Can microwaves damage living tissue — in particular the brain tissue of mobile-phone users? Mobile phones put out too little power to cause much heating; even so, they may induce more subtle non-thermal damage. Daedalus now proposes a mechanism.

A typical cell membrane is a fairly fluid bilipid layer with a few big protein molecules embedded in it. These molecules are receptors or ‘antennae’ by which the cell responds to specific molecules around it, or announces its internal state to the outside world. Every protein molecule, says Daedalus, is polar, and will tend to align itself with an electric field. It is also chiral, and often helical: rotate it in its socket, and it will screw inwards or outwards. Together, these facts mean that a rotating electric field could screw it into or out of the cell.

Almost any microwave source, such as a mobile-phone transmitter, will have some component of circular polarization. It will make billions of rotations every second. Any volume of brain tissue must have a few cells bearing protein molecules that happen to resonate at its rotation frequency. Even very weak coupling to the field should soon spin these molecules through the few turns needed to screw them out of the cell membrane. The cell might then simply leak to death — penicillin kills bacteria by making them leak. Or it might plug the hole with some wrong protein, creating more indirect trouble. Either way, the cell could lose the information entrusted to it, causing the memory loss complained of by mobile-phone users.

So, says Daedalus, to reduce the hazards of mobile phones, minimize the component of circularly polarized radiation in their output. But he also sees the way to a powerful new radiotherapy. If you knew the rotational resonant frequency of a particular protein in a particular type of cell, you could hit it with circularly polarized microwaves of exactly that frequency. Molecules of that protein would be spun out of their cell membranes, killing the cells or inducing them to take up some specially tailored therapeutic ‘channel-blocker’ which you had cunningly injected beforehand. Other proteins, and other cells nearby, would be unaffected. This elegant therapy could be directed against foreign bacteria or parasites in the body, or over- or underperforming glands, or cells succumbing to viral or neoplastic derangement. It would need much knowledge and insight to develop, but would have amazing power, specificity and freedom from side effects.