One night Mary Ann Kanzius awoke to a horrendous clamor coming from downstairs, upon investigation she found her husband John

One night Mary Ann Kanzius awoke to a horrendous clamor coming from downstairs, upon investigation she found her husband John sitting on the kitchen floor cutting up her good aluminum pie pans with a pair of shears. When asked why he was wiring the pans to his ham radio, he told her to go back to bed. So off she went know that John wasn't kind of person to quit until he was satisfied, but what she didn't know is that John was developing a way to use radio waves to kill the cancer he'd recently been diagnosed with and his midnight tinkering may soon give hope to the 1.4 million Americans diagnosed with cancer every year according to the 2006 American Cancer Society facts and figures. For John Kanzius inadvertently refined a current cancer treatment called radio frequency ablation, he made it more effective and less invasive. To understand how this came to be, we will explore first the current procedure, second, John's new approach and finally the implications of this new hope for treating cancer. Before we can understand radio frequency ablation or RFA, we need a crash course in wave physics. Energy moves in a wave, it's measured in frequency, how quickly it moves up and down. High frequency waves like Superman's x-ray vision move very quickly and that's able to penetrate most matter, however due to this frequency, they're likely to cause damage as they collide with molecules and disrupt the atomic balance. Low frequency waves like radio waves move very slowly and do not disturb the atomic balance of matter they pass through. On its website last updated September, 10^th, 2006, the Society of Interventional Radiology explains that radio waves are harmless to healthy cells as compared to x-rays which can alter the chemical and genetic state of a cell. This is why radio waves are the perfect choice for cancer ablation, this being defined by the National Cancer Institute on January 10^th, 2007 as the medical term for any procedure used to destroy diseased or damaged tissue in the body. The current RFA technique is outlined by the Radiological Society in North America on its website; last updated November 8^th, 2006. "First a local anesthetic is given to numb the skin and the underlying tissue, next a quarter inch incision is made in the skin so the doctor can insert a thin tube called a catheter and guide it to the treatment site using an imaging technique like ultrasound. The catheter is connected to an electric generator and once in place, metal prongs extend out of it and into the cancerous tumor. Next contact pads also wired to the generator are placed on the patient's skin, this completes an electric circuit thus when the generator is turned on, electric energy in the form of radio waves passes harmlessly through the body going back and forth between the catheter and the contact pads. However every time that the radio waves meet the resistance of the metal prongs at the treatment site, heat is created. It's kinda like an atomic mosh pit with a crowd of atoms suddenly agitated by radio waves; the electrons begin to bounce around and collide creating friction and thus heat. This heat gets up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature at which water boils." The National Institute of Health on January 11^th, 2007 explains that this heat destroys the cancerous tumor, essentially cooking it but leaving the surrounding healthy tissue whole. However there are limitations to this technique because it relies on the use of a catheter. Enter John Kanzius, John was diagnosed with leukemia in 2002 and his months of being bedridden by chemotherapy sparked a desire in him to find a better way to treat cancer. Now John had no medical training but he had worked in the radio industry for 40 years. He remembered a time when a colleague who was wearing wire rimmed glasses got burned because he was standing too close to a radio transmitter. This memory sparked John's late night kitchen experiment. Now two things were amazing about this, first John was able to replicate RFA in his kitchen; second John made a huge improvement upon RFA. Instead of using a catheter to insert metal prongs, he injected tiny metal minerals into a hotdog; he then placed the hotdog between the radio transmitter and receiver so that the radio waves would pass through the meat. When he cut the hotdog open the area around the minerals was cooked but the rest remained raw. After talking to several doctors, John became aware that he had improved RFA and he filed for a patent. Word got around and several cancer centers expressed interest in testing John's theory, he readily agreed so in August of 2005 according the March 22^nd 2006 Netraider Tribune, at the University of Pittsburg Medical Center a model of John's theory was set up and instead of a hotdog placed between the radio transmitter and receiver was a thin test tube. Inside this tube was a solution of carbon nano particles, these particles are actually pieces of metal 70,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, a speck of dandruff is like a mountain to a nano particle. When the electricity was turned on, the nano particles were successfully heated to 130 degrees Fahrenheit the perfect temperature at which to kill cancer cells says Dr. Steven Curley to the May, 2006 Reader's Digest. He further explains that they can use magnets to pull the nano particles through the body to the tumor. Dr. Curley's continuing to test this technique on live animals. Now that we understand how RFA works and John's big improvement, we can examine the implications. First because RFA uses electromagnetic energy in the form of radio waves, it's much safer than traditional cancer radiation treatment. <Inaudible> Health Week, April 30^th, 2006 confirms that radio waves are harmless to healthy cells as compared to x-rays. Second John's new method maybe solves some of the problems with the current RFA, on its website last updated January 11^th, 2007 the Mayo Clinic explains that because a catheter is inserted, tissues and organs near the treatment site are at risk to damage and may require surgical repair, there's also a risk of hemorrhaging and in some cases infection can develop but John's method prevents these with a simple injection of nano particles thus making the procedure non invasive. Third on its website last updated January 20^th, 2007, the University of Southern California, Department of Surgery explains that currently RFA is used to treat several forms of cancer such as liver, breast and prostate but John's new method can be used to target additional types such as pancreatic and colon. Additionally the current procedure must be performed several times to target multiple tumors but John's method makes it possible to target multiple tumors in just a single treatment. Unfortunately there are some concerns as to whether the nano particles used in this method will leave the body after treatment. If they remain around the treatment site or reenter the blood stream, it's possible that future exposure to radio waves may cause heat damage to healthy tissues, good thing MPR is such a weak signal. However research with <inaudible> detailed in the June 15^th, 2005 University of Michigan Health System Report indicates that the kidneys can easily filter nano particles from the blood stream and emit them in urine. Of course we're gonna have to wait until this practice becomes common but considering that the October 14^th, 2006 Erie Times News says John secured 10 million dollars in investment towards development; we may not have to wait very long. Ironically John's own method cannot be used to treat his form of Leukemia but fortunately his chemo regiment has been effective. So today we learn how a man with vision discovered how to cook a hotdog with a ham radio, we explored first the current procedure, then John's new approach and finally the implications of this new hope for treating cancer. Truly it may soon revolutionize the way we fight cancer, saving more lives and doing it more efficiently. Mary Ann Kanzius was upset when she saw her husband destroying her good pie pans, but now it's clear that the loss of a few pie pans and a hotdog may save millions of lives.