The Kanzius Cancer Cure - A Medical Cinderella Story

Did you ever dream you'd be the one to find the cure for cancer? Probably not. And neither did John Kanzius, but he has set the world of cancer treatment on its ear. Let me fill you in.

John Kanzius, a former radio and television executive from Pennsylvania, was diagnosed with a rare, incurable form of non-Hodgkins Leukemia in his late fifties. In the course of his 36 rounds of chemotherapy, he was in the company of many other patients undergoing similar treatment at Texas University's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

What haunted John, even more than his own situation, was the faces of the children in the Anderson cancer ward. In a CBS 60 Minutes broadcast in April 2008, John said to host Leslie Stahl, €œI saw the smiles of youth and saw their spirits were broken. And you could see they were sort of asking, €˜Why can't they do something for me?'...I still remember them holding onto their teddy bears€¦

Revelation on a Sleepless Night

The side effect of chemo for John was extreme nausea and insomnia. On one of those sleepless nights, John had a true €œaha moment. He remembered his childhood when he spent a lot of time building radios from scratch and got to thinking about the power of radio waves. Intrigued, he got out of bed and went in search of a way to start testing his idea.

John's wife Marianne woke up later to the sound of clanking metal. It was John - cutting up pie pans from the kitchen cupboard - and Marianne feared that her husband had lost his mental grip. €œShe felt sorry for me commented John in later interviews.

Hot Dogs and Home Bakeware

John's idea was a matter of brilliant simplicity: basically, radio waves are harmless to humans. But focus them on metal particles and they target the metal with intense heat. What if cancerous tumors were injected with a metallic compound and then zapped with radio waves? Would it kill the cancerous cells and leave surrounding tissue undamaged?

Without surgery?

Without chemo?

Without side effects?

Kanzius conducted the initial experiments with hot dogs - yes, the all-American Ball Park Frank. First he injected the hot dog with copper sulfite, then he aimed the radio waves at the hot dog placed in his home-made (from his wife's pie pans) radio wave machine. Using a thermometer, he compared the temperature of the injected metallic site to the non-metallic areas of the hot dog. Lo and behold, the heat was concentrated in the metallic areas while the rest of the hot dog was cool and undamaged.

€œGod, maybe I've got something here, exclaimed John.

Add a Pinch of Nanotechnology to the Recipe

With a viable testing idea, the trick now seemed to be how to introduce the metallic component into the cancer cells. John Kanzius had shared his theory with his surgeon, Dr. Steven Curley, a professor of surgical oncology at the Anderson Cancer Center. (That facility, by the way, was rated number one in cancer treatment by US News and World Report for four of the past six years.) As fate would have it, Dr. Curley had another patient at Anderson that could help. That patient was Rick Smalley - who had won the Nobel Prize for discovering nanoparticles made from carbon.

If you aren't familiar with nanotechnology, it is the engineering of materials at the atomic level. One nanometer is equal to one-billionth of a meter, which means you can fit 100,000 of them on the tip of a hair. Researchers have already been able to attach metallic nanoparticles to cancer cells in mice and rabbits.

Long story short, Dr. Curley asked Smalley for some nanoparticles, explaining why he wanted them. Smalley was skeptical, telling Curley it would never work and not to get his hopes up, but he did give him a vial of nanoparticles to experiment with.

The Deep Heat Beat Goes On

Sadly, John Kanzius died on February 18, 2009 from pneumonia contracted as a result of chemotherapy. Prior to that, Rick Smalley died of lymphoma. Kanzius had hoped to live long enough to be one of the first human test subjects for the Kanzius Radio Frequency treatment, but it was not to be. Smalley had gone from initial skepticism to being one of Kanzius' biggest supporters. One of his final wishes, expressed to Dr. Curley was €œdon't stop, no matter what you do€¦this will change medicine forever.

I honestly believe, as does Dr. Curley, that this is one of the most exciting developments in modern medical research. Clinical trials are set to begin in the fall of 2009. The FDA approval process is being accomplished step by step, which provides credibility and justification for further study.

Please stay tuned for more installments on the progress of research and development of the Kanzius Radio Frequency Therapy. I'll be following all of the published details and will share them will you in an ongoing series as they come in.

In the meantime, stay aware and stay healthy. And do consult your physician before making any changes to your exercise, diet or supplement regimen.

See you next time.

Sources:

1. €œ The Kanzius Machine: A Cancer Cure? Inventor Tells 60 Minutes He Hopes To Live Long Enough To See Machine Cure Humans, 60 Minutes, CBSnews.com, July 20, 2008
2. Curley, S, M.D., €œSpring 2009 Update, John Kanzius Research Foundation, Clark, Matt, €œPatents approved for cancer treatment developed by Sanibel resident, naplesnews.com, April 3, 2009
3. Bruce, David, €œStudy shows Kanzius' concept works, Erie-Times News, Dec 19, 2008
   Piddock, Charles, €œDeep Heat - A Leukemia Patient invents a potential cure for the disease, Current Science, Jan 9, 2009
4. Phillips, C, €œTreatment Approach Using Radiofrequency Waves Heats Up, NCI Cancer Bulletin, Mar 24, 2009, Vol 6/No 6