Inventor Tells 60 Minutes He Hopes To Live Long Enough To See Machine Cure Humans
Jump to full article: CBS, 2008-04-13
Intro: What if we told you that a guy with no background in science or medicine-not even a college degree-has come up with what may be one of the most promising breakthroughs in cancer research in years?
Well it's true, and if you think it sounds improbable, consider this: he did it with his wife's pie pans and hot dogs.
His name is John Kanzius, and he's a former businessman and radio technician who built a radio wave machine that has cancer researchers so enthusiastic about its potential they're pouring money and effort into testing it out.
Here's the important part: if clinical trials pan out-and there's still a long way to go-the Kanzius machine will zap cancer cells all through your body without the need for drugs or surgery and without side effects. None at all. At least that's the idea. . . .
The answer would cost much more than that. Kanzius spent about $200,000 just to have a more advanced version of his machine built. He knew that metal heats up when it's exposed to high-powered radio waves. So what if a tumor was injected with some kind of metal, and zapped with a focused beam of radio waves? Would the metal heat up and kill the cancer cells, but leave the area around them unharmed? He did his first test with hot dogs. . . .
Kanzius thought he had found a way attack cancer cells without the collateral damage caused by chemotherapy and radiation. Today, his invention is in the laboratories of two major research centers - the University of Pittsburgh and M.D. Anderson, where Dr. Steven Curley, a liver cancer surgeon, is testing it. . . .
They’ve already shown that the Kanzius machine can heat nanoparticles and cook cancer to death in animals. Dr. Curley with rabbits, and in Pittsburgh, Dr. David Geller demonstrated to 60 Minutes how he used nanoparticles, made from gold, to kill liver cancer cells grown in rats.
"Now what we’re going to do is inject the nanoparticles," Dr. Geller explained. "Directly into the tumor."
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