ABSTRACT
Today (2002) we are at a threshold for the acceptance of electromagnetic therapy as a clinically accepted form of therapy for such diverse diseases as unipolar depression, Parkinson’s disease, and sleep disorders and the treatment of debilitating chronic and acute pain. This threshold is high because (1) electromagnetic field therapy is suspect because of its present relegation to the alternative medicine market, (2) electromagnetic field therapy has been practiced with questionable spcificity where there is often a claim that one exposure regime cures all, and (3) contemporary medicine only accepts new methods after extensive testing often needing extensive clinical trials. For example, in the well-established and accepted methods of drug therapy, a new pharmaceutical to reduce the incidence of stroke recently required testing in over 6600 patients who were each followed for two years (1). Such trials are very expensive and number of patients large because the incremental improvement in outcome is small compared to existing therapy.
