Signal Curing Cancer

Sending his cancer a signal

"I want to see the treatment work," says John Kanzius, whose cancer has recurred. He knows the process he developed may not be ready in time to save his life, but the project was never about him.

John Kanzius, sorely weakened by leukemia treatments, drew on his lifetime of working with radio waves to devise a machine that targets cancer cells. The miracle: It works.

By Erika Hayasaki, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 2, 2007

ERIE, PA. -- When doctors told John Kanzius he had nine months to live, he quietly thanked God for his blessings and prepared to die.

Then 58, he had lived a good life, with a loving wife, two successful adult daughters and a gratifying career.

Graphic

Using radio waves against cancer

click to enlarge

Now he had leukemia and was ready to accept his fate, but the visits to the cancer ward shook him. Faces haunted him, the bald and bandaged heads, bodies slumped in wheelchairs, and children who could not play.

Like him, they had endured chemotherapy treatments that caused their weight to plummet, hands to shake, bodies to weaken, and immune systems to break down to the point that the slightest germ could be deadly. Kanzius knew their agony. He believed if cancer didn't kill him first, the treatments surely would.

He thought there had to be a more humane way to treat cancer.

Kanzius did not have a medical background, not even a bachelor's degree, but he knew radios. He had built and fixed them since he was a child, collecting transmitters, transceivers, antennas and amplifiers, earning an amateur radio operator license. Kanzius knew how to send radio wave signals around the world. If he could transmit them into cancer cells, he wondered, could he then direct the radio waves to destroy tumors, while leaving healthy cells intact?