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The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life
Robert O. Becker, M.D., and Gary Selden
A landmark of popular science that made the case for bioelectricity—the idea that electrical currents are fundamental to life, growth, and healing. Orthopedic surgeon and researcher Robert O. Becker, writing with Gary Selden, recounts his decades of experiments on how weak electrical fields govern the regeneration of tissue, beginning with salamanders that regrow lost limbs and reaching toward the tantalizing question of why humans mostly can't. Part scientific memoir, part manifesto, it argues that medicine's chemical-and-mechanical model overlooks the body's electrical dimension, and it helped seed serious research into using electrical stimulation to heal stubborn bone fractures. It also ventures into more contested territory about the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. Vivid and accessible, it remains a touchstone—admired as a genuine work of science and, as noted below, claimed by a range of later movements.
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The author
Robert O. Becker (1923–2008) was an orthopedic surgeon and researcher with the Veterans Administration and SUNY Upstate Medical Center whose work on bioelectricity and limb regeneration earned real scientific respect, including Nobel nominations. He was also a prominent early voice warning about the possible health effects of electromagnetic fields.
The book
The Body Electric narrates Becker's research program: the electrical control of healing, experiments in inducing partial regeneration, and the clinical payoff of electrical bone-healing. It reads as both a detective story of discovery and an argument that mainstream biology underrates electricity's role in life.
How it has aged
The core science on bioelectricity has aged well and is, if anything, resurgent in modern regenerative-medicine research. Its legacy is double-edged, though: Becker's warnings about EMF exposure made him a hero to activists and to some alternative-medicine and anti-technology movements, and portions of that broader EMF-harm narrative remain scientifically contested. Becker himself was a rigorous researcher; readers should separate his documented experiments from the more speculative EMF claims his book has since been enlisted to support.
For more context
For the current state of the field, look to contemporary work on bioelectricity in regeneration; Becker's later Cross Currents extends his EMF arguments.
Sources
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Robert O. Becker, M.D., and Gary Selden
- Publisher
- William Morrow
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1985
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Science
- Location
- Colorado