#821: Autism and DECT baby monitors
From Dr Andrew Goldsworthy:
Dear All,
I am pasting in the contents of an email that I have just sent to Sir William Stewart. I will let you know if I get a reply.
Best wishes, Andrew
Dear Sir William,
As I guess you know, there has been considerable press publicity about a possible link between the 6000 percent increase in autism in recent years and the proliferation of mobile telecommunications and Wifi.
With hindsight we might have expected this, since their radiations have non-thermal effects on brain function. As I explained in my article at http://tinyurl.com/2nfujj (which I believe that you read some months ago), pulsed electromagnetic radiation removes structurally-important calcium ions from cell membranes and increases their tendency to leak. When this happens in neurones, it will generate spurious action potentials to create a “mental fog”, which reduces a persons ability to perform complex functions such as driving a car. This is almost certainly the explanation for the four-fold increase in the accident rate when driving a car while using a mobile phone (even when are using a hands-free type).
However, even more serious is that the same mechanism could induce autism in babies. Just after its birth, a child”s brain is essentially a blank canvas and it goes through an intense period of learning to become aware of the significance of all its new sensory inputs, e.g. to recognise its mother”s face, her expressions and eventually other people and their relationship to him. If these processes are disrupted by spurious action potentials, they may be hindered, not accomplished in the allotted time, and the child may then express all the symptoms of autism.
A useful analogy might be the socialisation of dogs. If puppies do not meet and interact with other dogs within the first four months of their life, they too develop autistic behaviour. They become withdrawn, afraid of other dogs and strangers, and are incapable of normal “pack” behaviour. Once this four-month window has been passed, the effect seems to be irreversible (i.e. just like autism).
Whether you believe my explanation for the production of spurious action potentials is a matter for personal preference, but the brain is nevertheless an electrical organ and we should not be too surprised if it is affected by extraneous electromagnetic fields, and that the “blank canvas” of a newborn childs brain may be particularly susceptible.
While these effects might occur in response to the general electromagnetic environment, the use of cordless digital baby alarms may put the child especially at risk due to chronic exposure from a nearby source. Is it possible to get information on any correlation between the use of digital cordless baby alarms and autism and possibly other childhood problems such as cot death? If so, and the results prove positive, it may be necessary to take these devices off the shelves and advise people not to use them.
Yours sincerely
Dr Andrew Goldsworthy