William Congreve wrote, "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast," and yes, that's breast, as in the home of mankind's soul, not Beast, as in the big furry guy that hangs out with Beauty.
Unless, of course, your breast happens to be packing a pacemaker and you're listening to music with an iPod. Actually, any MP3 player is a risk to pacemakers, according to research conducted by high school senior Jay Thaker of Michigan, who worked with several doctors on the project.
Apparently there aren't enough drugs, parties or video games up there in Michigan, so high school students have to amuse themselves with research that puts several corporations at risk of crippling lawsuits. Idle hands are the devil's playground, after all.
You know this had to completely blow the curve at the science fair. "I built a baking soda and vinegar volcano!" "I grew a potato in a water glass!" "I trained sea monkeys! What did you do, Jay? ... Really? You don't say ... Get him, boys!"
Thaker's study found that portable music players caused pacemakers to fail in half the test subjects. The players caused either "telemetry interference" or "over-sensing," in which the pacemaker's recording device went all -- to use the technical term -- wonky. This could lead to a patient being treated for a problem he or she doesn't really have.
In one case, the MP3 player shut down the pacemaker entirely. Say what you will about sea monkeys, but they've never killed anyone. Well, OK, neither did young Thaker; he was merely studying patients whose hearts weren't completely reliant on the pacemaker.
The press on this story is woefully inadequate on one very salient point: What music was being played? After all, that could totally skew the research. If you take the average septuagenarian and blast Kelis' "Milkshake" ("My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard") into their ear buds, of course you're going to get them all -- to use another technical term -- twitterpated.
At a party in college, a musician explained to me that all the most popular music had 60 beats per minute, because it matched the natural beat of the heart. It's a nice theory, and maybe somewhere in Wisconsin there's a high school senior working on that research, but it's questionable for two reasons: a) the heart actually beats between 60 and 100 times per minute, and b) the same guy tried to convince me that Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima because he was left-handed.
Of course, the reason music selection didn't make it into the story is that it's not the music that's the problem, it's the feedback. You get the same effect by having your pacemaker too close to a microwave, cell phone or any number of other electrical appliances. For the study, they placed music players within two inches of the pacemaker, although in some cases they got results at 18 inches.
If you're thinking of getting Grandma an iPod for her birthday, be sure you assess the risks. Chances are, she's pretty safe with the player on her hip, although grandmas may vary. For example, on some grandmas, there's not enough cord to get the ear buds from the hips to the ears.
Also, if you're going to pre-load the iPod with music, make sure you take the person's tastes into consideration. Trust me, you don't want to have to explain to Grandma precisely what a "Hollaback Girl" is, or why it would be considered disadvantageous to be one.
Having Gwen Stefani inadvertently put Grandma in the hospital would really suck, but she's surely not the most dangerous performer out there. Rumor has it that Dick Cheney's last three heart attacks were "Krump-related."
F. Andrew Taylor is a Las Vegas freelance writer. His column appears twice monthly. Contact him at fandrewt@cox.net.
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