Bioelectromagnetics

[Pragmatist]

Thanks for the lecture on Law, Pragmatist, in legal terms and strictly legally speaking though only specific kind of claims can be subjected to Law. The way the coasters are presented by their manufacturer , if they fail to do what they promise well, Law doesn't care.

This is why I accused Mr. Coghill that he makes claims based on subjective criteria like taste, comfort etc. Law (thank God) doesn't care about your taste.

So, I guess that here you debate ethics and not law. In that case I agree with you.

Cleopatra, forgive me if you thought I was trying to lecture you on law! I wasn't, honest!

I was only explaining that I thought there were many levels of "wrong", some of them legal. Of course I could be wrong, I'm not a lawyer.

If the coasters are sold in England/Wales, as Roger is, then I believe they'd be covered by the English Sale of Goods Act, which states that "Goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are sold" and offers legal remedies if they are not. I have no idea if a court in England would accept a case against coasters on that basis. It sure would be an interesting case to watch though if it happened!

 

[cogreslab]

OK Just a quicky replying to Soapy Sam: Yes there may be all kinds of other possible causes of leukaemia in children, and other experts no doubt are looking in these. I am only investigating the EMF possibility, and reporting the correlations we found. All I can say is that at present the only agreed cause of leukaemia is electromagnetic radiation (we know that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki) so, since childhood leukaemia continues to rise, it seems plausible to investigate if the weaker forms of electromagnetic radiation, and even electromagnetic fields might also be implicated.

I do not say I have all the answers Soapy: what I want is that the pilot study we reported in 1996 be replicated properly and on a larger scale by the utilities, which they seem strangely reluctant to do, and this makes me suspicous when taken together with all the other circumstantial evidence (absence of electric field probes in EMDEX, refusal of electricity companies to measure residential electric fields in the homes nof their customers, carefully incorrect exposure periods in the UKCCCR study, failure to collect adequate period electric field data, etc., against a background of plenty of cellular and live animal evidence of a role for the electric field in adverse health effects).

 

[Cleopatra]

If the coasters are sold in England/Wales, as Roger is, then I believe they'd be covered by the English Sale of Goods Act, which states that "Goods must be fit for the purpose for which they are sold" and offers legal remedies if they are not. I have no idea if a court in England would accept a case against coasters on that basis. It sure would be an interesting case to watch though if it happened!

I can always use a good lecture worry not. Well who will sue somebody for failing to make his wine taste better. None can prove that, this is my point. The product doesn't claim that it can turn vinegar into wine it says that it can make your wine taste better. Go figure.

 

[cogreslab]

...and before I finally go to bed, just to remind would-be magnetic coaster buyers that all our products carry a full moneyback guarantee of at least thirty days. If our coasters (or rather the coasters of the producers whose products we sell) do not work for any customer we will gladly refund their money. Now tell me that is unethical! And as for subjectivity why not try it on your pet, who will not be influenced by any placebo effect, but will genuinely prefer the magnetised water in my predictive belief.

Magnetic products are moreover pretty durable (unless heated) so your insoles will still available to you Cleopatra long after your thermal socks have worn out. Kalinukta. Or something like that!

 

[Timble]

....only agreed cause of leukaemia is elecromagnetic radiation (we know that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki) so, since childhood leukaemia continues to rise, it seems plausible to investigate if the weaker forms of electromagnetic radiation......

I suspect a lot of people at Hiroshima and Nagasaki also swallowed or inhaled radioactive particulates.

And on causes:

At: http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/en.asp?TopicID=286&AreaID=565&LinkID=168

Exposure to certain things increases the risk of leukaemia, including:

radiation,
drugs used to treat certain cancers,
some industrial chemicals (e.g. benzene), and
certain viruses.

It should be noted, however, that even large doses of radiation do not necessarily cause leukaemia. Over a period of 12 years after the atomic bombs were exploded in Japan, the proportion of survivors who developed leukaemia was 1 in 60 (1.7 per cent).

 

[Pragmatist]

This issue of balancing came out at the North Yorks Power Line Public Inquiry in 1992. I do not profess to be an electrical engineer, but perhap one with better knowledge than me can explain how the generators can ever exactly predict the demanded load so that there is current balance? There is always gojng to be a small difference between generation at one end of the line and uptake at the other isn't there? And what about phase balance? (Another mystery to me). Do not these imbalances give rise to fields? Then there is the issue of unbalanced ground return currents too.

I would imagine that balancing for lines is achieved through some form of transformer arrangement and wouldn't depend on generators directly. The basic principle of most cancellation schemes is that you put fields in opposition to each other, antiphase currents would produce opposed fields, and the opposed fields would cancel each other out. The imbalances across the length of a line are unlikely to cause any significant fields either. The one thing that would NOT be cancelled by any of these schemes is the displacement field on a long line. But then again, since you keep insisting you've "proved" me wrong and that it doesn't exist, then I guess there's nothing to worry about, is there?

Ground return currents may be significant, as indeed may be ground mirroring which is related, but which you also contested previously when I mentioned the possibility of lines radiating. According to you, they don't, so again I guess we can forget it!

 

[Pragmatist]

...and before I finally go to bed, just to remind would-be magnetic coaster buyers that all our products carry a full moneyback guarantee of at least thirty days. If our coasters (or rather the coasters of the producers whose products we sell) do not work for any customer we will gladly refund their money. Now tell me that is unethical!

That's very good, and not at all unethical as far as coasters are concerned. But answer me this:

Acting in reliance upon your claims that some product will protect me against harmful EM, I purchase said product and then stop worrying about exposures to EM sources. It turns out that the device does NOT protect me and I subsequently develop terminal cancer as a result of the exposures I thought I was protected from. I am reassured you'll give me my money back.

But here's the (literally) killer question: will you give me my life back?

Or will you just sell me some suspect "cancer cure" and wait for me to die before I can sue you?

It sounds harsh, but then again these are serious matters are they not?

 

[EHocking]

...And as for subjectivity why not try it on your pet, who will not be influenced by any placebo effect, but will genuinely prefer the magnetised water in my predictive belief.

Can we assume then that the Coasters that Tez has are exactly the same as the Pet Coasters and that any test of pet's preference of drinking water can be done using either coaster?

Also, as you have previously stated that you do not do any tests on animals (excepts worms) what sort of study did you do to indicate that pets will always drink magnetised water in preference to plain?

 

[Prester John]

[B And as for subjectivity why not try it on your pet, who will not be influenced by any placebo effect, but will genuinely prefer the magnetised water in my predictive belief.

[/B]

1) the placebo effect does work on pets, or rather their owners who subjectivly interpret the pets responses.

2) I maintain that you have not adequately answered my statistical problems with your paper. I assume you refered me to the statistical primer in an earlier reply, this is both insulting to me and uninformative to the casual reader of the thread. If you will not or cannot discuss your own paper, one wonders why you brought it up. I'm a believer in the "no stupid questions" philosophy, what do you think?

3) if the director of WCISU is so convinced, why hasn't an investigation been carried out, i'm quite sure that he has the influence to do it if he wants to.

 

[Timble]

Bump, so Mr Coghill et al can find it.

 

[cogreslab]

To Pragmatist: Not really living up to your username are you? Another speculation to accuse me with!

"Acting in reliance upon your claims that some product will protect me against harmful EM, I purchase said product and then stop worrying about exposures to EM sources. It turns out that the device does NOT protect me and I subsequently develop terminal cancer as a result of the exposures I thought I was protected from. I am reassured you'll give me my money back".

Which product of ours are you referring to?

What you are describing might well be the disgraceful con trick perpetrated by the cancer industry right now, who lull patients into the false sense of security that they can treat cancer by poison, cutting or burning, and quote five year survival figures to support their lies, when the secondaries start appearing in year six.

 

[cogreslab]

To PJ and EHocking: If you consider giving a thirsty animal water to be an "experiment" then you have a weird sense of humour. How subjective is it if that animal drinks from one of two bowls, only one of which is on top of a magnetic pad? You can bring a horse to water etc...

Do'nt insult us all with these pedantries!

"3) if the director of WCISU is so convinced, why hasn't an investigation been carried out, i'm quite sure that he has the influence to do it if he wants to".

Why indeed! I have offered you one answer: in a word, money.

As for our study on childhood leukaemia, the statistics of our results show an elevated incidence as tested by well recognised statistical techniques carried out by a professional. You are actually insulting him, not me by questioning the method and denying the evident results which these statistics show.

 

[Timble]

What you are describing might well be the disgraceful con trick perpetrated by the cancer industry right now, who lull patients into the false sense of security that they can treat cancer by poison, cutting or burning, and quote five year survival figures to support their lies, when the secondaries start appearing in year six.

Frankly, Mr Coghill you are talking out of your arse.

Your medical knowledge is obviously skimpier than your knowledge of physics.

 

[cogreslab]

To Timble: What a well-argued, polite and logical response! Just what I have come to expect from some posts on this forum. Take another look at the cancer industry's success rate, Timble, before you take a Tumble.

 

[Timble]

Since I am currently writing a monograph on a novel anticancer agent and have around 30 peer-reviewed papers on my desk as I write - I suggest you talk about something you know.

In your eyes I suppose I'm part of the conspiracy?

 

[cogreslab]

To answer another recent question: this comes from the BBC's website reporting the results of the UKCCCR study:

"Michael Repacholi and Anders Ahlbom of the WHO write: "Although the UKCCS is very large and well-conducted, it is not the definitive study many scientists have been hoping for."

However, the results have been welcomed by the UK electricity industry.

Dr John Swanson, the Electricity Association's scientific advisor, said: "It now seems clearer than ever before that we have to look elsewhere for the real causes of childhood cancer."

Later this year I will be reminding him of these words.

 

[cogreslab]

Pleased to hear you are trying something new! So are we: but we don't just write literature based monographs, we test the agents in vitro too. I probably know more about anticancer treatments than you have had hot dinners, sonny boy.

 

[cogreslab]

Yes, I said poison:

Also from the BBC's website:

"However, it is known that exposure to large doses of ionizing radiation, cigarette smoking, and, infrequently, high dose chemotherapy for other cancers, can contribute to the development of leukaemia".

 

[Timble]

You are patronising and arrogant, Mr Coghill.

How d'you justify that statement?

Poker.

 

[BillHoyt]

Pleased to hear you are trying something new! So are we: but we don't just write literature based monographs, we test the agents in vitro too. I probably know more about anticancer treatments than you have had hot dinners, sonny boy.

And your challenge is to test a human infant how, Coghill?