Aiden Fitchett has confirmed the results of a scientific experiment. Aiden is a second grader in Michigan. What Aiden confirmed is that radiofrequency radiation harms the germination and development of Garden cress. Aiden repeated a similar experiment conducted by ninth grade Danish students.
The experiments consisted of growing Garden cress seeds in identical conditions except that one batch was grown next to a wired computer while another batch was grown next to a wireless router. In both experiments, the cress grown next to a wired computer did well. Next to the wireless router, the seeds failed to thrive. Aiden reported that, contrary to the spicy tang of the unexposed cress, the cress exposed to the wireless technology had no taste at all.
This is how science is supposed to work: independent confirmation of experimental results.
How is it that Aiden decided to conduct this experiment? Aiden suffered from severe headaches when he was close to a wireless projector used in his classroom. His mother Rachel, a biologist, immediately had Aiden moved away from the projector. When Science Fair time came around, Aiden, inspired by the Danish students, decided to do the Garden cress experiment.
What did Aiden conclude from his experiment? “The garden cress are living and growing just like me. The ones by the WiFi were not healthy and looked crazy. Wireless devices must send things through the air that are not good for my body.”
That’s a very reasonable thing to conclude.
Eventually, Rachel removed Aiden from his computer class altogether because his headaches continued. “He’s a very bright kid who excels in all subjects. He doesn’t need to get whatever it is they’re getting in there.” So clearly, Aiden’s school did not draw the same conclusions from his experiment as Aiden and his mother.
I think we should consider the power relations at work here and the many other radiofrequency radiation experiments being conducted involuntarily on children and adults.
Based on Aiden’s experiment, a reasonable person could conclude that exposure to non-ionizing radiofrequency radiation poses a health risk. That only one child reports a headache and associates it with exposure to a wireless device does not mean that other children are not experiencing other acute symptoms nor does it mean that other children won’t suffer from chronic health effects due to the same exposure. That’s the radiation experiment being conducted in Aiden’s former computer class.
A multitude of similar radiation experiments are being conducted these days. One is the wireless exposure to which infants are subjected by their worried parents. DECT crib monitors are widely known as sources of radiofrequency radiation exposure, but more recently parents are able to purchase a pacifier that monitors their child’s temperature and transmits it to the parents’ wireless tablet. This means that the baby doesn’t just have a wireless audio monitor in the room through the night, but a wireless transmitter in his or her mouth.
Of course, these aren’t very good experiments—aside from the subjects being unwittingly enlisted. They’re not very good because no one’s really paying attention because everyone knows that wireless technologies are safe because no one’s proven that they’re not safe.
Let me say again that a reasonable person could conclude that wireless exposures pose a health risk based on Aiden’s experiment.
But there are reasonable people who do take seriously the hypothesis that exposure to non-ionizing radiation can cause significant biological and health effects. A recently released 2007 document describes one collection of experiments conducted at the University of Nevada.
“The research in this proposal was to sustain the progress and growth of on-going research projects in which non-thermal radiofrequency /microwave effects on skeletal muscle contraction and catecholamine release from chromaffin cells are being investigated. The overall goal of the research is to lay the foundation for developing non-lethal stunning/immobilizing weaponry based on radiofrequency /microwave radiation.”
The document was prepared for the US Air Force and is a proposal to continue with research already completed. This is ongoing research.
Aiden’s school might not be interested in the health effects of the non-ionizing, non-thermal, everyone-knows-it’s-safe radiation from everyday devices such as smart phones, tablets, computers using wireless connections, wireless routers, cell phone antennas and towers, WiFi hotspots, wireless classroom projectors, wireless baby monitors, and WiFi pacifiers. But the US military is interested—actively interested—in the health effects of non-ionizing, non-thermal, radiofrequency radiation.
Catecholamines are precursors to stress hormones and neurotransmitters. So very broadly, this research is intended to develop a weapon that will immobilize enemy combatants by causing a severe stress response using a form of radiofrequency radiation commonly used in smart phones, etc. Do you think that a reasonable person could conclude that it causes a headache? Or other stress response?
