[noinfringers2]

I am reminded that years ago in the midwest,Iowa, there was a doctor named Dr.Norman Baker who was using radiation, I believe it was X-rays but could have been some other radiation, to kill cancer cells. He was run out of town and the Country for being a quack. The medical profession had much to do with his going. As I recall the Dr. set up his practice across the Rio Grande near Loraedo Texas. I don’t recall what went on as to his curing cancer but there were people who went for his treatment(s).

[donmeaker]

Radiation is routinely used to treat cancer. Cancer cells have less resistance to radiation than normal cells. The debate is whether it makes sense to accept the risk of radiation to healthy tissue. High level radiation certainly is associated with a cancer risk to healthy tissue. One could draw a straight line from that risk to zero-zero, and that is what is routinely done. The proponents of low level radiation assert that rather than use a straight line, they should draw their straight line to zero-less than zero, so some low level of radiation is associated with positive benefits for healthy tissue, rather than merely act as a treatment for small cancers that you don’t know about yet. I don’t know what a mechanism for such a health benefit would be.

[aruanan]

I am reminded that years ago in the midwest,Iowa, there was a doctor named Dr.Norman Baker who was using radiation, I believe it was X-rays but could have been some other radiation, to kill cancer cells.

It's standard practice to treat cancer using radiotherapy. It's not standard practice to claim to prevent cancer by subjecting patients to radiation. For one reason, it can be demonstrated that a targeted dose of radiation to certain tumors will cause them to shrink or regress. It cannot be demonstrated that exposing a particular individual to a whole body dose of radiation has prevented him from developing cancer. This is something that can be suggested epidemiologically by studies of cancer rates among populations living in areas of widely varying levels of background radiation, but not on a person by person basis. Treating Norman as a quack was the right thing to do if he wasn't a radiation oncologist.