Slashdot Mirror
English DJ Claims Wi-Fi Allergy
path0$ writes "British Ex-DJ Steve Miller claims that his Wi-Fi allergy is making his life one big misery
, forcing him to live in an iron-clad home far from any neighbors. According to the article, more and more people are suffering from an allergy like his. The only positive side to this is that at least Miller didn't think of suing anybody yet, like these people did,
who claim to suffer from the same condition and were mentioned in a Slashdot article in 2008."
Crazy people are everywhere. Stop giving them attention.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
What's left to say? Isn't this just a matter for psychiatrists and sociologists now? Engaging these idiots in discussions would just make your own IQ drop without affecting their worldview in the slightest.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
From the 70s, man. Cordless phones. And baby monitors. And cell phones. RC cars are in the 2.4GHz band. And walkie-talkies like security guards use. Also power lines, radio stations, and other things cause EMI on other bands besides 2.4GHz. Man this guy's entire life must suck.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
And I got a nasty rash just reading the summary.
Put him into a room. Randomly switch on and off a WiFi-net and ask him to tell if it is on or off. If he manages to get more than 50 % right there might be something to it. He would also be the first person to manage this in years and years of testing.
He should contact the James Randi foundation for their 1M prize for paranormal proof, as they might very well consider "WiFi sensitivity" paranormal behavior.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Some people call him the space cowboy
Some people call him the gangster of love
Some people call him Maurice
Because he has to stay in a Faraday cage to block out the wi-fi signals he's allergic to...
No. You're confusing the symptoms with the ailment. Although his symptoms may be real, the condition he claims to suffer from is most decidedly not. This has an important effect on what treatment should be used to alleviate or cure his symptoms. What he needs is psychiatry and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. Indulging his fantasies of "WiFi Allergies" will just make his symptoms worse.
Microwave ovens tend to have a lot of emissions in the 2.4GHz band, the same frequencies that most Wi-Fi uses.
If he were really allergic to Wi-Fi, wouldn't he have an extreme allergic reaction to microwave ovens too?
A properly scientific proof of this would most likely qualify him for the JREF challenge. If he can physically detect relatively minor electromagnetic radiation on these frequencies, he could win himself a million dollars. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html
"Steve navigates normal daily chores with the help of a âwi-fi detectorâ(TM) which spots areas he should avoid."
Let's see, if someone could sense WIFI why would they need a separate detector??? Hmm...
I've heard of this before, and I've always been skeptical of it. Not because that I think it's impossible for people to absorb electromagnetic radiation, but because the first people to expose me to this sensitivity believed pyramid shaped crystals could fix them. I really blame them for killing all of the credibility this condition may have had with me, but it's their own fault. This always struck me as a powerful example of the placebo effect. People want to feel sick when electromagnetic waves are around them, so they do. I've had a few friends deeply wrapped up in holistic medicine, and you could pick any random ingredient on your soda (anything man made) and they give you a story of how they feel sick when they are in the room with that ingredient.
I'm not going to sit here and bash the people who think they have this symptom. You're going to get 50 posters who have done that thoroughly by now. Instead I'm going to offer them a suggestion. Find a person who exhibits a visible symptom when they're exposed to the types of radiation you object to. If we can take a person and reliably give them a rash with a wifi router, then we're in business. Until then you're...well this lady who had her house covered in tin foil.
"But beneath the coats of magnolia paint, she points out, the walls are lined with a special paper that contains a layer of tin-foil; and upstairs, the windows are hung with a fine, silvery gauze."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-450995/The-woman-needs-veil-protection-modern-life.html
No, we're biased because, to date, double-blind studies done with people who are "WiFi sensitive" have turned up nothing. It is up to the people making the claims to prove their claims. If they are sensitive to WiFi signals, this can be trivially proven by a double-blind experiment. Yet, no-one has produced one.
Wi-Fi also causes me pain. Every time I jack up the power output of a laptop or my PC at home the wireless starts to give me a headache, it also bothers my wife, child and brother-in-law.
We also ended up taking the microwave out of the house because every time my wife would use it while pregnant the baby would go crazy and start lashing around in the womb. Shes 5 months old and still cant use it, her brother is the same it gives him an instant migraine if hes near a microwave in use.
Electrohypersensitivity is nothing new, and people claiming to have it is also nothing new. In Sweden there's been a lot of research on the subject since there's been a lot of cases of it over the last 15 years. There's no evidence for it, noone has been able to show it exists in a controlled experiment, and the science of its proponents have been thoroughly debunked.
The guy from TFA is undeniably sick and needs help, but shielding him from wifi is not the solution to his problem.
Just because it's all in someone's head doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I mean I probably think the guy is a kook, but can any of you really guarantee he is wrong?
Since such a condition is facially implausible, the burden of proof is on you to prove that he is not wrong, particularly because it would be a relatively simple matter to do so.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
This is an incredibly easy claim to test.
First: See if he can identify when the "Wi-Fi" is on or off.
Second: If he can (which would be highly unlikely and scientifically amazing)... see if he can differentiate between Wi Fi, Bluetooth and his Microwave.
Why do we report bizarre claims to Slashdot without requiring the scientific method to be applied.
If I claim to be psychic and to be able to use ESP to read emails out of thin air, does qualify for the front page of Slashdot?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Birds have been shown to react to magnetism, why not humans?
Sensitivity to magnetic fields are rather important for birds to navigate, for humans it is not. 99,9999999% of pigeons survive getting dropped from 500 meters above a parking lot, why not humans?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I mean I probably think the guy is a kook, but can any of you really guarantee he is wrong? No, the history of science is of people being proven wrong. You are all just biased because you love wifi.
Uh-huh. Well I have a pretty solid theory that he's wrong based on the evidence that he has doubtless been bombarded with EM radiation of the same frequency and equal or greater magnitude for years with no complaints due to the vast numbers of other electronic devices and cosmic radiation entering our atmosphere.
So frankly I can't "guarantee" he's wrong (well okay I can -- he's wrong or your money back) but as far as I'm concerned the burden of proof is on you/this kook to give a plausible reason why Wi-Fi is different.
You're just biased against science, and think that because scientists have been shown (by other scientists!) to be wrong in the past means that any random arse thing you make up on the spot with some half-assed casual observation behind it has an equal or greater chance to be true than something studied via the scientific method.
The enemies of Democracy are
Exactly. Microwaves are allowed leak up to 5 mW/cm2 at 5 cm according to the FCC. Half that leakage (2.5mW/cm2), is almost exactly the same output as a typical wi-fi access point. Which means if he can stand next to the microwave while he nukes his burrito, he shouldn't have any issues with wi-fi.
So unless he's actually 802.11b/g sensitive, I call BS.
No sig, sorry.
He needs one of these. So he can always tell when he's in danger.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Like others, I seriously doubt that the cause of his symptoms have to do with Wi-Fi. One of the the the things not mentioned in the article is whether he has explored other possibilities. The highest concentration of Wi-Fi signals are in urban areas. By its very nature, there are environmental factors tied to urban areas that go hand-in-hand with Wi-Fi. For example, urban areas tend to have higher concentrations of pollution, noise, etc., any one of which, or in combination, could cause his symptoms.
David
...we finally have an instance where a tin-foil helmet will actually be beneficial!
"I'm an old-fashioned type of guy. I worship the Sun and Moon as gods. And fear them."
Since everyone has already pointed out that electrohypersensitivity is simply a psychological problem (though probably no less real to the sufferer than panic attacks or depression, for example), I thought I'd add that even if it were a physical reaction, it almost certainly wouldn't be an allergy, which specifically implies the immune system reacting when it shouldn't. A general feeling of unwellness or pain is rarely a symptom of an allergy, unless it's among the symptoms of anaphylaxis, which is pretty much fatal if not immediately treated.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
As a kid, I could actually hear some EM quite distinctly. It was only the stronger pulse-like stuff, like arcing transformer a hundred meters away, or lightning strikes within about 2km. I can still hear lightning strikes that are fairly close as a faint crack in my head, a second or so before the thunder, but this ability seem to be diminishing as I age.
Of course, there is no frickin way anybody can feel 100mW of 2.4GHz radiation from any distance, and not feel 1kW (although shielded, but leaking a lot more than 100mW) microwave oven.
FWIW take a look at this study (http://www.aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html) which shows after weeding out people who are affected by fake situations, that this is a real health issue. An M.D. is involved in the paper. After weeding out people who got faked out by placebos and "active challenges", they got 100% positive, 0% negative. (I just briefly flipped through the paper so read it more carefully please.)
Surely we all know the truth about wifi?! Wifi eats babies!!
Here:
http://miscellanea.wellingtongrey.net/2007/05/27/the-truth-about-wireless-devices/
I used to be able to hear graphics being drawn on my PC. The power supply would ring. I don't think I can hear that high any longer.
Bruce Perens.