upon the existing, established condition that there is no proof of any real danger at all! The point being, if they can get away with it NOW, then it will be even easier to get away with it once they have established in the public mind, the idea that they are concerned for the greater good and the public welfare. No judge is likely to punish a power company for acting over and above the call of duty, or "compensate" someone for an unproveable risk! And if these people are so smart and so powerful to set up such a comprehensive conspiracy, then surely they would see that if they believed that there WAS any chance of some real danger becoming exposed in the future, that such a course of action would protect their own interests now.

Of course that leaves the question of the cost of actually lowering emissions, resiting lines etc. Seems formidable, but don't forget that EVERYONE wants power! Who is going to give up their electricity supply if the providers have to add 2c per unit in order to fund reconstruction efforts? And again, whilst the consumer will moan about the increase, they can just argue that they need to add this cost in the greater public interest and to maintain acceptable safety standards. Who will seriously be able to argue against that? I daresay that 2c per unit would probably even be overkill in terms of the extra funding required and maybe it could be achieved with a much lower increase.

So right there, they have an easy way out, no extra effort required (at least on the part of the people at the top), no extra cost required, they get great PR, they are lauded for their responsible attitude to public safety AND they avoid all the costs and risks of maintaining the "Great Conspiracy". And not only that, they protect their existing investment and profit against the danger of future exposure and losses. They are after all business people who are not likely to take unnecessary risks with their long term investments. And it is PRECISELY the example of the tobacco companies that you cite that gives them the warnings and the incentives to do this sooner rather than later.

On the hand, if we subscribe to your world view, we have this shady group of evil conspirators who know that EMF's are deadly. Firstly, where do they live and work? If they know EMF is so deadly then you can be sure they don't live in normal houses or work in normal offices etc. So where are they? Surely they must be living in mud huts in the middle of the countryside, as far from the mains as possible? Ekeing out existences without electricity. They won't use mobile phones. They won't use normal phones either because most of those have EMF fields. Or hairdryers or hi-fi's or TV's etc., etc. So they are isolated and cut off from half the modern world. They don't go to electrified offices with air conditioners, computers, fax machines and anything else that can radiate the deadly stuff at them. Unless of course they are terminally stupid - as we know they are not because they wouldn't be able to run such a great evil Machiavellian conspiracy if they were.

I wonder how they communicate with co-conspirators? Smoke signals, or semaphores perhaps?

And then there is the conspiracy itself. A conspiracy requires minions. And minions have minions etc., etc. There's not much point in having a conspiracy if the chief honcho has to double as the head hit man! But the problem with these minions is they want to be paid. And they have to be paid a LOT, because the problem with minions in a conspiracy is that they have to pay them enough to make sure they won't turn later. And they have to cover up paper trails, evidence, the odd minion mistake and so on. It's almost impossible to run a normal legitimate company with the kind of efficiency required to run a halfway decent conspiracy because it's just so difficult to get such competent staff - unless you pay through the nose for the best. Silence is expensive. And then there is all the cost of funding biased "studies" to support the status quo. The costs of maintaining the conspiracy would probably exceed the costs of fixing the system!

And then of course they have to silence the opposition. Which costs more money etc. If they know that EMF's kill, then they are murderers. They obviously have no qualms about killing babies. So just how difficult is it to knock off the odd inconvenient "bioelectromagnetics expert"? They already have motive, means and opportunity and they couldn't possibly have any moral qualms given the situation.

The FACTS argue against all the above. I'm not aware of a sharp increase in the mortality rate of "bioelectromagnetics experts". Power company executives use mobile phones, live in modern houses with electricity and probably have more fancy electronic gadgets and toys than the best of us mere mortals! AND, as part of the icing on the cake, even the "bioelectromagnetics experts" clearly use computers, mobile phones, electrical and electronic gear - all the things that some of them are trying to convince the rest of us NOT to use because they are so deadly....!

The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are easy to spin. And they can be used to explain anything if enough paranoia is applied. It's MUCH easier to spin ad-hoc conspiracy theories than explain the REAL facts of ANY case.

I have a conspiracy theory of my own. If an evil power company wanted to spin a perfect conspiracy then rather than paying off all these minions etc., to suppress the competition, it would be much easier to simply ensure that the opposition was not credible in the first place. So perhaps the best way would be to set up fake "bioelectromagnetics experts" to discredit the whole field. They would of course have to make sure that these fake "experts" were noticed. So they'd make sure they'd be selling a nice range of highly suspect woo woo devices for a start, with all kinds of bogus claims. And they'd also make sure that their "experts" were unable to answer simple scientific questions in their claimed fields of expertise. They'd then encourage these "experts" to get themselves noticed in any way possible, like joining skeptical forums and starting arguments, and by then demonstrating their incompetence by ducking and evading straight questions, giving utterly meaningless answers and so on.

Hmmm, I'm beginning to think there really MIGHT be something to this conspiracy business after all! I think we all need to look out! I wonder who might possibly fit the above criteria? :)
 
Oh, and before I forget, there is no comparison of a possible "state of the art" defence to EMF's and the case with smoking. Smoking was ALWAYS known to be dangerous, it wasn't somehow "discovered" in the 1950's, as a great surprise.

For just one example here is an extract from a medical treatise from the year 1606 (yes, that's nearly 400 YEARS OLD!):

"Doth not tabacco then threaten a short life to the great takers of it?"

and that it was:

"so hurtfull and dangerous to youth" that it might just as well be known "by the name of youths-bane, as by the name of tabacco."

Quoted from "Rules for the Preservation of Health" by Eleazar Duncon the Elder, Published in London, 1606
 
And, Pragmatist, that is EXACTLY what is happening in Denmark (not the conspiracy, I presume, but the practice you describe): Some years back, our power companies, with solid political backing, came out and declared that although no danger could be proved, plus for the sake of the landscape (power lines are ugly), they would start a project of putting all lines underground. So in the recent years, power masts have been disappearing from our landscape at a steady rate.

The cost? Of course the users pay, who else? Why should power companies forgo the oppertunity to sell a more expensive service?

Hans
 
I have been away for a day, so my replies come a little belatedly, and in reverse order, sorry for that:

cogreslab said:
Hans: The conclusion you have jumped to is that I based my claims for this pet coaster solely on my own anecdotal experience. How many times do I have to repeat that I do not regard my anecdote as the required level of proof? As Prag has said, and I agree with him, this was no where near becoming a scientific experiment. Don't let Bouncer BIll detract you both from the issue I am trying to raise here, which is beginning to stand a chance of serious and useful dialogue, i.e. the way in which ELF electric fields can adversely affect health. how carcinogenesis really derives, and how the establishment is covering up the truth knowlingly, to the detriment of public interest.
If in doubt, reread my post. I DID note that even you yourself did not count the test with Lizzie as scientific evidence, but you also said that you hade made no other trials, so naturally, I have to conclude that your claim of the effect of the magnetic device you sell is based soley on that experience. Or, if we discard the anecdote (but why relate it to us, then?), on nothing at all.

The fact that several topics are being discussed in this thread is not an act of diversion by anybody, but entirely your own choice. I long since suggested opening seperate threads for the different subjects, but you declined that. Don't worry about me, however; I'm entirely capable of discussing more than one topic at a time.

Hans
 
cogreslab said:
"So you freely admit you have no scientific basis for the claim other than your anecdotal evidence".

No. Where did I do that, Detractor ( and de-railer) Bill?
Then, for crying out loud, what IS your scientific evidence for your claim that pets can tell the difference? Come on, man; how many times do we need to ask?

Hans
 
OK, finally back to this one. Sorry for the delay. Thanks for a long and thoughtful post, it deserves a thoughtful reply (and that was why I could not spare the time for it till now):

cogreslab said:
Hans asked:

"Do you agree that any health-damaging effect from exposure to an AC electrical field can only come from the currents it causes in the body, or do you suggest some other mechanism, and if so, which?"

This is an excellent question,. because it challenges those arguing for weak (i.e. non thermal) ELF EM field effects to put forward a mechanism/mechanisms by which adverse health effects might occur. But the way it is framed it only possits one solution, (e.g when did you last beat your wife?) and since there are more than one mechanism the straight answer must be "No I do not agree that any health-damaging effects are so caused. But nor do I exclude that mechanism among others". So a fuller exposition is required of me.

No trap was intended. Indeed the classical trap question (which should rightly be phrased "have you stopped beating your wife?") is only a trap if you have to answer only yes or no, and I did not require that of you.

Why more than one mechanism?

Ahh, well; there was a trap after all, but a different kind ;): Had you confirmed there was only this mechanism, I would have proceeded to show mathematically that the contribution of the electrical fields is much inferior to that of the magnetic fields :p.

I answer that by pointing out that during most of our evolutionary experience we have never had exposure to relatively long wave alternating electric fields of any chronicity. We have however had exposure to quasi-static magnetic fields, e.g. geomagnetic fields which "wobble " a little all the time by a few nanoTesla. (J. C-M has a purple passage about that in his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Vol 2). Nature is smart and subtle. What smarter idea than to choose for the control of life processes a communication or other systems which optimise the signal-to-noise ratio?

However, nature is not "smart". Nature works in a hit and miss fashion with what building blocks she has at hand.

Given the previous absence of AC electric fields Nature chose that environment for regulatory growth control among multicellular life. Monocellular creatures (e.g. listeria, legionella) probably are not so badly affected, and can endure more comfortably in such environments, since they do not need to communicate with fellows in the same way. Colonies however do need ionic calcium for their integration, a discovery made I think in 1907.

Interesting thesis, but entirely speculative. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, of course, but should such a mechanism exist, it is strange that we have not ever observed these signals. We have been measuring minute signals within the body for decades, but we have not met the signals you are speculating.

So the heart’s beat rate is controlled by electric fields emanating from the sino-atrial node; the brain uses electric fields created from currents flowing between the great pyramidal cells on either side of the cerebral hemispheral cortex ("Betz cells") via the corpus callosal nervous transmissions into the third and lateral ventricles;

Stop, stop! You keep confusing the types of electrical "fields"! PLEASE read my earlier post on the matter. There are no electrical fields (to speak of) inside the body, only three dimensional areas of current flow.

the cellular immune system is programmed to understand the differences between self and non-self by characterised electric fields at the thymus; the synthesis of ATP is achieved by electron transport in oxidative phosphorylation; and I am sure there are other mechanisms equally dependent on charges or the control of cations like calcium, rather than upon magnetic fields which are diffuse and to which the body is transparent. With nervous conduction the passage of ions across the membrane can be reliably inhibited by devices such as TENS machines in a similar way for pain relief.

And all are mediated by CURRENTS flowing in the body tissues, driven by minute electrochemical potentials (not charges) in the cells.

It is plausible that the unexpected and novel evolutionary experience of exogenous and "incoherent" AC electric fields will perturb such systems, since electric fields or rather the individual charges of which they are composed or from which they are derived are superpositive. I expect responses to this will include a lot of physics, but I want to concentrate on the biology for the moment.

It still boils down to currents. The trap is still active and baited. You may wish to concentrate on biology, but you cannot ignore physics. And especially, you cannot build your biologic theories on misconceptions about physics. At least not if you want to do science.

Now, how in Hell does the electric field get into the body? We have a most efficient barrier to intrusion in the form of the dermis and epidermis, specifically evolved to deflect and keep out radiation e.g. from the sun; and we have associated melanin dependent protections. The skin like hair is dead. We defend our living selves with the dead bodies of our own cells, and "fill the wall up with our English dead", to quote Shakespeare. These thicknesses have been honed by the shortness of the waves incoming such as solar UV which may be too short to penetrate past the wall of dead. But RF waves are longer and can get past this evolutionary derived barrier, and so can the even longer non-ionising fields and radiation. We need to be thicker skinned these days, (especially if joining this forum with new ideas).

(All you need is evidence for your ideas, then you can be as tender-skinned as you like). Please, please, do educate yourself on electromagnetics; you keep exposing your severe lack of understanding in that field. The skin somewhat blocks short-wave radiation in the visible spectrum and up. It does not even stop IR. RF waves do penetrate the body, but only relatively short waves interact to any degree with the body (hence the apprehension for cell-phone radiation). However, eletrical fields are NOT a wave phenomenon, they are a force. Electrical fields penetrate the skin easily because the skin is a poor conductor, but they do not penetrate living tissue because it IS conductive.

We (you, me and others) have been nitpicking a bit about whether ELF waves are emitted from power lines or not, but it is really moot: A 50hz wave is 6,000 kilometers long. It will not interact with a tiny human body at all.


So though thse barriers may have been good enough in a world devoid of AC electric fields, when electricity arrived (thanks to Westinghouse and Tesla’s AC electricity transmission systems prevailing over Edison’s DC system and his powerhouses every few miles), the situation changed for ever. The ELF AC waves were long, and very similar in frequncy to those of the brain and the heart, and for the same reason: their ability to conduct meaningful information through a physiological saline solution (0.9 percent Na+ Cl-) just right for its purpose.

No, that is not the reason for preferring AC to DC. We use AC because it can be transformed. It is really very simple: The loss to ohmic resistance in a power line is inversely proportional to the square of the voltage. I'm sure Edison was aware of this, but the lack of technology with which to syncronize generators made DC the best bet for the pioneer power grids. The reason for choosing 50/60Hz is also technological; frequencies in this area lend themselves well to building large generators and cause minimal disturbance to radio circuitry. For military purposes, 400Hz is often used, as it has a number of advantages, but it is unfortunately too late to convert to that in the consumer power grid.

The ELF project at Wisconsin and the back up at Michigan does the same job: at 76 Hz it can communicate effectively with organelles (nuclear subs in this case) well below the surface of the saline ocean. These subs have long strings dangling out behind them to pick up the signals. Cells also have long glycoproteins - a whole forest of them in the glycocalyx, each able to receive via their negatively charged sialic acid residues specific information.

Cancer cells have lost these glycoproteins, and are outside regulatory growth control for that reason. I can explain how that occurs, because it is fundamental to an understanding of malignancy and how to stop metastasis, but that has to be later in this dialogue, (perhaps when the young guy with his thirty peer reviewed papers wants to ask about it).

No, no, no. The ELF project works with waves. While, as we have discussed, a wire is unable to transmit an ELF wave unless it is very long (hundreds of kilometers), there are other ways to build radiating arials for ELF. The reason an ELF wave is capable of penetrating a very short way into the ocean (compared to its wavelength) is beyond the scope of this thread (suffice to say that the ocean is not very big compared to the wavelength), but that phenomenon is NOT SCALABLE. The ELF antennas of submarines are hundreds of meters long, and have to be. In comparison, even the entire length of a human body is less than a thousandth of an ELF wave, and they do not interact at all. For the cellular parts you are talking about to act as antennas, frequencies should be well into the nanowave spectrum (100+ Gigahertz), but these frequencies will not penetrate very far into the body (millimeter scale)

Hans I hope you can now see why this answer is not a simple one. I will stop at this point because the post is already over long, and take critical questions. [/B]

The answer is not simple, but it is severely confounded by your repeated attempts to make conclusions on a field where your knowledge is sketchy. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but there is no other way to put it: You may be a good biologist (I'm not qualified to judge that), but you demonstrate little more than a layman's knowledge of electromagnetics, yet you try to make theories straddling both disciplines. To put it humerously, you are like a man trying to ride two horses simultaneously, in too tight trousers. With the enevitable result .....:p.

Hans
 
Pragmatist said:
I have a conspiracy theory of my own. If an evil power company wanted to spin a perfect conspiracy then rather than paying off all these minions etc., to suppress the competition, it would be much easier to simply ensure that the opposition was not credible in the first place. So perhaps the best way would be to set up fake "bioelectromagnetics experts" to discredit the whole field. They would of course have to make sure that these fake "experts" were noticed. So they'd make sure they'd be selling a nice range of highly suspect woo woo devices for a start, with all kinds of bogus claims. And they'd also make sure that their "experts" were unable to answer simple scientific questions in their claimed fields of expertise. They'd then encourage these "experts" to get themselves noticed in any way possible, like joining skeptical forums and starting arguments, and by then demonstrating their incompetence by ducking and evading straight questions, giving utterly meaningless answers and so on.

Hmmm, I'm beginning to think there really MIGHT be something to this conspiracy business after all! I think we all need to look out! I wonder who might possibly fit the above criteria? :)

Conspiracy theory? Hardly. As I have said many times since Mr. Coghill joined this forum but without getting any answers from him, Mr. Coghill constitutes an establishment himself and regardless what Bill Hoyt and others think I do not consider him ignorant.

He knows very well that he doesn't have anything in his hand scientifically speaking and he resorts to political slogans to impress the general public. I had doubts until I saw the reference to Atlantis and the necromancers. He has a target group. He addresses consumers not citizens,free thinkers or scientists.Consumers. And he addresses people that when somebody cannot help he should leave them and their families alone in their pain.

Mr. Coghill is neither idiot nor ignorant he is arrogant. He sees people as wallets that he must empty because he believes that if he won't do it somebody else will.

Simple as that and sooo typical.
 
Cogreslab said:
the cellular immune system is programmed to understand the differences between self and non-self by characterised electric fields at the thymus

I've been meaning to address this particular point so here we go:

The Thymus is involved in the maturation of T cells. You get proto T cells going in and mature T cells coming out. Upto 98% of proto T cells fail and are destroyed T cells are Major Histocompatabilty Complex (MHC) restricted. This means they only recognise antigen when presented with a self MHC molecule. This is a fundamental part of antigen recognition.

So you get a whole load of wanna be T cells going into the Thymus, with a whole range of abilities. Some can't recognise MHC molecules for toffee, some love MHC so much they'll bind to the MHC with rather too much vigour (high affinity), and last and the smallest population those that are just right. So the first stage is positive selection, weed out the crappy ones that can't bind to MHC well. This takes place in the thymic cortex. A test for the immature cells, those that can bind to the MHC molecules on the epithelial cells pass and carry on. Those that cannot (weak affinity) undergo programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Thats gotten rid of the weedy ones, so now for the second test, negative selection, just as insufficient binding affiity is bad, over zealous binding is bad, so the immature T cells move on to the thymic medulla and interact with bone marrow derived antigen presenting cells. Thoose that interact too strongly undergo death by apoptosis.

Whats left, mature T cells that are self tolerant and MHC restricted.

So the Thymus matures T cells in a 2 step process, firstly positive selection that only allows T cells that recognise self MHC molecules to survive, then by negative selection that elimates T cells that react too strongly to self MHC. The primary process behind the selection is binding of molecules.
 
Prester John said:
So the Thymus matures T cells in a 2 step process, firstly positive selection that only allows T cells that recognise self MHC molecules to survive, then by negative selection that elimates T cells that react too strongly to self MHC. The primary process behind the selection is binding of molecules.
P/J,

That's a good discussion. The only thing I'd add to it at this point is that each T cell undergoes a hypermutation period, in which it splices and recombines specific areas of the gene responsible for the antigen-recognition molecules. This somatic recombination is unique to the immune system and is responsible for recognizing specific non-self cells. The few T cells that happen to randomly get the right tertiary and quaternary structures to identify the antigen get to survive as memory cells, and provide the basis for future defenses against the same invader.
 
Interesting explanations PJ and BH, I understood at least half of the long words ;). Am I to infer from this that Mr. Coghill's knowledge of immunology is (also) not that impressive?

Hans
 
cogreslab said:
...I will remove the word "always" and substitute the words "almost always" on our website page relevant to the pet magnet to avoid others making such stupid criticisms in future.
If you consider these criticisms stupid - why bother contemplating changing the claim on your advertising site?

Oh, and you might want to try;
"Given the choice your pet will ALMOST always choose to drink magnetic water but will not make this distinction if they are thirsty,"

Even with these weasel words, the advertising for this product is still misleading and wilfully so.

At least with the Magnetic Coaster advertisement you've protected yourself by not claiming it magnetises water.
"Use it to 'magnetise' drinking water, "

I'm presuming that is the purpose of the single quotes.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Interesting explanations PJ and BH, I understood at least half of the long words ;). Am I to infer from this that Mr. Coghill's knowledge of immunology is (also) not that impressive?

Hans

The problem is Mr Coghill is making claims and statements that have a tendancy to be vague and have no evidence to back them up. His proposed mechanism for carcinogenesis is "at odds" with the accepted model, and he has not produced any evidence to support it.

He appears to be a fan of Avemar, which is described as a nutriment. This contains substances in it that have (accepted) anti cancer properties. However he seems to feel that he is on to a novel discovery. Incidentally i believe that the supplement is rather expensive, and the pharmaceutical formulation of the active ingredients relatively cheap.

I don't pretend to be an expert on Immunolgy and much less Cell Biology, but then neither would it appear that Mr Coghill is either.
 
Roger Coghill:

Since we are juggling several balls here, let's not forget the "Harmonizer":

How do you propose that the little pendant you are advertizing on your web (at around 17£) is able to interfere with radio waves? How can this product influence radio waves that are not in its path?

How can you expect to be regarded as a scientist if you cannot explain how products you sell are working?

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Interesting explanations PJ and BH, I understood at least half of the long words ;). Am I to infer from this that Mr. Coghill's knowledge of immunology is (also) not that impressive?

Hans

I find myself in the same position as Hans, and I suspect most readers of this thread do.

We have to take into account that Roger claims expertise in "bioelectromagnetics". Which in turn HAS to require some competence in both biology AND electromagnetics. Now, some readers here are probably non technical, so they probably don't follow highly specific arguments related to EITHER biology OR electromagnetics. So for that reason I believe it's a good idea to occasionally summarize what is going on. Because one thing that is clear to me is that Roger is trying to confuse the issue with all kinds of diversions etc. He may not be able to convince anyone of his "technical" points, but failing that, I believe he hopes to confuse the issue sufficiently so that nobody will be a position to declare him absolutely wrong on all counts.

Now, I know a thing or two about electromagnetics. So does Hans. I believe that both Hans and I would agree that Roger knows NOTHING of any significance about electromagnetics. In fact his knowledge in this area is WORSE than I would expect from an average intelligent high school student.

I don't follow all the biology arguments in great detail, it's not an area I know very much about. But I know enough to see that there is something wrong there too. And with the help of people like PJ and BH I believe the evidence shows that Roger's knowledge of biology is similar to his knowledge of electromagnetics, i.e. virtually non-existent.

Quite aside from the specific knowledge is his demonstration of how he applies reasoning and "scientific method". And once again we find the same deficiencies.

There is only one possible conclusion. Roger's claim to be a "scientist" is basically untrue. There is nothing scientific about what he has done on here, or anywhere else that I can see.

On that basis I believe that there is little point in arguing with him about scientific matters. He simply doesn't know what he is talking about and only hopes to confuse people by throwing big technical words around. The more we argue with him on such points the more we contribute to his attempt to confuse.

I believe that this is what Cleopatra was saying before (my apologies if I have misunderstood). But at the same time, it was a useful exercise to explore the science, because that is what science actually requires, that even though we may believe the initial presentation to be BS, we are nonetheless obliged to explore the facts within reason. Having done so, the conclusion confirms the initial suspicion.

It might be more productive to explore his real motivations as Cleopatra has suggested. In part I addressed that with my last posting - (my own "conspiracy theory" was a joke by the way in case anyone didn't get that).

Roger clearly wants publicity. That much is obvious from his numerous comments to the effect about how many people have read this thread etc. But I believe that it is incumbent upon us to make it quite clear that the general result of this thread is that most of us believe our diagnosis of bullsh*t is unequivocally confirmed. Because if we don't I'm quite sure Roger will try to use this thread to advance his agenda by misrepresenting it.

I suspect the latter on the basis of what I have seen in the other threads. For example, in one of the other threads, Roger says:

Next may I address the issue of melodrama (Cleopatra's word). In 1998 I brought a court case at Cwmbran Magistrate's Court against a local cellphone retailer. I claimed an infringement of the UK Consumer Protection Act, 1978, for failing to label a product whose safety to the public was in doubt. The world's press turned up and the issue even got mentioned in the Malaysian Straits Gazette (not my normal read) . This case was instrumental in the appointment by the UKGovernment of the Stewart Committee, whose conclusions, after an urgent and thorough review of the literature was that children should be discouraged from excessive cellphone use, and that the frequencies used by such phones should avoid frequencies close to that of the brain. All new cellphone boxes now carry a warning message, and all UK retailers are supposed to hand new cellphone buyers a leaflet indicating the potential health hazards.

and elsewhere:

Why doesn't he take his evidence to the court and sue the hell out of the responsible organisations then?

All in good time. If the situation doesn't change shortly that is exactly my intention. As you have seen, I managed to find a way to bring the cellphone industry into the dock.



What Roger is NOT telling anyone is that he LOST the above case!!!!!!

The case was thrown out of court because he FAILED to prove his case. Yet he conveniently omits to tell us that. Instead the clever wording is designed to convey the idea that somehow he won it, and that his case was upheld.

Here is one link to the TRUTH: http://www.silicon.com/networks/mobile/0,39024665,11006349,00.htm

"After two days of expert testimony, magistrates at Abergavenny Magistrates Court found the defendant not guilty, dismissing three charges against him and ordering Coghill to pay costs."

I have some further points to make on this, but I have to go somewhere and don't have time right now. I'll continue later.
 
Pragmatist said:



What Roger is NOT telling anyone is that he LOST the above case!!!!!!

The case was thrown out of court because he FAILED to prove his case.



:eek:

Is that Stewart Report he influenced the same one that says in para. 6.37 "The balance of evidence to date suggests that exposures to RF radiation below NRPB and ICNIRP guidelines do not cause adverse health effects to the general population ?
 
To continue what I was saying earlier....

I don't know what happened in Roger's court case. But I sincerely hope that the person he sued was a friend or accomplice of his who was willing to undergo this ordeal. Because if NOT, then here is a case of an innocent man carrying on a perfectly respectable small business who was harassed and embarassed by Roger, and who stood to lose his business and his livelihood, solely to advance Roger's agenda.

If Roger genuinely believes that cell phones are so dangerous, the logical thing to do would be to sue the cell phone manufacturers, not some poor schmuck who just happens to sell them. One wonders if Roger's real motive here was simply to pick on a weak target, someone who presumably would not be in a good position to defend himself. I suspect this case tells us a lot about Roger's sense of fair play and his personal morality - but I hope I am wrong.

Another issue is these "devices" that Roger sells. I don't think any of us need to worry about whether the wine coaster really makes the wine taste better! But the alleged "protective products" are a different matter entirely as I have previously pointed out.

On Roger's web site he had a report about the "personal harmonizer". He concluded that it would "protect lymphocytes in vitro from cell phone radiations at 1800Mhz". Now, despite my personal opinion that his methodology is seriously suspect, I will acknowledge that this report makes it clear that the alleged protective effect is ONLY verified in-vitro, and that one cannot reasonably extend this conclusion to any "protective effect" in-vivo. This is spelled out several times in the report, and if anyone reads it properly they shouldn't draw the wrong conclusion and assume that it endorses it's use in real world situations.

However, if one goes to the manufacturer's web site, a somewhat different version of the same report is presented. In particular various paragraphs relating to the applicability of the results in-vitro ONLY have been removed. In THAT version there is only ONE minor reference at the end to in-vitro, and another very vague reference to the fact that no claim is made in-vivo. However, this would not be at all clear to a casual user.

Now, Roger cannot be held responsible for everything the manufacturer does, but one would think that as he clearly has a working relationship with the manufacturer that he would at least take some measures to ensure his report is not misrepresented for the purposes of a sale. And the fact that Roger himself sells the things, does nothing to convince that he is truly independent of the manufacturer.

Nor is there any "up front" declaration on his sales page to the effect that the device has NOT been certified to protect "in-vivo". In fact, when I raised the matter of the harmonizer with him only a few days ago in the context of "in-vivo protection", he made no mention of the "in-vitro" ONLY aspect of the device, and also even admitted that it now FAILS even his suspect test, and that as a result he MAY (this requires emphasis - MAY) stop selling it!

But it gets worse. Having admitted that his test cannot possibly determine whether such devices have any use "in-vivo", to quote him from the other thread:

"To conclude let me repeat, a study on cells in vitro does not mean that the effect will also occur in vivo in the living body."

he then goes on to "certify" other such devices as being effective in-vivo using exactly the same methodology which he has already assured us is NOT effective in-vivo! To wit, I refer to the following link as an example: http://www.radar3.com/report.doc where it says about the "Radar3" device:

Conclusion

1.The RA*D*AR device "completely protects" against electromagnetic radiation.

2.In addition, RA*D*AR users would find that their immune system was "over 20 percent stronger" than if they were not protected by RA*D*AR.


Seriously misleading? Draw your own conclusions. I presume that the immune system which Roger claims to be "over 20% stronger", refers to an immune system "in-vitro"??? Clever man indeed, our Roger!

Perhaps I should issue my own "Coghill Challenge". Roger, let's see you put your mouth where your money is for a change. Would you be prepared to stand inside a large scale microwave oven for a good 30 minute basting at a power density of say 800 watts per kg body weight, armed only with your wonderful Radar3 device? Or similarly in a gamma ray flux chamber of a nuclear reactor? Hmmm....thought not!

How many other such "devices" have you "certified" in this way? I shudder to think!

I think we can all conclude that Roger's motives for rubbish such as the above have nothing to do with science. No way, no how!

I'll stop here for the moment.
 

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