CV for Olle Johansson, assoc. prof. at the Karolinska Institute andprofessor at The Royal Institute of Technology, both in Stockholm.
Olle Johansson introduced the clinical term "screen dermatitis" to explain thecutaneous damages that developed in the late 1970's when office workers, first mostly women, began to be placed in front of computer monitors. Many of thembecame ill and developed cutaneous and neurological problems. Several clinicaldermatologists, headed by the late professor Sture Lidén, instead talked about union-driven fears, mass media-based psychoses, imagination phenomena,Pavlovian conditioning, and so forth. Olle Johansson, however, refused to reducepeople to an ill-defined psychologic home-made diagnosis, without any support even among experts in psychology and psychiatry. Instead, he called for actionalong lines of occupational medicine, biophysics and biochemistry, as well asneuroscience and experimental dermatology.He has always supported the democratic principle that citizens are allowed to beill even in a disease, i.e. a new diagnosis, that is not yet acknowledged by themedical establishment. All diseases were once a "new diagnosis", and it should beremembered that the medical profession strongly has doubted asbestosis, coldurticaria, AIDS, the mad cow disease, skin lice, etc. He has never stopped askingquestions and is constantly using the answers to put into place the ever-growingnumber of pieces of a very, very complicated and enigmatic puzzle.According to Olle Johansson, persons claiming adverse cutaneous andneurological reactions after having been exposed to computer screens, cellularphones, low-energy light bulbs, etc., very well could be reacting in a highly specificway and with a completely correct avoidance reaction, especially if the provocativeagent was radiation and/or chemical emissions -- just as you would do if you hadbeen exposed to e.g. sun rays, X-rays, radioactivity or chemical odours. Theworking hypothesis, thus, early became that they react in a cellularly correct way to the electromagnetic radiation, maybe in concert with chemical emissions suchas plastic components, flame retardants, etc.Nowadays, thanks to his endless efforts, electrohypersensitivity (EHS) is inSweden an officially fully recognized functional impairment (i.e., it is not regardedas a disease). Survey studies show that somewhere between 230,000–290,000Swedish men and women – out of a population of 9,000,000 - report a variety ofsymtoms when being in contact with electromagnetic field (EMF) sources.The electrohypersensitive people have their own handicap organization, TheSwedish Association for the Electrohypersensitive (http://www.feb.se; thewebsite has an English version). This organization is included in the SwedishDisability Federation (Handikappförbundens SamarbetsOrgan; HSO). HSO is theunison voice of the Swedish disability associations towards the government, theparliament, and national authorities, and is a cooperative body that today consistsof 43 national disability organizations (where The Swedish Association for the2
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