Homemade Cancer Machine Shows Promise

(CBS)  John Kanzius invented a radio wave machine that he believed would one day cure cancer. He got cancer researchers so excited, some are already testing it out on laboratory animals.

When 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl first met Kanzius, he told us he didn't have a background in science or medicine; he didn't even have a college degree.

What he did have was a deadly form of leukemia and a determination to use whatever time he had left to come up with a better way to treat the disease.

Using his wife's pie pans and what he knew best - radios - Kanzius, a former radio executive, built a machine in his garage that he hoped would zap cancer cells without the horrible side effects you get with chemotherapy and radiation.

60 Minutes decided to keep track of Kanzius and his invention, so we followed him for over a year, as he pushed to speed up the research on his machine and fought to slow down his own cancer, which was killing him.

When Stahl first met Kanzius in January 2008, he was finishing his 36th round of chemotherapy since being diagnosed with terminal leukemia. All that chemo had been keeping him alive, barely.

April 2008: The Kanzius Machine
MD Cancer Center: Have questions about cancer?
John Kanzius Research Foundation: Learn more about the research.

He said the leukemia was getting him mentally and physically. "And I didn't think that one could feel this bad and still be alive as I did back in January."

But we were surprised by how healthy he seemed seven months later, in August 2008, when we visited with him and his wife Marianne at their home in Erie, Pa.

"I must say you look like a completely different person to me. You look energetic. And you've gained some weight, am I right?" Stahl remarked.

"You're right about all of them," Kanzius replied.

He told Stahl he felt "great."

So great, he had spent the summer outside doing things he hadn't been able to do since he'd been diagnosed with cancer six years earlier, like playing 18 holes of golf a day. What happened?

"I decided it was time to turn the switch on and try it…Try treating myself," he explained. "Got in the machine, adjusted it, and turned it on for a minute the first time. And [I] didn't feel anything strange."

He had turned himself into a human guinea pig.

"I've done it nine times," Kanzius told Stahl. "Nine times and my blood work has improved all summer long. We're on vacation right now from cancer, I don't know whether it's a permanent leave but we're on vacation right now.

"Now that you feel so good, you feel great, you look good, do you have a constant worry that this is too good to be true kind of thing?" Stahl asked.

"Sure. I mean, you wonder when the bubble's going to break," Kanzius admitted.

So even though he had been feeling good for awhile, he admitted there was always fear his disease could take a turn for the worse. "The disease is relentless. It just keeps pushing and pushing and pushing."

It was that relentlessness of leukemia that had given Kanzius the idea to build his radio wave machine in the first place. When 60 Minutes met him back then, he showed Stahl how the radio waves - transmitted across a small field - created enough energy to light up a fluorescent bulb.

When moving a fluorescent bulb into the force field, the bulb lit up.

He then wanted to show us that radio waves are harmless to humans, and even moved his hand back and forth into the force field. "Nothing happens," he told Stahl.

But he knew that radio waves can heat up metal. So he wondered: if he injected a cancerous tumor with some kind of metal, would radio waves heat up the metal and cook the cancer cells to death, and only the cancer cells? He tried it out on a hot dog, injecting it with a metal solution.

He took a probe, and placed it into an injection site on the hot dog. When he turned the device on, the temperature went up in that one area where the metal was and nowhere else.

Kanzius thought he had discovered a way to attack cancer cells without the collateral damage caused by standard treatments like chemotherapy and radiation. "I said 'Eureka, I've done it,'" Kanzius remembered.

He managed to intrigue Dr. Steven Curley, a liver cancer surgeon at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Dr. Curley thought there was so much promise in Kanzius' invention, he began conducting his own research with the machine, using tiny bits of gold nano-particles that are so small, thousands of them can be injected into a single cancer cell. The radio waves then heat up the gold, which kills the cancer. But Kanzius wasn't happy with all the time it would take Curley to get through the usual human clinical trials and approval by the FDA.

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[mommyt3]

I am a 36 year old mother of three battling stage iv colon cancer. I am doing well, but what a breakthrough this could be if everything turns out the way we all hope. But, I like so many others probably don't have 4 or 5 years to wait. I think we should all petition our congressmen and women to push this through the FDA much quicker. I have a friend who's brother lives in Houston and has inoperable brain cancer. He was supposed to be in on the trials for this, but it was determined that he is not "sick enough." I don't even know why they're bringing up the possiblility of participating in a trial if they are so far away. Anyway, maybe if we ALL put pressure on our new president through our representatives in congress, we may be able to get this pushed through quicker. I'm drafting my letter right now.

[bornagain33]

You might give City of Hope a call. The phone number to the center in Duarte, California is: 626-256-HOPE (4673). My husband had stage IV colon cancer and was treated there with RFA (Radiofrequency Ablation) which sounds exactly like the same procedure mentioned in this article. It was basically a very hot needle inserted into the tumor which killed only the tumor and leaving the surrounding tissue intact. God bless you in your fight. I'll be praying for you.

[cheryl_s23]

My daughter is 35 and has stage four colon cancer. She has 2 small children and was given 2-3 years to live a year ago. I'm sure she would love to give this a try. At least it gives people some hope.

[tr5003]

My Cancer is GONE. The prime cause of Cancer was discovered by Dr. Otto Warburg in 1920. Dr. Warburg received 2 Nobels in Medicine in his life time. He was one of the most respected Doctors and researchers of his time. Dr. Warburg found that a lack of oxygen in the cell could lead to Cancer. He and others verified this many times over 40 years. They could not find out how to get the oxygen into the cell. So Cancer research has gone in all different directions and Dr. Warburg was either forgotten or hidden. Now I think Doctors and researchers think this is to simple an answer for such a terrible disease.
I urge everyone reading this and I challenge 60 minutes to investigate the following book and discovery: The Hidden Story of Cancer by Professor Brian Peskin. Professor Peskin found the link that Dr. Otto Warburg could not find. Again a very simple product may stop Cancer for less than $50.00. www.brianpeskin.com is the professors web site. There is a lot of free information there about Cancer and other myths of medicine. If you have Cancer or know someone that does please get his book.
As people have stated before me the Cancer industry refuses to investigate because of money.
I sent this information to the Doctor that was treating John Kanzius at the Anderson Cancer Center. The above named book is in their library for the doctor to read.
MAY BE JOHN KANZIUS WOULD BE ALIVE TODAY IF THE DOCTOR HAD READ THE HIDDEN STORY OF CANCER. In all fairness I do not know if the doctor received the information.

This is to 60 minutes please investigate the disovery of Dr. Otto Warburg and Professor Peskin.

And finally again my Cancer is gone and I do believe that Professor Peskin is why. I had Prostate Cancer and it was verified by biopsy. The Cancer was gone after another biopsy and after following Professor Peskins book.
My doctor refused to believe it also.

[Ron_in_Il]

Had to smile watching this. We've been doing ("testing") this for at least 5 years. Instead of "nano" gold, we use colloidal silver, and instead of "radio waves", we use 32Khz - positive 5 volts offset, from a frequency generator, or the resonance freq of the virus or bacteria. Pretty much the same stuff...

[mbollin3]

Please send mote info on this.
[e-mail]

[jankebenzone]

It is estimated that $2-3 trillion have been donated to cancer research in the past 20 years, yet the medical field still uses chemo as the best known treatment. Where did all the money go?

[dpatrickdooley]

My brother has been doing something like this with electrical shock. He was told he had 7-14 months to live in Feb. 2008. He went through this electrical shock plus other herbs (Not sure if they are herbs, haven't asked). At one point all his tumors were gone and all the cancer was gone from his blood. He did have a re-occurrance. He is now doing a stronger dose of electrical shock and still doing the herbs. He is getting stronger now again. I think this is similar but is already being done in California. The guy that sells the machine and herbs is not a doctor. Anyway thought this would be a good follow-up to your story.

[rwsmith29456]

Lighting up a fluorescent tube doesn't prove anything medically. And waving your hand in the field doesn't prove it is harmless. The first radiologists lost hands after showing a number of people that x-rays were harmless by putting their hand in the field. However, I really hope he did come up on something that could be used as effective treatment. The metal injection seems to have some promise.

[Nivlac_Skcaj]

Tesla. Remember the name Tesla. This is the man who showed the world haw to create elctricity. Tesla invented a remote controled boat back in 1915. The boat ran off the radio waves sent to it, not a battery. Tesla create plans for a machine that could transmit a signal that would match that of a virus. By using this he could give you the virus or kill it. He was ridiculed by the medical community and the machine never given a chance. The curious note here is that everything that Tesla created designs for worked and worked as he thouth they would, everything. After he declared he wanted to give the world free electricity he came under attack from those that wanted to charge for electricity. The man who invented the coils that are still in use at niagra falls died penniless because he wanted to give us free electricity. Look it up, read about this great man. Then go have a good cry.

[lawyertom1]

Oh, come on guys. Bought into another hoax? When this device is proven by several independent lab's as having some validity, then perhaps we can begin to consider that he is on to something. But, this is an old idea that has failed in the past and will likely fail now. Shame on you for not taking an appropriately skeptical view of the claims made.

[AkulJay]

Kanzius would probably be alive today if he had stuck with his own treatment and not gone thru chemotherapy. With his machine, the effect of Radio waves is equivalent to passing mild direct current (fluorescent tube glows) and this disables a critical enzyme RR in cell-growth. See www.cancer-treatment.net for full mechanism.