Dr. Milham has published seminal papers over the 40 some years of his career as an occupational epidemiologist. He has received international recognition for his work, winning the highly prestigious Ramazinni prize for his pioneering work on the risk of cancer from occupational exposures to electromagnetic fields (EMFs).
But this book surpasses all of his previous work. It certainly is, in my view, the most important book yet published in our new century. He convincingly shows that a set of diseases, the "diseases of civilization" (cancer, Alzheimer's, cardiovascular, asthma, type 2 diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and depression) is the result of the exposure to EMFs, though not necessarily the only cause.
The book begins with a wonderful rendition of how as a medical doctor he became entranced with epidemiology. He give a brief overview of his experiences in medical school and his success as a young doctor, particularly as his mentor Gilbert Beebe taught him to do, "listening to patients, if properly questioned, would always tell the doctor the diagnosis."
He tells story after story of how he was able to detect a health problem that no one else had seen. For example, when his infant daughter became quite ill. He diagnosed her with a strep infection (as any doctor would have likely done) but he went beyond the obvious. He checked with his neighbors and discovered that the community was in the middles of a milk-borne strep infection, which in his words was a "clear example of a public health failure." It was this, and many other similar examples, that brought him to epidemiology.
He shows that the same skills that he brought to his medical practice when he became an epidemiologist MD. That is, as an epidemiologist, as he had been as a practicing doctor, he looked beyond the obvious. It is the continuous application of this skill that resulted in his wining of the Ramazzini prize. This book is about how he came to the understanding that dirty electricity is a hazard, yet a hazard, if recognized by society that can easily with little to no expense be mitigated such that we can continue to live with the benefits of electricity and substantially eliminate the diseases of civilization.
Everyone concerned about health issues beyond contagious diseases should read this short and highly readable book, then each reader should pass on to their friends, what an important book Dirty Electricity is.