But andy, you did state that Cecil (and by extension I too) am wrong when we say that there is no good evidence that magnets treat pain and cure diseases. And you have still not backed up that statement in any credible way. None of your site cites (and most of them don’t work for me) address that at all. The ones that do work indicate that magnetic fields do interact with living tissue, but that assertion was not in dispute here.
So what gives?
This (and several other points you raise) is the logical fallacy of “arguing from ignorance”. It may convince you, but it does not constitute proof, and does not help your case. Science’s ignorance of this (or any other) phenomenon has no relevance to the matter at hand.
To wit: a claim is made that magnets treat pain and cure diseases. Where is the evidence to support this claim? If there is no evidence, it is no better than any other claim you or I care to make up.
You are terribly naive if you think that’s how the purveyors of this claptrap operate. If magnets are “believed to heal” but there is no medical evidence, are you saying the basis of that belief is religious faith?
Just a minor correction of no relevance to the post but biologic iron is magnetic in the strictest sense of the word.
Most materials are inherently magnetic it is just that the orientation of the magnetic field of each molecule is randomly orientated and thus at the macroscopic level they cancel out. In the presence of a magnetic field there is force applied to the atoms to realign themselves in a common direction thus generating macroscopic magnetic effects.
There are several factors that affect this process the strength of the base magnetic field, the strength of the external aligning field and the other force acting on the molecule that are opposed to the alignment. The only one of these that is easily controlled is the strength of the external field.
For most materials the external field required to cause alignment is very large.
andy_fl
Every observation is a measurement. In the case of something like the pain that is supposed to be relieved by magnets in bracelets, observations are made in terms of more or less pain. That is a measurement. It’s highly subjective, of course, but a lot of meaningful data is. Even if you think there’s too much margin for error on the degree of pain, there is certainly a lot to be said about duration or frequency which are more quantifiable.
Or, more to the point, it’s not clear what an objective measurement would amount to. Number of erasures on a math paper? Shit/Shinola sorting? Still, distinctions are made, and relative levels in intelligence are observed, and the fact that we don’t have minute rigor to back up our impressions doesn’t mean we can’t make any judgements about whether one person is smarter than another – and when we do, a measurement has taken place.
You’re equivocating accepted, treating its use as having a nontrivial level of following as a hypothetical model worth investigating' as though it were interchangable with its use to mean believed to be an observed fact.’
The point is that you asserted that science could not measure the effects of magnetics on human systems, and then yourself posted what appears to be an example of just that kind of measurement. If you’re now saying that it’s important to note that these were not actual human systems, but partial ones, or analogs of human systems, then you’re dodging that bullet while making the apparent point behind citing these pages to begin with moot. You can’t have it both ways.
What exactly is that going to accomplish, in terms of the purported claims about magnets? Also, there is a scaling problem:
25% blood flow is significant. 10 tesla is a hell of a lot more significant. MRIs are used at 2 tesla at most. If it takes five times the maximum medically approved magnetic flux, that difference of 25% doesn’t seem that significant. If the progression linear, such that at maximum approved range the effect is more like 5%, then what do we know about the meaningfulness of the 5% difference? And if the progression is not linnear, couldn’t the significance be even less than that?
I’m afraid that this appears to be full of mysteries and sufficiently out of range of anything generally attempted in the medical use of magnets that it doesn’t right now constitute reason to extend charity to these practices.
You’re comparing apples to spam. So we don’t have a full account of gravity yet. Does that mean that if somebody says, “I can fly if I hold my breath long enough” we ought not discourage him?
Mostly from claims involving much more pedestrian levels of magnetic power, which is largely what the market consists of. At very high levels, such as the pages you cite seem to be based on, apparently there are observable effects. But it’s not clear that these have credible uses, and it’s certainly not clear that if they did these effects and their uses would scale down to the kinds of low-power magnets used in magnetic bracelets and the likes.
But that’s irrelevant. Or, to put it another way, it’s just as relevant to this argument as to an argument about whether there are invisible pixies inside every soap bubble. There’s still a hell of a lot we don’t understand about soap bubbles. Does that mean we shouldn’t poo-poo the invisible pixie theory? Arguments about the ignorance of science are essentialy an ad hominem attack. In lieu of evidence supporting magneto-therapy claims, you are denigrating the authority of science as a whole to assert doubts where evidence does not seem to be forthcoming. This could easily be stood on its head to say that science, as a large body of knowledge and methodologies, knows a lot more than you, and so who are you to say what science does or doesn’t know? But that wouldn’t be right either. Address the arguments, not the authority of the arguers unless you are responding to arguments made only to authority, which has not been the case in this thread.
The first is not really a response to the issue of whether or not a magnetic signal can generate an electric signal in a neural pathway as though it were a wire, and the second only claims that there may be special receptors that detect magnetic force and then generate neural signals, again nothing like the effect of a magnetic flux on a wire.
The MIT quote sounds pretty far fetched, but it’s true that even a single electron moving will generate a magnetic field. It’s silly to think that you can get some kind of coherent reading off of such a mass of tiny movements of electrons. This really only serves to bring to mind how absurd it would be to think that one can make a useful disruption in the signal flow of the neural system through magnets.
It certainly doesn’t seem then that they’re drawing an `intellectually qualified blank’ as you said.
A lot of people did, actually.
It exploits vanity by promising to establish you as the kind of person who buys bottled water, and it accomplishes this. That this amounts to some kind of status is maybe a bit dicey. On the other hand, phony therapy takes advantage of pain and poverty and despiration. It just doesn’t seem too closely analogous.
Quote from Cecil’s post -
**“is that no one’s proposed a plausible physiological explanation for how magnetism does its stuff on the body’s cells” **
This is contradicted by - http://biomag.eng.fsu.edu/biomag2.html
This is only one of the measured effects of magnetism on blood cells.
Quote from you post - “biologic iron is non-magnetic”
This is contradicted by - http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/scienceshack/articles/questions/q_ou24.shtml “Magnetite particles have been found within a specialised structure between the brain and skull in pigeons.”
All the cites work for me - some of the sites don’t work because there’s a period(.) at the end of the link, remove that period and the links will work.
Don’t have the time to respond to Johnny and Kamandi, but will do so later :).
Magnetite (Fe[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]3[/sub]) crystals are completely unlike the vast majority of iron found in biological systems. Biological Iron is generally not found in crystalline arrays, but rather as single ions, bound to heme, and each sequestered within a protein having a molecular weight of 30,000 to 50,000. The iron atoms in a crystal of magnetite are associated closely enough to permit the formation of magnetic domains. These domains are what make the material strongly magnetic. In hemoglobin and most other iron containing proteins, each iron atom is wrapped in hundreds of times its own mass of protein. This packaging prevents the formation of magnetic domains, it also prevents the iron from responding to any but the strongest magnetic fields. Even in Ferritin, the bodies main iron storage protein, there’s only enough iron to make a crystal ~17 atoms on a side. That’s not much wiggle room for a paramagnetic domain. It also doesn’t leave much room for “magneto-therapy”, except as a way of confusing pigeons ;).
Well, as Squink so ably pointed out, magnetite is not generally considered “biologic iron”. http://www.cchem.berkeley.edu/~knrgrp/iron.html
It’s only been recently that magnetite has been identified in human brains. If we now now alter our definition of biologic iron to include magnetite, I should modify my statement to say: the biologic iron in red blood cells is not magnetic.
But we continue to split hairs finer and finer here. For all practical purposes, blood is non-magnetic, along with 99.99% of the iron in the human body, and no good evidence exists that magnets treat diabetes or relieve pain. I’m not interested in pursuing the argument that “because magnets do something measurable to biological systems in certain laboratory circumstances, we can’t dismiss the statement that they do treat diabetes or pain”. I can and do dismiss it until such a time as evidence is shown in support.
Since people objected to the “genuineness” of the above cites, here are others:
Author(s):Segal NA ; Toda Y ; Huston J ; Saeki Y ; Shimizu M ; Fuchs H ; Shimaoka Y ; Holcomb R ; McLean MJ
Affiliation: Vanderbilt University Medical School, Nashville, TN 37232, USA.
Title: Two configurations of static magnetic fields for treating rheumatoid arthritis of the knee: a double-blind clinical trial.
Source: Arch Phys Med Rehabil (Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation.) 2001 Oct; 82(10): 1453-60
CONCLUSIONS: Both devices demonstrated statistically significant pain reduction in comparison to baseline, with concordance across multiple indices.
Author(s): Xu S ; Tomita N ; Ohata R ; Yan Q ; Ikada Y
Affiliation: Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Title: Static magnetic field effects on bone formation of rats with an ischemic bone model.
Source: Biomed Mater Eng (Bio-medical materials and engineering.) 2001; 11(3): 257-63
CONCLUSIONS : It was found that the magnetized group had significantly higher bone weights than the unmagnetized (p<0.05).
Author(s):Pelka RB ; Jaenicke C ; Gruenwald J
Affiliation: Universität der Bundeswehr München Neubiberg/Munich, Germany.
Title: Impulse magnetic-field therapy for insomnia: a double-blind, placebo-controlled study.
Source: Adv Ther (Advances in therapy.) 2001 Jul-Aug; 18(4): 174-80
CONCLUSIONS : Seventy percent (n = 34) of the patients given active treatment experienced substantial or even complete relief of their complaints; 24% (n = 12) reported clear improvement; 6% (n = 3) noted a slight improvement.
Author(s):Lin VW ; Kim KH ; Hsiao I ; Brown W
Affiliation: Functional Magnetic Stimulation Laboratory, Spinal Cord Injury/Disorder Health Care Group, VA Long Beach Health Care System, Long Beach, CA 90822, USA. vernon.lin@med.va.gov
Title: Functional magnetic stimulation facilitates gastric emptying.
Source: Arch Phys Med Rehabil (Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation.) 2002 Jun; 83(6): 806-10
Conclusion - Gastric emptying was enhanced by Functional magnetic stimulation in able-bodied subjects and was greatly enhanced in spinal cord injury subjects.
Author(s): Mosimann UP ; Marré SC ; Werlen S ; Schmitt W ; Hess CW ; Fisch HU ; Schlaepfer TE
Title: Antidepressant effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation in the elderly: correlation between effect size and coil-cortex distance.
Source: Arch Gen Psychiatry (Archives of general psychiatry.) 2002 Jun; 59(6): 560-1
Author(s): Eichhammer P ; Kharraz A ; Wiegand R ; Langguth B ; Frick U ; Aigner JM ; Hajak G
Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Germany. peter.eichhammer@bzk.uni-regensburg.de
Title: Sleep deprivation in depression stabilizing antidepressant effects by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Source: Life Sci (Life sciences.) 2002 Mar 1; 70(15): 1741-9
Title: Magnetic stimulation treats severe depression.
Source: Health News (Health news (Waltham, Mass.)) 2002 Apr; 8(4): 9
Author(s):Carter R ; Aspy CB ; Mold J
Affiliation: Family & Preventive Medicine, 900 NE 10th St, Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA.
Author(s): Sato T ; Nagai H
Affiliation: Department of Surgery, Jichi Medical School, Minamikawachi-machi, Kawachi-gun, Tochigi-ken, Japan.
Title: Sacral magnetic stimulation for pain relief from pudendal neuralgia and sciatica.
Source: Dis Colon Rectum (Diseases of the colon and rectum.) 2002 Feb; 45(2): 280-2
CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study indicates that magnetic stimulation of the sacral nerve roots may be a promising therapeutic modality for pain relief from pudendal neuralgia and sciatica
Author(s): Simoncini L ; Giuriati L ; Giannini S
Affiliation: Unità Operativa Recupero e Rieducazione Funzionale, Ospedale Maggiore, Bologna.
Title: Clinical evaluation of the effective use of magnetic fields in podology.
Source: Chir Organi Mov (La Chirurgia degli organi di movimento.) 2001 Jul-Sep; 86(3): 243-7
Conclusions : The use of magnetic fields in medicine has obtained encouraging results and it has stimulated the research conducted so that the use of this method of treatment may be better and more widespread.
Author(s): Weinstein S
Affiliation: Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics, George Washington University School of Medicine, Children’s Hospital National Medical Center, 111 Michigan Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20010, USA. sweinstein@cnmc.org
Title: The anticonvulsant effect of electrical fields.
Source: Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep 2001 Mar; 1(2): 155-61
Netbrain - you are right in that. It is used as an alternative. 
I thought you were going to respond to the points Johnny Angel and I raised, andy.
This cite:
“Sleep deprivation in depression stabilizing antidepressant effects by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.” Describes using high strength, short duration electromagnetic pulses, similar to an EMP bomb, to treat depression. This thread Can electromagnetic fields induce hallucinations? gives a few more details. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the magnetised funnels, filters, and earrings described in the OP.
In order to back up a claim that the magneto therapy described in the OP is anything other than BS, they must come up with a reproducible biological effect of low strength, static, magnetic, not electromagnetic, field. Barring that, they need to produce at least a plausible mechanism by which such fields could have an effect.
• There is no relevant example of a reproducible biological effect of small static magnetic fileds.
• There is no plausible mechanism whereby such fields could act.
I find the idea of Gravito-Therapy far more convincing. Anyone who’s read Niven is aware of the extreme effects gravitic fields can have on the human organism. Even the relatively minor change from 1 to 0 G results in a massive reponse by the body. Calcium is mobilized, fluid is retained, the immune system changes etc. etc. If we put these proven effects together in the same strange way as magneto-therapy is justified, the idea of going through life with a bowling ball hanging from a chain about our neck becomes very appealing.
:smack: Where did I go wrong ?
You may be onto something there, Squink, but I think something like a lead-lined jacket would be far more practical - and stylish. You could design a whole line of ballasted fashions. They would have the added benefit of shielding you from those daaaangerous EM fields from power lines and cell phones! Think of the possibilities!
andy_fl, most of your citations involve magnetic fields orders of magnitude higher than the miracle-tonic magnets unscrupulous salesmen are touting. The last one isn’t even about magnetic fields. Also, some of the studied involved administration of magnetic tracers (akin to radiological tracers) for use in actual physical therapy that have nothing to do with wearing magnet bracelets and the like. Please don’t give us a snowjob if you haven’t had the decency to read the articles and consider whether they address the issues at hand.
I agree with Squink: Send your arthritic grandma on a rollercoaster six times as day and call me in the morning.
andy_fl, most of your citations involve magnetic fields orders of magnitude higher than the miracle-tonic magnets unscrupulous salesmen are touting. The last one isn’t even about magnetic fields. Also, some of the studied involved administration of magnetic tracers (akin to radiological tracers) for use in actual physical therapy that have nothing to do with wearing magnet bracelets and the like. Please don’t give us a snowjob if you haven’t had the decency to read the articles and consider whether they address the issues at hand.
I agree with Squink: Send your arthritic grandma on a rollercoaster six times as day and call me in the morning.