Reproduced by permission of GR Press, Inc., 6959 University Blvd., Winter Park, FL 32792. Portion of the 1995 update of the 4 volume, Innovations in Pain Management: A practical guide for Clinicians.

Sciences rarely evolve scientifically. At this junction in history economics play the major role in determining priorities. The pure pursuit of scientific knowledge has practically been abandoned from the list of factors influencing funding and reimbursement for scientific advancements. Science, and the scientific method, originally evolved to help us understand ourselves and the universe we live in. For government and insurance company bureaucrats who are not true scientists themselves, it has become an excuse to avoid bothering to understand new developments; even to deny obviously observable phenomena. Yet eventually science does seem to prevail, even if only by a complex and seemingly unrelated series of events. Experimental and experiential data in electromedicine is already accelerating independent of, and even in defiance of the standard means of support and controls. Perhaps more than any other therapeutic option, electromedicine is used by at least some of the practitioners from all of the health care professions, as well as by patients themselves.

A recent study examined the prevalence of so-called "unconventional medicine" in the United States. Eisenberg (1993) reported that Americans spent $13.7 billion for alternative treatments in 1990 of which $10.3 billion was out-of-pocket, non-reimbursable expenditures. This is comparable to the $12.8 billion spent out-of-pocket annually for hospital expenses. In addition, the study determined that in 1990 Americans made an estimated 425 million visits to these practitioners of unconventional medicine compared to 388 million visits to all primary care physicians.

One definition of conventional is "conforming to accepted standards." Another definition is "established by accepted usage; ordinary or usual" (Stein, 1980). The latter definition could be interpreted to mean that what is being called unconventional medicine has become conventional. This seems to be confirmed by the 37 million more visits to these practitioners. It is unlikely that patients would continue to spend their time along with such large sums of money if they were not getting results, or if safe and effective relief was more readily available in the more comprehensive context of conventional medicine.

Harvard Medical School is beginning to teach "alternative medicine" and the National Institutes of Health has set up an Office of Alternative Medicine to award grants to researchers in this emerging field. Many patients site the side-effects and short-term relief of drug therapy as the primary reason they seek alternative care. New developments in electromedical technology offers physicians safe, effective, and long-lasting treatment options for a wide variety of disorders for these patients. Unfortunately, most conventional physicians are slow to accept new developments.

It is ironic that change moves slowest in the one science most responsible for our very existence, biology, or more appropriately for our purposes; medicine as applied biological science. It is simply easier, safer and less time consuming for someone who struggled to become part of the status quo to maintain it. It is certainly a major shock to one's conception of reality to learn that it is incomplete or incorrect. Yet physiology was taught as a complete science 100 years ago, again today, and most likely it shall be taught that way 100 years from now.

A classic and often cited example of medicine's reluctance to change occurred last century when Lord Joseph Lister advised surgeons to wash their hands before operating (Lister, 1979). Even well after Louis Pasteur's discovery of bacteria, surgeons were still not willing to believe and accept the need to be clean into the early part of this century (Lyons & Petrucelli, 1987). In fact, Pasteur could have been considered an unconventional practitioner when he insisted surgeons wash their hands before operating on his daughter. The Johnson brothers were the real driving force behind the widespread use of sterilization which resulted from their starting a company to manufacture antiseptic bandages. It was only after industry took the initiative that doctors came to accept the reality and consequences of our microbacterial cohabitants.

Dr. Lawrence D. Wilson (1993) suggested that "drug medicine" is able to maintain a virtual monopoly in America due to the following reasons:

a. Medical practice acts restrict competition and limit innovation. State licensing boards not only police their members, but police the entire population.
b. Prescription laws prevent public access to medical products.
c. Laboratory regulations prevent public access to medical laboratories.
d. Hospital regulations block the establishment of alternative hospitals and clinics.
e. Insurance mandates block innovation and limit competition in the insurance industry.
f. Subsidies to allopathic schools stifle the ability of other healing schools to compete fairly.
g. Subsidies for drug research amount to billions. Taxpayer dollars flow to dozens of government institutes such as NIH, HIMH, and NHI. Patent agreements often tie these labs to drug companies. Federal research agencies frequently ridicule alternative therapies. By stifling 'the competition', NCI and other agencies often have a counterproductive effect.
h. Medicare and Medicaid powerfully support the monopoly. They are infiltrated by private interest groups, and only reimburse for allopathic treatment.
i. A bloated and powerful FDA, in the name of protecting the public, prohibits public access to many harmless health care products. Manufacturers and retailers are terrorized by a regulatory agency that does not have to follow due process of law.

On August 31, 1993, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration published a proposed ruling in the Federal Register for reclassification of cranial electrotherapy stimulators. The FDA exhibited extreme bias in their appraisal against this effective and harmless modality. Unless the CES industry can quickly raise millions of dollars for pre-market approval for a technology that has been on the market in the U.S. for well over 20 years, CES will no longer be available in the United States 90 days after the FDA publishes their final ruling.

The FDA and American drug medicine are not as opposed to diagnostic developments in electromedicine due to of several factors. Bentall (1990) reasoned that diagnostic technology is more easily introduced because it enhances the capability and reputation of the practitioner within an acceptable risk/reward equation, without jeopardy or the need to understand its physics. Electromedical imaging systems succeeds on its instantaneous merits. Electrocardiology, electroencephalography, electromyography and magnetic resonance imaging are just a few examples of relatively recent innovations that have dramatically improved the abilities of health practitioners to arrive at more precise diagnoses. However, allopathic practitioners would like to have the physiology of therapy explained within the satisfaction of their domain of chemical knowledge, rather than venture into a new physiological paradigm.

Within the framework of the established and acceptable therapeutic practice based on chemistry, it does not seem so urgent to understand the physiology of new developments quite as clearly. For once one acknowledges the core philosophy, it is human nature to accept the whole concept, and with it, its newest additions. As a result, there is an ever increasing supply of new patented drugs.

Although the search for new pain controlling drugs continues, none appear to be much of an improvement over morphine, codeine, opium and heroin. The latter was hailed as a nonaddictive wonder drug in 1898 when the Bayer Co. of Germany named it from the German word "heroish" meaning powerful or heroic. Of course, heroin turned out to be three times more addictive than morphine and eventually banned as a therapeutic agent in the United States. Only about a decade ago Johnson & Johnson announced its breakthrough of a new drug that was to have been stronger than morphine and no more addictive than aspirin. Unfortunately their product, Zomax, turned out to be fatal in an unacceptable number of users.

The pain, or at least concern about the pain is relieved with drugs, but there are the concerns of side-effects, addiction and worse of all, tolerance. Binding sites being what they are, systemic pharmaceutical solutions do not seem very promising for the long term management of chronic pain.

Chemistry, both physiological and for therapeutic intervention, can be viewed as the existence of matter at the level of elements or compounds. Electromedicine is a means of diagnosis and treatment at the next level of matter. For every thought and action creates, or is created by electrical signals along the fibers of the nervous system.

A fresh look at physiology is needed to solve the primary medical complaint of pain. Although "fresh" is only appropriate to those who are uninformed of the plethora of information on electromedicine amassed over the last three or four decades. The answer is apparent on a smaller scale than we were able to define previously. In fact, even today, subatomic structure goes beyond the eyes fully assisted ability to squint.

Atoms are bonded electrically. This is a basic foundation necessary to understand electromedicine that was taught during the most elementary training in the basic sciences. Further in our rudimentary training we learned that there are voltage potentials across the membrane of all cells. All standard physiology textbooks define the Nernst and Goldman Equations to determine membrane and action potentials. They do not, however, speculate on the staggering significance of these facts.

If batteries are placed in series their voltage potentials are combined. A simple remote control unit may use three 1.5 volt batteries to produce the 4.5 volts needed to operate a television. The human body has trillions of cells each having a millivolt potential across their membranes. All good scientists should ask themselves why we find electricity so prevalent in biological systems.

It is already established that bioelectricity plays a major role in the control of all life's processes. Robert O. Becker, M.D. has spent more than 30 years attempting to determine how trillions of cells with hundreds of subtypes can function harmoniously in the form we call human. The result of that inquiry is a complete revolution in our previous concepts of biology (Becker, 1983).

Becker (1982) has reasoned that an electromagnetic field exists that controls all of life's processes. The original concept of such field effects can be traced back to ancient China. Traditional oriental medicine is based on the controlling power of ch'i or ki energy; a concept that predates electricity but appears to be analogous (Kirsch, 1978). Chiropractic also developed based on a similar observation termed innate intelligence by Daniel David Palmer in 1895 (Palmer, 1910). Indians use the term prana to represent the same concept. Allopathic practitioners are limited to a vague notion they call homeostasis.

In western civilization, the first documented use of electricity to manage pain was by the physician, Scribonius Largus, in 46 A.D. He claimed that just about everything from