It was 1977. The ward of a U.S. Navy hospital hummed with clinical sterility, but behind thin, pale curtains, the air was heavy with quiet dread. John Coates was just seven, eyes wide beneath the harsh glow of a long hallway lined with beds of children on each side. He lay very still as doctors prepared to remove his cancer-ravaged kidney. After returning from surgery, he noticed outside his curtain, parents wept quietly, clutching shoes and stuffed animals—tragic mementos from an empty bed left by a child who departed for surgery and never returned.
From his hospital bed, John absorbed it all—the muffled sobs, the cries from other children, the nurses’ whispers, the absence of children he would share smiles with under unthinkable conditions of fear. A singular, haunting question took root in his young mind:
“What poisoned us? Why can’t we all go home to our mothers and fathers?”
A Child Among Invisible Waves
As a Navy aviator’s son, John spent his childhood on military bases, surrounded by radar towers spinning silently, invisibly bathing entire neighborhoods in electromagnetic radiation. To John, these aviation radar towers seemed harmless—just another part of the landscape, like trees or telephone poles.
But after his surgery, something inside him shifted. Driven by an instinct he couldn’t yet name, he grew determined to understand the unseen forces around him. At just fifteen, too young for a driver’s license, he enrolled in Tidewater Community College, immersing himself in engineering and later the calculus of invisible fields, convinced that answers lay hidden within frequencies and waves. Step one was clear: learn how things worked at their most fundamental levels.
The Promise
In 1995, tragedy struck again, far more cruelly this time. John, now a seasoned engineer and business owner living outside Aspen, Colorado, became a young father. Doctors gave him devastating news: his newborn daughter fought desperately for life, every breath a struggle, victim to a neural-tube defect deemed “incompatible with life.” The grief nearly overwhelmed him. Yet in that suffocating darkness, he made his daughter a vow before her last breath:
“If I ever find out what took you from me, I will fight it every moment of my life.”
Two years later, groundbreaking research linked prenatal exposure to radio-frequency radiation with neural tube defects. John’s grief instantly crystallized into purpose. He saw a clear connection between the loss of his left kidney and the loss of his firstborn.
RF Safe is Born
John launched RF Safe in 1998, not as just another activist, but as a man driven by personal apocalypse, armed with rigorous engineering methods and a talent he refused to waste.
In 2003, John patented the world’s first interferometric array antenna for cell phones. Leveraging the Americans with Disabilities Act, he forced the FCC to rewrite outdated isotropic radiation rules that previously made his safer antenna design illegal.
In 2021, he patented revolutionary Li-Fi technology with biodefense mode—using safe pulses of light rather than microwaves to transmit data—offering society an escape from an invisible, toxic cloud.
Voices in the Wilderness
Initially, his warnings were dismissed as alarmist, but science soon validated his concerns:
- In 2011, the World Health Organization classified RF radiation as “possibly carcinogenic.”
- In 2018, the U.S. National Toxicology Program found “clear evidence” of cancer caused by RF radiation.
Yet, inexplicably, after spending $30 million, the government halted further research—violating Public Law 90-602, intended to continuously monitor radiation-emitting products.
The Tower by the Playground
Fast-forward to 2025. John’s surviving daughter is now in first grade. Her classroom window frames a towering cell antenna just 465 feet away—far closer than the minimum safe distance recommended by independent experts.
Local officials, bound by Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, are powerless to relocate the tower, forbidden from citing health concerns. The FCC, an entity profiting from selling spectrum licenses, dictates “safe” exposure.
John sees his daughter at her desk, and the question from his childhood resurfaces more urgently:
It’s no longer about what harms them, but about convincing enough people of the truth regarding the health effects of entropic waste. The real question: How to help people see we can have both wireless technology and healthy children? The solutions exist—what’s needed are mandates from leaders to avoid further compounding decades of mistakes.
The Clean Ether Act: Our Path Forward
Today, John’s advocacy crystallizes into the Clean Ether Act—legislation designed to transition society from harmful microwave radiation toward safe, sustainable Li-Fi technology. The act demands:
- Removing health oversight from the FCC and restoring regulatory power to the EPA.
- Immediate resumption and sustained funding for the National Toxicology Program’s RF radiation research.
- Repealing Section 704, empowering communities to protect themselves based on modern science.
- Mandating Li-Fi in public spaces to dramatically reduce microwave radiation exposure.
- Transparent, real-time radiation reporting for every antenna, router, and cell tower.
- Establishing national minimum setbacks of at least 1,500 feet from schools.
A Call to Action
John Coates isn’t merely a survivor; he’s a father who buried a child, an engineer who knows a safer path is possible. His journey is an urgent plea for collective action:
Map your child’s daily environment—school, bus stop, home. Identify invisible towers shaping their exposure. Demand transparency from telecom companies. Hold elected representatives accountable to public health.
Above all, amplify this story. Let John’s truth become our shared awareness.
As John himself says:
“I’m just someone who survived cancer as a young child, a father who made a promise to his daughter who wasn’t as lucky in our hostile electromagnetic environment. I will fight the invisible poison that stole her life until my last breath. But I cannot win alone—every person on Earth must join this fight!”
The curtains are open. The unseen dangers have names. Together, we must decide—will we remain silent and complicit, or step forward into a cleaner, safer future, illuminated by truth?
We owe our children protection from the harmful environments we’ve created—from bombs destroying homes to the constant assault of microwave radiation and chemical toxins. We must prioritize their well-being.
For several generations, we’ve failed our children. It’s time to address the man-made threats we’ve created, especially the one no child can escape—non-native electromagnetic fields (nnEMFs).