Allan Frey

January 10, 2022

Leif Salford celebrated his 80^th birthday on December 7. An emeritus professor at Sweden’s Lund University and a noted neurosurgeon, Salford spent much of his career treating patients with brain tumors. Over the years, he became frustrated as, all too often, he was unable to save them with a scalpel.

In 1987, Salford came across a paper in Neuroscience Letters from a group at the University of Western Ontario, who had found that rats undergoing the equivalent of a routine MRI scan showed changes in their blood-brain barrier. The BBB is a membrane that keeps potentially toxic substances in the bloodstream from getting into the brain. It’s not a perfect barrier —it can leak. The Canadians reported that something about the electromagnetic exposures during the MRI scan had increased the permeability of the rats’ BBB. It had become more porous.

If microwaves used in the MRI were responsible, Salford thought....

November 29, 2021

The End of BEMSA Merger or a Heist?

The Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) and the European BioElectromagnetics Association (EBEA), the two leading research groups in Western countries, will soon join together and become BioEM. Like its predecessors, the new society will be a forum on the interactions of all types of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields and radiation with living organisms. BioEM will be based in Zurich, Switzerland.

The move is hardly unexpected. Just the opposite. A union has been in the planning stages since at least 2016. Many favored a BEMS-EBEA consolidation even earlier, but it ran into one roadblock or another, at least partly because directors did not want to lose control.

May 9, 2021

Yuri Grigoriev, Russian BiophysicistAnd Non-Thermalist, Dies at 95

Yuri Grigoriev, a Russian biophysicist and a singular figure in the world of electromagnetic health and safety over the last 50 years, died in Moscow on April 6 at the age of 95.

“We have lost a ‘scientific grandfather’,” Oleg Grigoriev told Microwave News. “Yuri supported scientists and pushed them to do research. He was greatly respected by all his colleagues, myself included.”

In contrast to many of his counterparts in the West, Yuri Grigoriev promoted the idea that microwave biology is more complex than simple tissue heating. His views were based, in part, on his own research showing the importance of modulation characteristics.

December 16, 2020

“A Computational Investigation of Strain Concentration in the Brain in Response to a Rapid Temperature Rise,” Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, March 2021. Microwave pulses and embassy illness: Computer simulations show importance of how long they are (or more importantly, how short) to cause potential ill effects in the brain.

December 5, 2020

“An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies,” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Released December 5, 2020. “Overall, directed pulsed RF energy, especially in those with the distinct early manifestations, appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these case.” See also this thread of nine tweets.

September 2, 2018

“Microwave Weapons Are Prime Suspect in Ills of U.S. Embassy Workers,” New York Times, September 1, 2018.

“Strikes with microwaves, some experts now argue, more plausibly explain reports of painful sounds, ills and traumas than do other possible culprits — sonic attacks, viral infections and contagious anxiety.” (Front page, print edition, September 2.)

May 30, 2013

“Are We Ignoring the Dangers of Mobile Phones? To some scientists they are deadlier than cigarettes; to others they're harmless. Will we ever know the truth about mobile phones?”

The Telegraph (U.K.), May 30, 2013.

March 12, 2013

Are Magnetic Fields in Incubators Confounding Cell Culture Studies?

Lucas Portelli just ran over the Cheshire cat. He didn't know it was there. He's too young to appreciate how this fictional feline has held sway in the EMF-health controversy.

A little background for newcomers: the Cheshire cat is a metaphor for the lack of reproduciblity of EMF effects observed in some laboratories —but not others. It’s a favorite of those who see the study of EMFs as pathological science. The effects come and go, like the Cheshire Cat. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don’t. EMF effects are not thought as being robust. Or more plainly, they are not to be believed.

But what if there was an unregognized confounding factor that was playing havoc with the EMF experiments? Portelli may well have found such a confounder.

December 4, 2012

Plus Ça Change…

Another in our continuing series —Nothing Ever Really Changes.

We recently came across an item in the January 20, 1964, issue of Newsweek titled, “The Mrs. G Effect” about a California housewife, who could hear noises that no one else could hear.

An “expert” was brought in. As far as he could tell, Mrs. G was converting alternating current fields into sound signals “as though she were a radio receiver.” Newsweek also talked to Allan Frey who offered qualified support. “If you use the correct frequency and modulate it...

September 25, 2012

“Cell Phone Health Risk? Security Concerns During the Cold War May Have Led to the Generation of Misinformation on the Physiological Effects of Microwave Radiation from Mobile Phones,”

The Scientist, September 25, 2012, by Allan Frey.

June 5, 2012

Milton Zaret, an “Early Prophet” of Microwave Hazards, Dies at 91

Milton Zaret, an ophthalmologist who was one of the first to warn about long-term health hazards of microwave radiation, died on May 29. He was 91.

"Dr. Zaret was an extraordinary pioneer who showed that microwaves have a profound effect on the eye," said Paul Brodeur, who chronicled Zaret's career in The New Yorker more than 35 years ago and in his subsequent 1977 book, The Zapping of America. Brodeur called Zaret an "early prophet" of the biological hazards of microwaves.

June 15, 2007

Weak Kilohertz Electric Fields Kill Tumor Cells

It’s become axiomatic that wide acceptance of non-thermal effects will come from developing biomedical therapies rather than from studying potential hazards. The health effects work is mostly sponsored by those who don't want to find any. And they usually don't (cf: the USAF, EPRI, CTIA, FGF, MMF, etc.) So no one should be surprised that the latest advance comes from a small high-tech Israeli company, Novocure, which is looking for innovative ways to treat cancer. It's a breakthrough —most likely a major breakthrough.

Novocure uses weak 100-200 kHz electric fields —the company calls them tumor treating fields or TTFields— to stunt the growth of cancer cells, either by slowing down their proliferation or by killing them off entirely. The company has now demonstrated this in four different cancer cell lines. Even more impressive is that tumor growth has been curtailed in mice, rats and, in a small pilot project, ten human patients with recurrent brain tumors (glioblastoma).

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Allan Frey: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )