Possible cure for cancer found by grandpa...

[Plan9]

Possible cure for cancer found by random non-scientist.

Wouldn't that be some craziness?

Get the technology developed enough to "nuke" the specific part of your body that has the cancer.

[Ustwo]

Originally Posted by Crompsin

Possible cure for cancer found by random non-scientist.

Wouldn't that be some craziness?

Get the technology developed enough to "nuke" the specific part of your body that has the cancer.

No, its not crazy and it makes good sense if you can find a way to only attach to cancer cells.

Only hes not a non-scientist, but a non-MD, he seems to have some physics training.

[Hain]

That is pretty wild! It honestly does take someone who is a few steps back from the problem to see a completely alternate solution. Genius.

I thought for a minute this would be a link to a site that talks about using antimatter to treat tumors, which is just as wild as this. Link: http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technol...cbccdrcrd.html

[Hain]

I just read a new article about this on PopSci, so just thought of updating.

View: A Homebuilt Tumor-Killer
Source: Popsci
This post created with FASS

Abstract: "John Kanzius's treatment uses radio waves and nanoparticles to zap cancerous tumors. See it in action"   click to show 

A Homebuilt Tumor-Killer
05.13.2008 at 1:31 pm
by Rena Marie Pacella

The Kanzius RF Field Generator
Cost to Develop: $1 million+
Time: 5 years
Prototype | | | | | Product

When a man with no medical degree and a diagnosis of fatal leukemia builds a cancer-curing machine in his garage, you might think it merely the desperate attempt of a dying man to escape his fate. And you’d be right. The weird thing is, it just might work.

John Kanzius was diagnosed with leukemia in the spring of 2002. But it wasn’t until the following year, during a bout of chemo-induced insomnia, that he got the idea for his machine. Disappointed at the blunt forms of treatment available, the lifelong inventor and retired radio-station owner thought maybe he could build something that would target cancer cells more directly. Radio waves generate an electromagnetic field, which, if intense enough, can make the electrons inside a piece of metal move around violently and give off heat. So Kanzius suspected that if you embedded metal particles into a tumor and hit it with the right kind of radio waves, you could heat the tumor enough to kill it.

How the Kanzius RF Field Generator Works: : Kanzius’s machine generates an intense electromagnetic field, which kills cancer by heating nanoparticles attached to the tumors.
Researchers have begun human trials with a similar treatment, using infrared light to blast gold nanoshells attached to tumors. But infrared works best on tumors close to the surface, such as those in the throat. Radio waves, which pass straight through human cells, could penetrate much deeper, into lung or liver tumors. But they also radiate in all directions and lose energy as they travel. Kanzius’s challenge was to concentrate high-powered radio waves on a relatively small area to create that high-intensity electromagnetic field.
So he built a high-voltage system that sends intense radio waves through a pair of antennas just inches apart. At the end of both antennas are seven-inch copper coils precisely tuned to resonate at the same frequency (13.56 megahertz, the frequency typically used for medical applications). This “resonant coupling” confines the radio waves into a narrow beam between the antennas, creating a super-strong electromagnetic field between them. The electromagnetic energy takes the path of least resistance—the metal—and heats the tumor. The metal-free tissue around it remains unscathed.

By the end of 2003, Kanzius was injecting hot dogs with copper sulfate and putting them in his device. When he examined the hot dog, only the meat around the copper sulfate was cooked. (The machine also, strangely, turned saltwater flammable, a phenomenon we wrote about in Headlines, December 2007.) But of course, frying hot dogs was a long way from curing cancer. To make the machine more precise, Kanzius needed even smaller particles and real cancer cells—and help from someone who knew more about both. In 2004, he filed for a patent and started circulating the idea among friends and doctors. He quickly drew the attention of some renowned scientists, including David Geller, the co-director of the Liver Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Steven Curley, a professor of surgical oncology at Houston’s M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and a colleague of Kanzius’s personal physician. Curley, an early pioneer of a cancer treatment that sends a low-frequency current through electrodes to destroy tumors directly, was impressed by

Kanzius’s radio-frequency generator. “What John has done,” Curley says, “is found a way to produce a radio-frequency field so intense and so focused, it’s achieving heating rates that have never before been described.”

For the next few years, Kanzius worked with Curley’s and Geller’s teams to fine-tune the intensity of the radio-wave field to improve its effectiveness with the new particles. Last December, the first peer-reviewed paper on animal trials of the therapy appeared in the American Cancer Society’s journal, Cancer. Curley’s group injected carbon nanotubes into liver tumors in rabbits and zapped them with Kanzius’s machine, killing the tumors and leaving the rabbits healthy. Geller’s team achieved similar results in rodents using gold particles; that study will be published in August. The next step is getting the nanoparticles, once injected into the body, to find and enter only the cancer cells. Human trials could be just a few years away.

“The applications will be profound,” predicts surgical oncologist Raphael Pollock, the editor in chief of Cancer. “The method could be easily expanded to look at a variety of cancers.”

“People always ask me if I ever treat myself,” says Kanzius, who is still fighting leukemia. “No. I wrote the patents—I know it won’t work without that targeting particle. If it did, I’d be sitting in front of that thing every day.”

[Ustwo]

I'm disappointed that what the biggest obstacle is, the targeting of the cancer cells by the particles has not been overcome.

Still it shows how invention is normally just a moment of inspired genius, not a product of profound spending hoping to find a solution.

[ASU2003]

But once you have an idea that works (or it looks promising), it takes money to test and develop it. The more money there is, the easier and faster it can be improved upon.

Weren't they thinking that they could attach gold particles onto some white blood cells or something and that is what would attach to the cancer cells?

I just wonder how many people don't want something like this to come out. There is big money in treating the symptoms and surgery. A lot of doctors may have to switch to different fields. Ok, so the doctors probably would be happy and could retrain or retire, but the charity organizers and researchers wouldn't be too happy.

[echo5delta]

Wait, wait, hang on... we're not doin' this shit right here again, are we?

[Hain]

Originally Posted by ASU2003

Weren't they thinking that they could attach gold particles onto some white blood cells or something and that is what would attach to the cancer cells?

I just wonder how many people don't want something like this to come out. There is big money in treating the symptoms and surgery. A lot of doctors may have to switch to different fields. Ok, so the doctors probably would be happy and could retrain or retire, but the charity organizers and researchers wouldn't be too happy.

The gold particulate method you are thinking of is explained in the article I just linked. It is used in the treatment of surface tumors.

Let's not forget pharmaceutical companies make a killing in selling drugs only designed to treat the feelings of sickness in cancer patients.

[CaliLivChick]

Fuck them and their money making (pardon my french), I'm tired of all my family members dying of cancer, and I'm looking like I'm gonna be on that list too.

[Hain]

Originally Posted by CaliLivChick

Fuck them and their money making (pardon my french), I'm tired of all my family members dying of cancer, and I'm looking like I'm gonna be on that list too.

[Not to thread jack] Welcome to the ethics of the corporate world: If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

[MSD]

Originally Posted by Augi

Let's not forget pharmaceutical companies make a killing in selling drugs only designed to treat the feelings of sickness in cancer patients.

Because there isn't any market for affordable cures in countries with government-run healthcare systems, or in free markets where they can charge whatever the hell they want for a cure

[Ustwo]

Originally Posted by Augi

[Not to thread jack] Welcome to the ethics of the corporate world: If you're not part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.

What does this mean exactly?

[Hain]

Originally Posted by Ustwo

What does this mean exactly?

Firstly, it is a joke. Despair.com

Second, this was the first thing I learned in my corporate ethics class: corporations have no ethics. The corporation is not a person, it's only goal is to maximize good- make money and do all things required to keep making money. The people within a corporation work to do good for the company, concerns not affecting the company are irrelevant.

.........

Originally Posted by MSD

Because there isn't any market for affordable cures in countries with government-run healthcare systems, or in free markets where they can charge whatever the hell they want for a cure

So curing disease is bad?