

Ask HN: Is anyone up to date on e.m. pulse research for killing cancer cells?  - kvnn

Summary : (1) An intelligent amateur (Anthony Holland) reads a book about some device invented in 1930 that used electromagnetic pulses to kill cancer cells, builds his own devices and shows a cancer researcher some videos of him blasting away different bacteria<p>(2) Cancer researcher (Jonathan Brody) invites him to do some experiments at his lab, on his own time and budget<p>(3) Amateur does experiments and shows some dramatic differences between cancer cells blasted with e.m. pulses + chemo and cancer cells in the control group (just chemo) : 60% killed versus 10% killed.<p>(4) Amateur didn't treat the control group properly so the experiments are bad<p>(5) There is a highly conflicting experiment : 0% of cancer cells treated with pulse + chemo are killed, some unsaid amount of cells in the control group are killed. Brody was quoted as saying something like "it seems like the pulses protected the cancer cells".<p>(6) Amateur and Brody have a falling out because of their extremely different points of view on "proof" (Brody wants to continue doing scientifically sound experiments in their own time, Holland can't afford to and believes they have enough evidence to reach out to other cancer researchers)<p>I can't find any other information from Brody about e.m. pulses except for the podcast. There is a lot of information on Holland : https://www.google.com/search?q=anthony+holland+cancer&#60;p&#62;Source : act one of http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/450/so-crazy-it-just-might-work .<p>Is anyone up to date on this type of research? Can you share some information?
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polyfractal
I just did a quick literature search and didn't see any published articles on
the subject be either of those two.

And, frankly, I'm dubious it isn't snakeoil. Perhaps well-intentioned
snakeoil. Biologically speaking, the electromagnetic waves would have to
discriminate cancer cells from normal cells.

Except cancer cells are basically identical to normal cells, with the
exception of a handful (of very important) mutations. Otherwise they are
fundamentally the same.

On a similar and more hopeful tangent, there is "magnetic hyperthermia" which
is being developed. Essentially, magnetic nanoparticles are targetted to tumor
sites and then subjected to alternating magnetic frequencies. This causes the
nanoparticles to heat up and destroy the surrounding area (tumor cell).

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ac2u
Might get a better response on reddit/r/askscience

