Maxwell's Silver Hammer 281
Various other symptoms consistent with stress were found, including
decreased water intake, enlarged adrenal and pituitary glands, and al-
tered protein and hormone ratios in the blood. There was also a very
high incidence—ten in sixty—of glaucoma in the early experiments.
The disease didn't show up in later runs from which we excluded ani-
mals having observable eye defects, suggesting that the electric field had
worsened a preexisting problem rather than causing it.
We expected the utilities to roll out their heavy artillery when the
PSC hearings resumed, but we were still unprepared for what actually
happened. The companies had hired two microwave researchers, Herman
Schwan and Solomon Michaelson, both of whom did most of their work
for the Department of Defense, and University of Rochester botanist
Mort Miller. Carefully prepared by these three, the company lawyers
cross-examined us for seventeen days in December 1975, attacking not
only our methods and results but our scientific competence and honesty
as well. Michaelson strenuously denied that our rodents had shown signs
of stress, even though the biological markers were clear. Even if they
had, he contended, stress could be healthful, an idea that Hans Selye
later called "farfetched" when applied to a biological challenge that was
continuous and not self-imposed.
As far as I know, our testimony was the first ever openly given by
American scientists stating that
electromagnetic energy had health
effects in doses below those needed to heat tissue, and that power lines
might therefore be hazardous to human health. We criticized the White
House Office of Telecommunications Policy for failing to follow up a
tentative 1971 warning by advising the President that some harmful
effects from electropollution were now proven. Moreover, although we
didn't realize it at the time, we greatly embarrassed Captain Tyler and
the Navy by publicly revealing the existence of the Sanguine report,
which had been secret until then.
Among those who heard about it was Wisconsin Senator Gaylord
Nelson, who was understandably furious that his constituents were even
then being used as guinea pigs in ongoing ELF tests at an experimental
station near Clam Lake, while the document gathered dust in some
Navy safe. Quoting Andy and me, he soundly criticized the Navy on the
Senate floor. Due to local opposition, the Navy had already moved the
site of the full-scale antenna to Mulligan's upper peninsula, modifying
the design and giving it a new name—Project Seafarer. Nelson's fury
now induced the Secretary of the Navy to ask the National Academy of
Sciences for further study of the environmental questions. Harvard's bi-
ology chairman,
Woodland Hastings, who was picked to head the NAS