Russ Hobbie wrote a review of a revised edition of Physics with Illustrative Examples from Medicine and Biology for the magazine Physics Today (July, 2001). Here are some excerpts.
The Physics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began about 30 years ago to offer a special calculus-based introductory course for freshmen and sophomores interested in biology. This led to the first edition of George B. Benedek and Felix M. H. Villars’s Physics with Illustrative Examples from Medicine and Biology. The book was issued by Addison-Wesley in 1979 as three paperback typescript volumes. The book fascinated many physicists with the applications of physics in biochemistry and physiology, but they have been out of print since 1990. Now that the AIP Press and Springer-Verlag have issued a second edition, as printed volumes, a new generation of physicists can learn from them…
These are classic books, and anyone planning to include biophysical examples in a calculus-level course should study them carefully. The authors are to be congratulated for their work, and I commend AIP Press and Springer-Verlag for making the books available again.
In his review, Russ lists the book as published in 1979, but I think there must have been earlier editions, because the first edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, published in 1978, cites Physics with Illustrative Examples from Medicine and Biology several times, and lists the publication date as 1973 (Volume 1) and 1974 (Volume 2). Clearly Benedek and Villars influenced the first edition of IPMB and all subsequent editions. You can learn more about Physics with Illustrative Examples from Medicine and Biologyhere, here, and here.
Benedek wasn’t just a textbook author. He invented quasi-elastic light scattering spectroscopy and became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1962. He received the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology’s Proctor Medal in 1997 for “outstanding research in basic or clinical sciences as applied to ophthalmology.” He was a true biological physicist. He’ll be missed.
MKUltra (pronouced M-K-ultra) was a covert Central Intelligence Agency research program carried out between 1953 and 1973 to investigate mind control. It used techniques such as high doses of the psychedelic drug LSD, hypnosis, sensory isolation, and electroshock therapy to influence a subject’s brain, and in particular to obtain secrets from unwilling people. This program is notorious for torturing studying subjects without their consent, which is considered a grave sin in research today.
One subproject of MKUltra (#119) was to use very low frequencyelectromagnetic fields to influence the brain. This project comes disturbingly close to techniques I’ve worked on over the years, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation. It got me to wondering: is mind control using electromagnetic fields possible?
I guess I have thought about this before, because in the August 14, 2015 post in this blog I suggested that the “psychic probe” described in Isaac Asimov’s famous Foundation Trilogy might be made by combining transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and magnetoencephalography (MEG), which are both described in Chapter 8 of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. In that post I wrote “a combo TMS/MEG unit could therefore both detect and alter brain function.” Of course, I was writing tongue-in-cheek, joking about how a science fiction device might have worked within the constraints of real science. On the other hand, perhaps I was actually an MKUltra agent sending a secret message to my underground accomplices?
That last sentence mocks the recent conspiracy theories surrounding MKUltra. Last week the House Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets held a hearing about the research program. It didn’t focus on the historical record (which is sparse because most of the MKUltra documents were destroyed) but instead went off on weird tangents, talking about things like mind control related to the assassination of President Kennedy. The purpose of this hearing seemed to be aimed primarily at blaming science in general for past errors. Some issues that were brought up, like MKUltra itself, were serious mistakes that should be, and have been, investigated. Others, like bogus lab leak theories related to the origin of Covid, were just crazy talk with no scientific justification. One researcher, Elizabeth Ginexi, a respected former program official at the National Institutes of Health, was invited by the Democrats to talk about the horrendous anti-science policies currently imposed on NIH by anti-vax zealot Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Ginexi (a hero in my view) tried to discuss these vital issues, but was constantly cut off by Republican members of the committee who were focused on the bizarre and engaged in an attempt to demonize scientists and public health workers.
But back to my question: could electromagnetic fields be used for brain control? Well, transcranial magnetic stimulation is currently used to treat depression, so you can’t rule out the possibility. However, the technique is very nonspecific. I spent seven years at NIH trying to improve the focality and spatial resolution of transcranial magnetic stimulation. Generating a localized stimulus is extraordinarily difficult, especially for activating deep brain structures. You can use transcranial magnetic stimulation to make individual fingers move, but only because the hand has a widespread representation in the motor cortex. The idea that transcranial magnetic stimulation could control individual thoughts or suggest specific actions seems like science fiction to me. Other techniques that have been suggested as potentially useful for mind control are brain-computer interfaces and deep brain stimulation. Both of these have important medical uses. For example, deep brain stimulation can help reduce or control tremors caused by Parkinson’s disease. Perhaps these techniques could potentially be used for controlling behavior, but they are highly invasive (requiring surgery to implant electrodes in the brain).
Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill?
What about techniques growing out of subproject 119? That work was led by W. Ross Adey and Mary (“Mollie”) Brazier, two leading scientists studying how electromagnetic fields interact with, and are produced by, the brain. I mentioned Adey in my book Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill?. He claimed to find “window” effects, for which one particular applied field strength resulted in an observable effect, but stronger or weaker fields did not. Similarly, he found that certain frequencies had marked responses (“resonances”) but both higher and lower frequencies did not. These window effects are not very reproducible and are not widely accepted today. Generally, resonant effects are claimed at very low frequencies (say, 20 Hz). Ultimately subproject 119 ended in failure because no mind control methods were found. Some say that a modern offshoot of this research is microwave weapons responsible for the Havana syndrome. Again, in Are Electromagnetic Fields Making Me Ill? I discuss why electromagnetic fields are almost certainly not responsible for the Havana syndrome. My opinion is that this is another anti-science conspiracy theory.
The final question I address is: could something like MKUltra happen today? The ethics rules governing research are far more stringent now than several decades ago. About 15 years ago, I served for one year in an interim role as Oakland University’s Vice Provost for Research, which is the chief research officer at the institution. Among other things, I was in charge of overseeing research misconduct issues at OU. Any human subjects research had to go through our Institutional Review Board. If a faculty member merely wanted to give a simple survey to students, that survey had to be assessed by this board and a detailed consent form was required. Any potentially dangerous human studies were monitored particularly closely, and informed consent was essential. It’s the same at all academic institutions. MKUltra would be virtually impossible in today’s academic research environment. Could it happen in the CIA or another research center associated with the military? I don’t know. Perhaps. But the CIA and other intelligence agencies can’t compete with academia and scientific institutions like the NIH and NSF when it comes to scientific advances. (Take, for example, the recent brouhaha over the military’s claims about “ghost murmur” which are almost certainly bogus.) I don’t believe MKUltra or anything related to it is going on today, especially involving electromagnetic fields to control the brain. I believe that such a suggestion is a conspiracy theory, advanced to discredit scientists and scientific institutions. It’s part of the Republican War on Science. Please, don’t believe the anti-science crackpots. At the very least, insist that they support their claims with evidence. They rarely can.
Angela Rasmussen and Liz Ginexi discuss MKUltra and What Really Happened in the Wuhan Lab
I’m old enough to remember the bicentennial. In 1976 the USA reached the age of 200. I was 15 years old, about to start my junior year in high school, and living in Ashland, Ohio. I recall the bicentennial being a much bigger event than what we are experiencing this year. Perhaps I was simply younger and more easily impressed. Or, perhaps, Chuck Todd’s explanation is correct; I’ve always liked Chuck. Or, perhaps, the problem is that semiquincentennial is so @#%& hard to pronounce!
What was the status of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology back in the summer of 1976? Russ Hobbie, then the sole author, was 43 years old. Just three years before he finished auditing all the courses medical students take in the first two years at the University of Minnesota and must have been hard at work on the first edition of IPMB, published two years later, in 1978, the year I graduated from high school. I didn’t become aware of the book until I reached graduate school at Vanderbilt University. I probably saw it first in 1982 or 1983.
Move forward 50 years and the 6th edition of IPMB should appear (assuming all goes well) just a couple months after the semiquincentennial celebration. Russ Hobbie passed away in 2021, but Gene Surdutovich will join as an author of this new edition.
I expect that during the tricentennial celebration in 2076 people will look back at 2026 as a dark and dangerous time for science, when anti-science forces came to dominate the federal government, promoting vaccine hesitancy, climate change denial, and other nonsense. I hope that by 2076 this era will have passed, and science will have become respectable again, but I’m not certain that will be the case. Will IPMB still be read and used in college courses? Who knows? I’ll be gone by then, and most likely Gene will too. But perhaps new coauthors will come along, and the tricentennial will coincide with the 11th edition of Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology!
For you scientists and science-lovers celebrating the 4th of July, I recommend a series of events sponsored by the American Philosophical Society about science during the founding of the United States, called America’s Scientific Revolutionaries. I particularly like the lecture in the video below, about Benjamin Rush—an American Founding Father who was also a medical doctor—and his role in early American medicine. The video is also about the war on vaccines today, and features vaccine scientist Paul Offit. It’s an interesting analysis of how much progress medicine has been made in the last 250 years, how much ground we have lost recently, and the work ahead of us during the next half century.
Communicating Disease: Assessing Benjamin Rush's Public Health Legacies at America's 250th.
I am an emeritus professor of physics at Oakland University, and coauthor of the textbook Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology. The purpose of this blog is specifically to support and promote my textbook, and in general to illustrate applications of physics to medicine and biology.
