THE INVISIBLE RAINBOW

This seminal book, subtitled 'a history of electricity and life', will transform your understanding of this relationship and especially of the environmental and health effects of electricity and radio frequencies. The book contains 160 pages of references related to individual chapters and topics. Many readers will have come across of Arthur's work with his International Appeal to stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5GSpaceAppeal.org). During the lockdown, the launch of 5G satellites has continued, and Elon Musk's SpaceX now has nearly 600 in the ionosphere of a planned 42,000. The total envisaged is 100,000 distributed among a number of companies, with a lifespan between 5 and 10 years, so they will eventually need to be replaced at a rate of 10,000 per year.

Arthur points out in summary (from a recent email) that 'the threat to life comes from the fact that all these satellites are located in the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a source of high voltage that controls the global electric circuit, which in turn provides the energy for life.' He continues: 'all animals and plants are polarised positive to negative from head to feet, or from leaves to roots. An electric current of picowatt per square meter amplitude flows from the positively charged sky to the negatively charged earth in fair weather, courses through the earth beneath our feet, and returns to the sky via lightning bolts during thunderstorms. Every living thing is part of this circuit. The current enters our heads from the sky, circulates through our meridians, and enters the earth through the soles of our feet. This current provides the energy for growth, healing, and life itself. We do not live by bread alone, but by the energy provided to us by the biosphere. Oriental medicine calls it qi, Ayurvedic medicine calls it prana, and atmospheric physicists call it electricity. It provides us energy for life, and information that organises our bodies. If you pollute this circuit with billions of digital pulsations, you will destroy all life.' We are electrical as well as biological and chemical beings.

The history of electricity and life begins in the 18th century and its therapeutic use with electrotherapy aimed at restoring the electrical equilibrium of the body, but its negative effects were also soon apparent, as shown in a revealing table on page 28. Contemporary electrosensitive people will immediately recognise the list of largely neurological symptoms; these were also suffered by pioneers such as Benjamin Franklin, and later by Marconi and many telegraph workers at the end of the 19th century. A key early philosophical development is reflected in the tension between the biology of Galvani and the physics of Volta, later developing into the battle between mechanism and spirit, the material and the vital, with the ultimate triumph of the mechanistic view over vitalism.

The most important figure in the mid-19th century was George Miller Beard MD, who coined the term neurasthenia in 1869, coinciding with the widespread introduction in the US of telegraph wires 30,000 times stronger than the natural electric field of the Earth at that frequency. In 1885, the German physician Rudolph Arndt specifically proposed that 'electrosensitivity is characteristic of high-grade neurasthenia.' Then along came Freud in 1894, who crucially relabelled neurasthenia as 'anxiety neurosis' and its crises 'anxiety attacks'. This immediately transformed a physical into a psychological condition, a diagnosis that continues to this day with many physicians arguing that chronic fatigue syndrome is just psychological. It is important to note that our nervous systems are susceptible both to electrical load and toxic chemicals – these may be mutually reinforcing and make it harder to discern the relative importance of cofactors in disease.

The chapter on the behaviour of plants reports the work of Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose FRS (1858-1937), who 'proved the exquisite sensitivity of all living things to electromagnetic stimuli' related to the strength of the current. Later, Vernon Blackman discovered that electric currents averaging less than 1 milliampere per acre increased the yields of several types of crops by 20%, while increasing the current two 1/10 of a microampere was always harmful. Bose also discovered that radio waves could slow the ascent of sap.

A currently controversial aspect of Firstenberg's thesis is the association of electrification with the emergence of influenza in 1889. The epidemiologist Edgar Hope-Simpson proposed that the flu virus is not actually spread person-to-person, but remains latent until 'reactivated by an environmental trigger of some sort.' The author cites extensive other work connecting influenza with sunspots or atmospheric electricity, which might go some way towards explaining why pandemics begin in widely scattered parts of the world (p. 85 ff.). The confusion arises from the fact that 'influenza is a virus and it is also clinical illness', and not all people carrying the virus will show symptoms, as is also the case with the current pandemic. The author argues that in each major influenza outbreak of 1889, 1918, 1957 and 1968 'the electrical envelope of the earth… was suddenly and profoundly disturbed' – as it is also the case with the current rollout of 5G, although to propose any such a connection on the Internet is immediately labelled misinformation and taken down. I think that part of the problem arises from our tendency to seek out single rather than multiple systemic factors in analysing aetiology. This is reinforced by scientific specialisation where 'atmospheric physicists do not study astronomy. Astronomers do not study electricity. Electricians do not study biology. Medical doctors do not study acupuncture. Doctors of oriental medicine do not study atmospheric physics. But the universe is not fragmented, it is a whole, and our culture has forgotten this, to its peril and to the peril of everything alive.'

The next chapter explains the nature of Earth's ionosphere as an electric envelope, as already explained in the quotation at the beginning of this review. The important point to note is that all life has co-evolved with these natural frequencies, but humans have altered them out of all recognition: our electromagnetic environment is radically different from what it was before 1889. As a background to his consideration of the influence of electromagnetic radiation on heart disease, diabetes and cancer, the author explains the critical role of porphyrins in the manufacture of heme and as molecules interfacing between oxygen and life – they are also present in the nervous system - (pp. 136 ff.) and explains the work of Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgi on piezoelectricity and therefore the connection between electricity and biology; this followed up on Otto Lehmann, who had proposed as early as 1908 that 'the very basis of life was the liquid crystalline state.'

The common aetiological factor identified by the author behind diseases of civilisation is oxygen starvation to the cells resulting in slow asphyxiation – and also a slower metabolism overall. It might be argued that although the author provides a great deal of circumstantial evidence, he overstates his case here, but there is no doubt that the role of electromagnetic radiation in the genesis of disease has been almost completely neglected in favour of other factors. In the chapter on heart disease, the author points out that animals in zoos were similarly affected (also by obesity), which makes an interesting control group. In both cases 'microwave radiation, and electricity in general, starves the heart of oxygen because of effects at the cellular level.' (p. 177) The central mechanism is that the mitochondria cannot efficiently use oxygen and nutrients, thus starving the whole body of oxygen. The same mitochondrial mechanism is present in bees, but at a much faster metabolic rate – see below. In all these cases of disease, the rate of cellular metabolism is reduced and the Krebs cycle impaired (p. 215).

With respect to cancer, as I also mention in my review of Travis Cristofferson's book below, Otto Warburg homed in on the importance of metabolism, identifying the central causative factor as 'nothing other than oxygen deficiency.' The author reports that it has now been shown that the protein HIF (hyperoxia inducible factor) 'is activated under conditions of low oxygen, and that in turn activates many of the genes necessary for cancer growth.' (p. 239) Later, he discusses the implications of the fascinating finding and implications for ageing, based on the electron transport system in the mitochondria of our cells. Research has shown that calorie restriction can extend lifespans by slowing metabolism, but this is also a side-effect of poisoning the electron transport chain whereby our cells are starved of oxygen rather than calories (my emphasis). Paradoxically, while both calorie restriction and oxygen deprivation slow metabolism and prolong life, 'where calorie restriction prevents cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, electromagnetic fields promote cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.' (p. 270) So 'radiation always produces two opposite kinds of effects: injurious effects that shorten the lifespan, and a reduction in basal metabolic rate that lengthens the lifespan' – these results are also found in experimental animals.

One of the most disturbing chapters reports research on bees, birds and trees as well as humans with 15 pages of detailed scientific references. The bottom line is that all species of birds are affected by cell phone antennae – examples are given from London and Edinburgh – in terms of fertility and therefore population. Pigeons lose their navigation skills and radio tagging ironically alters the behaviour of the animals under investigation. Extensive research has been carried out on the damaging effects of cell phones on bees, and electromagnetic radiation is arguably a more critical factor than mites in triggering colony collapse disorder. Similar damage is reported to trees and forest soil where 'needles and leaf-ribs of trees are resonant absorbers like antennas… the electrons migrate as ionic bonds from the leaves, the trunk and then through the roots into the soil…. generally making the soil acidic similar to the effect of acid rain'. Detailed and persuasive location studies involving population health are also given here.

All this brings us back to the present where official radio frequency radiation safety levels are set by regulators like the FCC and ICNIRP that have been captured by the telecommunications industry in a similar way to health agencies by the pharmaceutical industry. Governments do not want to know about extensive scientific research that might undermine the economic growth promised by the current 5G rollout, with 6G in the pipeline. Documentaries and even Senate hearings admit that no prior health research was carried out prior to the rollout, although the more general literature on the topic is vast, as this book demonstrates. Researchers like Olle Johansson from the Karolinska Institute who concluded that electrosensitivity is environmentally induced lose their jobs and funding – and an attempt was even made on his life by sawing through 27 spokes of the rear wheel of his motorcycle. As I imply in the title of my review, the findings of this hugely important book are a seriously inconvenient truth and it is high time that we looked more closely at the relationship between electromagnetic radiation and the health of all life, not just ourselves. This is potentially a crime against nature, and we are part of nature.