Light Induced Enhanced Selective Hyperthermia (LIESH)

I came across this AMAZING claim of a "local" cancer cure. If it really does work, it's simply brilliant. It seems too simple to be true.

It is an interesting form of targetted hyperthermia using a low power laser to heat up tissue. A chromophore is injected into the general area where the tumor is. Both cancer and normal cells absorb the chromophore. However, the cancer cells retain it longer. So after waiting a bit for the normal cells to excrete the chromophore, the laser is then pointed at the area. The cancer cells that still retain the chromophore then start heating up and eventually reach 50 degrees celcius and are killed.

Some advantages of this system are

• Since it's a low power laser, there is little heat felt by the patient, and hence no unnecessary tissue/skin damage.
• No surgery is required. You wait for the person's immune system to slowly excrete the dead tissue.
• The procedure can theoretically be performed over and over again without significant detriment to the patient.

Some "disadvantages" of the system are:

• They perform the procedure on an outpatient basis for now (since they don't have the necessary support/adoption). Hence, they do not perform operations and can only use the system on tumors that are accessible within 4 inches of skin.

So is this for real? It's run by a tiny clinic headed by a physicist in Little Rock (they supposedly have an MD on staff). If you listen to the radio interviews from their website, the claim is that the regular medical community has ignored their cure for the standard evil reasons - that it's too simple/cheap a cure and will put the entire oncology machinery out of business - that MDs are too proud to accept such a simple alternative etc.

Their website is bare-bones. There are no biographies of the staff, no published papers. Their before/after pictures don't prove that their technique kills ALL tumor cells, which is key to preventing recurrence. There is very little to go on. For all you know everything could be staged. The key element in their solution is their proprietary stain which they call OxyM. How did they find something that's preferentially retained by ALL types of tumor? Why aren't there any published papers? Why isn't there more buzz about this revolutionary solution?

More links:

• The patent for their technique can be found here.
• They have a job posting for an MD or DO. In the job posting, they describe themselves as "small but growing".
• Treatment account by an Australian patient