An anonymous reader writes "BBC news is reporting a new handheld scanner that can detect cancers in patients. In clinical trials at a hospital in Milan, the scanner was able to correctly identify 93% of prostate cancer patients whose condition was later confirmed by a biopsy operation."
Re:Let's just hope the device isn't *causing* canc
by
Sgt+York
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
They are, but the doses here aren't high enough to hurt you.
This reminded me of something I heard years ago, in college. A guy from a cancer research organization (Stehlin) came by & talked to our class about cancer treatments. One of the investigative techniques focused on microwaves.
Apparently, it's more damaging to cancer than normal cells (has to do with plasma membrane composition). If exposed to low levels for a fairly long period of time (several minutes to an hour a day for several weeks), the tumor would dissolve and the local normal tissue would remain. The main problem they had at the time, he said, was that the cancer cells tended to lyse all at the same time, and the subject would go into lethal toxic shock, a prety bad way to go(this was working in mice.)
This was a while ago, 1990 or 91. I haven't heard anything from them about this stuff in a while, so it probably fell through.
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There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
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This reminded me of something I heard years ago, in college. A guy from a cancer research organization (Stehlin) came by & talked to our class about cancer treatments. One of the investigative techniques focused on microwaves.
Apparently, it's more damaging to cancer than normal cells (has to do with plasma membrane composition). If exposed to low levels for a fairly long period of time (several minutes to an hour a day for several weeks), the tumor would dissolve and the local normal tissue would remain. The main problem they had at the time, he said, was that the cancer cells tended to lyse all at the same time, and the subject would go into lethal toxic shock, a prety bad way to go(this was working in mice.)
This was a while ago, 1990 or 91. I haven't heard anything from them about this stuff in a while, so it probably fell through.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.