Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields

Abstract

Molecular biology today appears to be the mainstream interpretative basis for all cellular and pathophysiological phenomena, even going so far as to embrace neuronal and psychic events. The explanation of disease processes, whether genetic or acquired, is sought and, where possible, located in mechanisms consisting in quantitative and/or qualitative modifications of particular molecules making up part of the various anatomical or physiological systems. In relation with the molecular paradigm of disease, also the medical treatment is today founded mostly on the conventional pharmacological approach. However, the need of further research in different fields is suggested by the fact that biological phenomena are characterized by high levels of organization, in which inter-molecular and inter-cellular communications of biophysical nature appear to be involved according to many lines of evidence (Bellavite and Signorini, 1995). As suggested by Kroy (1989), in the living creatures there is an ancestral cybernetic order that is not based on the nervous system or on the humoral system (blood, hormones). This ancestral system is thought to be of an electromagnetic nature, because electromagnetic radiation is the most basic form of information carrier present in nature. Electromagnetic signals have constituted (and still constitute) both the language of communication between atoms and molecules and the means whereby primordial organisms received a series of items of information on the environment (sunlight, other cosmic waves). Living organisms have learnt to use electromagnetism as an information signalling system and even as a means of communication between cells and tissues. According to the studies by Popp and coworkers (Popp 1985; Popp et al. 1989; Ho and Popp 1994), many biological systems are capable of producing, receiving and even of “storing” electromagnetic waves such as light.