168
The Body Electric
multinational medical-equipment company that made our "black boxes,"
the battery packs with all their circuitry that powered our electrodes. I
discussed the problem with the company's young research director, Jack
TerBeek, and a few weeks later he came back with a fascinating material.
NASA needed an electrically conductive fabric, and a small manufactur-
ing company had produced nylon parachute cloth coated with silver. It
could be cut to any size and was eminently flexible.
It performed beautifully. Although the silver ions still didn't get
more than a quarter of an inch from it, we could use it to cover a large
area. Hopeful that we might have a cure for two of an orthopedist's
worst
nightmares—nonunion
and
osteomyelitis
(bone
infection)—we
studied the positive silver technique in the lab and continued to use the
negative electrodes to stimulate bone growth in selected patients. Word
spread via newspaper and TV reports. We began getting patients from
all over the nation, but we didn't accept many for the experimental
program due to my conservative viewpoint. I applied the same criterion
as before: Electrical treatment had to be the patient's last chance.
While slowly gaining experience, we surveyed the literature to stay
informed about other people's work. As of 1976, fourteen research
groups had used bone stimulators on some seven hundred patients, for
spinal fusions and fresh fractures as well as nonunions, all with seem-
ingly good results.
We'd used our electrical generator on only thirteen patients by then.
We were the only ones using silver electrodes, a lucky choice as it
turned out; all the others were using stainless steel, platinum, or ti-
tanium. We used 100 to 200 nanoamps per centimeter of electrode,
while Brighton and most other investigators were using 10,000 to
20,000 nanoamps. The low level approximated the natural current and
also minimized the chances of a dangerous side effect. Brighton and
Friedenberg had found a danger of infection and tissue irritation when
running their high-current electrodes at more than 1 volt. We figured
this couldn't happen at our amperage, but just to be sure we built in an
alarm circuit to shut off our box automatically if the electrical force rose
close to 1 volt.
By this time we'd also cleared up several more cases of osteomyelitis
by reversing the battery and making the silver electrode positive for a
day. It looked safe. There was no crossover of effects: When negative,
the wire didn't
make
infectious bacteria
grow,
and
when
positive,
it
didn't destroy bone-forming cells or prevent them from growing when
we switched the current to negative. Our confidence in this method
grew with one of our most challenging cases, which also forced us to
revise our theories.