Talk:Kanzius RF Therapy

Did John Kanzius actually invent anything (related to cancer treatment)?

I'm re-posting this from the John Kanzius talk page.

Like many people, I first heard about John Kanzius from popular press reports saying something like "cancer patient invents machine that may cure cancer". I was immediately skeptical of this on several levels. The first is that therapy is essentially RF ablation, a technique that has well established for a long time. In fact using external RF sources for thermal ablation had been demonstrated before he ever became a cancer patient himself (a 1997 reference). Reading the news articles it seems that the only thing Kanzius did was understand the basic principle of induction heating (i.e. that a microwave oven works). Of course to get efficient heating in tissue, you need something that conducts inside the tumor. The key ingredient here was using (gold) nanoparticles, which appears to have been suggested to him by people (Curley?) at MD Anderson). Tumor ablation by heating nanoparticles with an external electromagnetic source was already being studying (at MD Anderson and Rice University (next door)) by the time Kanzius went to Houston. It seems that what Kanzius did was start a company to produce RF sources and get a patent. The media saw what would make a good story: a cancer patient who was trying to cure cancer as an "outsider" (i.e. not a trained doctor or scientist). It seems that he just brought his small amount of technical knowledge and large amount of media savvy to create this story, whereas the "invention" side of things has been performed by others.

1. Invest Radiol. 1997 Nov;32(11):705-12, Evaluation of temperature increase with different amounts of magnetite in liver tissue samples, Hilger I, Andrä W, Bähring R, Daum A, Hergt R, Kaiser WA.
2. Nanoshell-mediated near-infrared thermal therapy of tumors under magnetic resonance guidance, L. R. Hirsch, R. J. Stafford, J. A. Bankson, S. R. Sershen, B. Rivera, R. E. Price, J. D. Hazle, N. J. Halas, J. L. West, November 11, 2003 vol. 100 no. 23 13549-13554
3. Photo-thermal tumor ablation in mice using near infrared-absorbing nanoparticles, Cancer Letters, Volume 209 (2004), Issue 2, Pages 171-176, D.O'Neal, L.Hirsch, N.Halas, J.Payne, J.West

I am posting here to ask for references that either confirm or contradict whether Kanzius did invent something new and comments regarding whether any of this should be included in the article. Wantdouble (talk) 09:28, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not a patent officer however it is my opinion that Mr. Kanzius, while not a scholar, contributed a technology and a technique that may prove useful in the palliative treatment of cancer. Sceak 21:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm dubious re notability. Note mess: Non-invasive_RF_cancer_treatment#Cancer_therapy redirects to the JK page WMC 19:05, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Mr. Kanzius' contribution is in the realm of engineering. In my opinion, however, what is remarkable is his synthesis in trying to preserve his own life. Sceak 10:02, 9 May 2012 (UTC)