Special Issue: The Melatonin Connection

For the last three issues of Electromagnetics Forum, each issue carried many different articles on the various aspects of the health effects of electromagnetic fields/radiation. For this particular issue I have digressed from that format to examine the evidence for a connection with powerline electromagnetic fields, melatonin and breast cancer. This issue, which has for the several months taken up much of my time, has resulted in my latest report being tabled in the Australian Senate on 29 October 1997.

Since the incorporation of this report in the Senate Hansard , there have been numerous enquiries, both in Australia and overseas for this report. The most effective way to meet these requests in a "reader friendly" way is to incorporate the report, Senator Lyn Allison's speech and related information into this newsletter. Some of the information in the senate report has been printed in previous issues of Electromagnetics Forum, my apologies to my readers for the repetition.

The senate report, far from being unwarranted, details overseas mainstream research which unfortunately remains largely unknown to either Australian medical practitioners working with breast cancer patients or the medical fraternity in general. The relevance of this information for breast cancer treatment is clearly mentioned in the latest scientific publication reviewing this issue.

To quote from the preface of The Melatonin Hypothesis: Breast Cancer and Use of Electric Power, edited by Richard Stevens, Bary Wilson and Larry Anderson, from the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the United States Department of Energy, Published by the Battelle Press in 1997.

"Our group itself has, by design, included researchers from a wide range of disciplines. From this rich diversity of experience came the "Melatonin Hypothesis." With its basis in the modest and, at the time, arcane nocturnal experiments of almost 20 years ago, this hypothesis has become one of the salient hypotheses on breast cancer etiology in the main cancer research community."

Unfortunately to date none of the research money set aside for breast cancer research in Australia is examining this topic for reasons outlined in my report. It is my hope that the tabling of this report in the senate will lead to a change in this omission.