Posted on 10/09/2025 5:27:05 AM PDT by Red Badger
If Zhen Xu hadn't annoyed her lab mates, she might never have discovered a groundbreaking treatment for liver cancer.
As a PhD student in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan in the US during the early 2000s, Xu was trying to find a way for doctors to destroy and remove diseased tissue without the need for invasive surgery. She'd landed on the idea of using high-frequency sound waves – ultrasound – to mechanically break up tissue and was testing her theory on pig hearts.
Ultrasound isn't supposed to be audible to human ears, but Xu was using such a powerful amplifier in her experiments that other researchers she shared the laboratory with began to complain about noise. "Nothing had worked anyway," she says. So she decided to humour her colleagues by increasing the rate of ultrasound pulses, which would bring the sound level outside the range of human hearing.
To her shock, increasing the number of pulses per second – which also meant each pulse reduced in length to a microsecond – was not only less disruptive to those around her, but also more effective on living tissue than the approach she'd tried previously. As she watched, a hole appeared in the pig heart tissue within a minute of ultrasound application. "I thought I was dreaming," says Xu, who is today a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.
Decades later, Xu's serendipitous discovery, known as histotripsy, is one of several approaches using ultrasound that are ushering in a new era of advanced cancer treatment, offering doctors non-invasive methods to rid patients of cancerous tumours using sound rather than surgery.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Ping!................
What’s the BBC’s agenda?
Twenty years ago, it cost about a billion dollars to get a new drug or process certified so it could be used. If you can’t lock in a patent that means only you can use it, no one will spend that kind of money. (The approval process is mandated by Congress, and it is used to funnel money to special entities and has little to do with safety or efficacy. Just money.)
Sometimes a story is just a story.................
“... and it is used to funnel money to special entities...”
It is used to funnel money to THEMSELVES..............
“... and it is used to funnel money to special entities...”
It is used to funnel money to THEMSELVES..............
Bkmk
Why does ultra sound that kills internal cancers not kill the healthy skin cells it has to pass through to reach the cancer?
Related question...
It seems like ultra sound would be an ideal non-invasive treatment for skin cancer and benign, but unsightly, skin lesions.
However, no mention of that.
Does this remind you of someone? A story youve heard?
There is a guy that used to come up from time to time around here, the mere mention of his name would send physicians into fits.
1950s? Magic healing boxes? California?
A cancer cell and a healthy cell will have different ‘resonant frequencies.’ This means that a healthy cell will not react with the ultrasound energy that is ‘tuned’ to the resonant frequency of the cancer cells.
This may also lead to therapies to destroy other types of cancers, since each type of cancer will have a different resonant frequency.
I envision a MRI-Like machine that a person with cancer would be put in and scanned for cancer that would be then treated with the unique ultrasound frequency for the entire body.....................
Robert Heinlein, the first science fiction Grand Master, predicted this in his novelette, “The Sixth Column”, first published in 1941!.................
Robert Heinlein, the first science fiction Grand Master, predicted this in his novelette, “The Sixth Column”, first published in 1941!.................
By focusing the sound waves upon a point of constructive interference below the surface. What I don't understand is how they do that accurately through tissues of variable density.
This one goes to 11
Patents could be limited by revenue and not by time.
That would mean slower but cheaper methods could be used.
A drug might be tested and approved only in say in the country of Georgia, which has modest per capita incomes and a homogeneous population.
It might then be tested and approved in say Ghana and Vietnam.
Then the FDA might say testing and approval in Caucasian, black and Asian populations indicate it is safe enough for US use.
A royalty might then be paid for each US prescription based on the type of drug and number of treatment days dispensed until the patent limit is reached.
“The approval process is mandated by Congress”
Our records indicate you are the largest shareholder of Moderna. We are ready to test the new Moderna vaccine for safety. Nurse....
Our records indicate you are the largest shareholder of Pfizer. We are ready to test the new Pfizer vaccine for safety. Nurse....
Our records indicate you are the second largest shareholder of Moderna. The largest shareholder has a sore arm but is otherwise fine. Nurse....
Our records indicate you are the second largest shareholder of Pfizer. The largest shareholder has a sore arm but is otherwise fine. Nurse....
....
You are one of the largest 1000 shareholders. If your kids don’t get jabbed, you can’t sell your stock for more than present value.
Imagine that list suddenly obsoleted by this technology................
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