The Body Electric tells the fascinating story of our bioelectric selves. Robert O. Becker, a pioneer in the field of regeneration and its relationship to electrical currents in living things, challenges the established mechanistic understanding of the body.

The Body Electric tells the fascinating story of our bioelectric selves. Robert O. Becker, a pioneer in the field of regeneration and its relationship to electrical currents in living things, challenges the established mechanistic understanding of the body.

Robert Becker describes his research in how electricity influences biological processes. Much of the material will not appeal to a general audience, which is unlikely to warm to animal limb amputations and limb regeneration. Becker and his colleagues nevertheless made some fascinating discoveries. The idea that biological processes are driven by electricity had never been entirely welcome in biology and medicine because it is associated with the notion of vitalism, that there is an essential force that gives organisms life, and some vitalists suggested that electricity could be that essential force. Becker was of course not a vitalist, but had to overcome the stigma of studying electrical influences on physiology and behavior.

In his later work, he became interested in both the beneficial and harmful effects of electrical currents and fields on human health, and that material is covered here too. Electrical and magnetic fields have since been implicated as the causes of harmful effects and since the early 1980's when Becker wrote this book the introduction of cell phones and other wireless technologies have vastly increased the electromagnetic fields people encounter in their daily lives. His historical summary of work in this area shows that researchers who have found harmful effects have had their grants withdrawn. ( )

The first part of the book discusses regeneration, primarily in salamanders and frogs. Becker studied regeneration after lesions such as limb amputation, and hypothesized that electric fields played an important role in controlling the regeneration process. He mapped the electric potentials at various body parts during the regeneration, showing that the central part of the body normally was positive, and the limbs were negative. When a limb of a salamander or frog was amputated, the voltage at the cut (measured relative to the central part of the body) changed from about -10 mV (millivolts) to +20 mV or more the next day—a phenomenon called the current of injury. In a frog, the voltage would simply change to the normal negative level in four weeks or so, and no limb regeneration would take place. In a salamander, however, the voltage would during the first two weeks change from the +20 mV to -30 mV, and then normalize (to -10 mV) during the next two weeks—and the limb would be regenerated.
Becker then found that regeneration could be improved by applying electricity at the wound when there was a negative potential outside the amputation stub. He also found that bone has piezoelectric properties which would cause an application of force to generate a healing current, which stimulated growth at stress locations in accordance with Wolff's law.
In another part of the book Becker described potentials and magnetic fields in the nervous system, taking into account external influences like earth magnetism and solar winds. He measured the electrical properties along the skin surface, and concluded that at least the major parts of the acupuncture charts had an objective basis in reality.
In the last chapters of the book, Becker recounts his experiences as a member of an expert committee evaluating the physiological hazards of various electromagnetic pollutions. He presents research data which indicate that the deleterious effects are stronger than officially assumed. His contention is that the experts choosing the pollution limits are strongly influenced by the polluting industry.
In 1998 Becker filed a patent for an iontopheretic system for stimulation of tissue healing and regeneration ( )

The book is an account of Robert Becker's research career in bioelectricity. Becker had some success in research associated with infection control using silver electrodes. He followed some interesting concepts associated with the involvement of electricity in nerve transmission and magnetic fields in direction sense. His research in electropolution and regeneration were more controversial. Eventual effects of claims of the negative effects of electromagnetic fields caused his loss of funding and of his lab. He was obviously an iintelligent man, which had a disappointing end to his career. I can not recommend this book except to those interested in the subject. I have a personal interest since I was a graduate student of one of Becker's graduate assistants (Andrew Marino). ( )