Two Stages Of Brain Development, One Mechanism, One Common Denominator Leading To Cause: How a 1997 embryo study turned a promise into RF Safe
I didn’t start RF Safe as a business plan. I started it as a promise.
In 1995, my firstborn, Angel Leigh Coates, died from a neural-tube defect. In the months that followed, the only actionable science pointed to folate—so I did the one thing a grieving dad felt obligated to do: I backed campaigns for public awareness. I spent thousands of dollars running ads in big-city newspapers urging expectant moms to take folic acid (with B-vitamins) before and during early pregnancy. That was before I ever registered http://rfsafe.com. RF Safe became official in 1998, but the mission began the day I promised to fight whatever took Angel’s life—forever.
The study that changed my life
A year or so later I saw an experimental paper (Farrell et al., 1997) reporting EMF-induced abnormalities in chicken embryos—the same class of defect that took my Angel. That image series is etched in my mind: malformed neural folds, arrested closure, red arrows marking what should have been a seamless morphogenetic event. Replications have been scarce, but to me the signal was unmistakable: electromagnetic fields can interact with developing systems at the wrong time and the price is permanent.
Neural-tube closure is a one-shot job in the third to fourth week after conception. There are no retakes.
Two different stories that meet at the same gate: ion channels
Over the years I’ve come to see a shared upstream vulnerability for both neural-tube defects (NTDs) and later neurodevelopmental divergence (including autism features): ion-channel timing and the bioelectric patterns it organizes.
Bioelectric coherence: Cells talk in voltage. Voltage-gated ion channels—especially the S4 voltage sensor domain—set the rhythms for proliferation, migration, and tissue patterning.
Environmental “entropic waste”: When the environment injects noise—whether pulsed RF fields, certain drugs, inflammation, or heat—you risk mistimed channel opening, Ca²⁺ spikes, oxidative stress, and transcriptional chaos.
Why timing dictates severity:
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If the hit lands during neurulation (days ~22–28), you can derail tube closure—a structural failure with lifelong consequences.
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If it lands later (mid-gestation → infancy), you may perturb synaptogenesis, glial maturation, and myelination—changing function and circuitry rather than gross anatomy.
You’ve heard similar language in the acetaminophen debate: its active metabolite can modulate sodium channels. Different input, same gate—ion-channel dysregulation—and then the familiar downstream cascade: ROS, immune signaling, and epigenetic shifts.
Where folate fits (and why B9 keeps reappearing)
Ion-channel timing sits upstream; folate chemistry (vitamin B9) sits downstream and keeps the building line moving.
Folic acid is the synthetic, oxidized form of B9 used in fortification and prenatal vitamins. The body must activate it (via DHFR → THF) before it can feed DNA/RNA synthesis and methylation. Taken before conception and in very early pregnancy, it reduces NTD risk because the parts bin is stocked before the one-shot event.
Folinic acid (leucovorin) is already-active B9 (5-formyl-THF). It bypasses that activation step and can quickly top up the folate pools that support thymidine/purine synthesis (cell division/repair) and methylation (gene-programming, membrane/lipid chemistry important for myelin).
Clinically, that’s why folinic is explored for cerebral folate deficiency phenotypes in a subset of autistic kids—not as a generic replacement for folic acid in NTD prevention, but as a targeted bypass when transport/processing is impaired.
Key point: B9 can buffer damage by keeping DNA synthesis and methylation on track, but no B-vitamin can re-time a missed morphogenetic cue. That’s why folic acid must be present before the tube closes—and why folinic acid later is about supporting function in vulnerable brains, not rewinding development.
How we got here with EMFs
In the late 90s we were told the exposures were “safe.” Then came the ubiquity: phones on bodies, Wi-Fi everywhere, complex pulsed signals. My engineering lens kept coming back to fields + moving charges = forces—what I’ve described as a reciprocating Lorentz force nudging the ion channel gates. Whether or not every detail of that model, like ceLLM, survives peer review, the future will tell; the biological plausibility is right in front of us: voltage-gated channels are exquisitely sensitive timing devices. Add noise at the wrong window, pay for it in structure (NTDs) or function (circuit wiring, myelination, behavior).
Two paths, one convergence
Path 1 (1990s): I warned about folic acid because that’s what the best evidence said would prevent NTDs.
Path 2 (1997 → today): I pursued EMF safety because I watched the literature (and that embryo series) point to field effects on developmental timing.
Convergence: Both paths meet at ion-channel regulation and rely downstream on B9-powered DNA synthesis and methylation. Timing decides whether we face a structural catastrophe or a functional divergence.
What I’m asking readers to take away
#1 Parents of autistic children, and those with autism, PLEASE don’t discount the role of nnEMFs. I understand it’s easier to point at the tangible things in front of us. You can’t taste them, you can’t feel them, you can’t hear them, but just like Tylenol, nnEMFs affect ion gates.
Preconception B-9 folic acid remains a non-negotiable public-health win for preventing NTDs.
Folinic acid is a different tool—pre-activated B9—for specific neuro cases where transport/processing is impaired.
Protect the cellular Goldilocks zone. Limit near-body, pulsed RF during pregnancy and infancy; treat timing as a safety parameter, not just “average power.”
Mechanism matters. Whether the perturbation is a drug like acetaminophen that modulates ion channels or an nnEMF field that tweaks voltage sensors, the gate is the same, and downstream support (B9 sufficiency, redox balance) is necessary but not sufficient if the timing is off.
That’s why we must repeal section 704 of the TCA. We must enforce Public Law 90-602 and mandate LiFi to reduce the nnEMF load on our children.
We have solutions that WILL make a difference if you stop pretending that because you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
John Coates
Be RF Safe to be sure!
#TrumpRepeal704
Replies
Scott Marsland, FNP-C
@RhusToxidendron
Powerful and clear. Two thoughts to add. 1)We use low dose sublingual ketamine to stimulate BDNF, generate new neurons and heal myelin. There may actually be a way to repair NDT from a missed window. 2) There are 15,000 enzymes in humans. We only partly understand 1500.
RF Safe
@rfsafe
I sure do hope that’s possible one day, Scott. We might figure out what the other 13.5k enzymes are doing before such a non-reiterative, critical-window process is metabolically repaired.
As you know, primary neurulation is a single-pass and time-locked process; a neural-tube defect is the morphogenetic failure of cranial/caudal neuropore closure, which truly requires us to understand what caused the first domino to fall.
I think it is becoming clearer every day that domino is our natural EM environment, which allows for high-fidelity, coherent cellular communication during critical windows. We’ve become so adept at treating symptoms that we rarely confront the underlying cause.
Dr. Marty Makary at the FDA has touted leucovorin (folinic acid) treatment for some with Autism to restore brain folate when folate receptor-alpha (FRα) is blocked, but the real question is why it needs restoring.
By his own description, it’s an autoimmune problem choking off folate delivery to the brain. If we don’t treat what’s driving that autoimmunity, we’re still just treating symptoms, not the cause.
The underlying issue is the loss of fidelity within the cellular microenvironment, mistimed ion channels, Ca²⁺/ROS, mitochondrial and immune drift, with ever-present nnEMFs causing continuous bioelectrical dissonance.
Until we reduce the entropic waste, replenishing folate is necessary support; it’s not a cure for the biological disruptions or Autism itself. However, it will improve many people’s lives, but delaying proper focus on the cause will eventually reach a tipping point.
We have engineering solutions (LiFi) that can tackle the most pervasive nnEMF problems head-on. There is a need for an environmental civil engineering project to take place in and outside of the human body to restore bioelectric fidelity; only then will the curve begin to change its trajectory.
Keep healing people, Doc! I’ll keep working on clean Aether so biology has a high-fidelity substrate to carry out its evolutionary instructions without unnecessary errors within critical developmental windows.
Repeal Section 704 of the TCA, Enforce Public Law 90-602, and Mandate LiFi, or else the global health problem only gets worse, no matter how good we get at treating the symptoms!