Introduction
When we inquire about the mechanism of a biological effect, we have implicit reference to a
picture of how nature is organized and how it should be approached. In one view, the biological system
is seen as more than a sum of its parts and it is held that one cannot understand an organism's essential
characteristic-life-by studying subsystems below a certain structural level because life does not exist
below that level. This idea was precisely stated by Paul Weiss (1)
:
If a is indispensable for both b and c; b for both a and c; and c for both a and b; no pair of
them could exist without the third member of the group, hence any attempt to build up such
a system by consecutive additions would break down right at the first step. In other words,
a system of this kind can exist only as an entity or not at all.
Thus, for example, even complete knowledge of the properties of a protein solution would not
tell us how the protein functioned in vivo; we would not even know whether its in vitro properties had
any relevance at all. Under this approach, the proper starting point to study nature is the whole
organism in its normal environment. It is recognized that, considering the organism's physiological
control processes, not all biological phenomena can be localized to specific tissues in the organism. In
contrast to this cybernetic approach is the idea that, ultimately, living things will be describable solely
in terms of the physical laws governing inanimate things. Methodologically, this analytical approach
consists of the study of increasingly more complex models of the organism's parts, with the goal of
explaining the organism's characteristics and behavior in terms of the characteristics and behavior of
the models. The amount of whole-animal data presently available is much greater than that involving
model systems and, for this reason, the cybernetic approach gives a more general and more useful
picture of bioelectrical phenomena. This approach is described below; work that can be considered to
have arisen from an analytical approach is described in the following section.
Cybernetic Approach
The cybernetic approach to EMF-induced biological effects begins with a view of the living
system as a black box. The animal is considered to have an unknown internal organization, and the
only factors regarded as accessible to investigation are the applied EMF (input) and the biological
effect (output). Empirical data that describe relationships between various inputs and outputs is
generalized into empirical laws that furnish insights into the relevant component processes. The
empirical laws cannot conflict with known physical law, but they need not conform to a process or
behavior observed only in a model system. The reports described in the preceding chapters provide a
basis for this approach, and they may be summarized this way:
I. EMFs can alter the metabolism of all body systems, including the nervous, endocrine,
cardiovascular, hematological, immune-response, and reproductive systems.
2. The effects on each tissue or system are largely independent of the type of EMF. The studies
suggest that there are common physiological pathways for spectrally different EMFs, and that the
major consequence associated with specificity of the EMF is that it determines the magnitude or
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