It seems, at first blush, a little odd that a story about the therapeutic benefits of electromagnetic radiation (in Microwave News this week) instead of reassuring people about low level radiation being safe (as utility companies say) actually confirms worries that Smart Meter opponents have regarding the radiation these meters emit being dangerous.

The story by Louis Slesin discusses studies by a research team “led by Boris Pasche of the University of Alabama medical school” which used non ionizing radiation (at lower levels than a cell phone) to treat cancer.  The first study, released a few months ago, showed how specially modulated EMF could shrink tumors in advanced liver cancer patients, the EMF actually working better than the approved drug used for the disease.  In the second study, published three days ago, in the British Journal of Cancer,  Dr. Pasche  and his team used cell lines, in vitro, which showed that different cancers reacted to different modulated frequencies.  Said Dr. Pasche “So, we now have in vitro findings showing modulation frequency specific effects of hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer), breast cancer and ovarian cancer.”

So how could this completely wonderful and promising new treatment for cancer help confirm or add proof for those of us who are concerned about the deleterious health effects of RF radiation? This is because, of course, to treat or “heal” cancer you need to kill or  “damage” cancer cells. Dr. Pasche and his research group’s work involved using “narrowly defined, specific modulation [EMF] frequencies” which disrupted the “mitotic spindle”(which is in the nucleus of a cell) as well as caused “changes in gene expression,” which is how the cell uses its DNA.  As one pathologist said, “If this radiation can damage the ability of tumor cells to divide, it can also potentially damage the ability of normal cells to divide.”

So Dr. Pasche’s success with cancer patients is further evidence that low level, non thermal radiation, under the right circumstances, can damage cells. That’s good news as a medical treatment prescribed and administered in a doctor’s office, but not necessarily such good news when it is being emitted from a device placed on the side of your house by a utility company.