In all the debate about what type of flame is burning, how much and what
type of power is being generated and how; the main point seems to have been
lost. This guy is primarily claiming that he has developed a cure for cancer
and not a limitless source of power - that's just an incidental by product.
He has a lot of expensive looking equipment that can generate focused
microwave radiation. It can produce enough power to dissassociate water
molecules and/or create plasma flames. He also appears to have access to
some buckminster fullerine C60/C70 particles judging by the colour of the
solution in one of the test tubes.

His (rather simplistic) hypothesis is that cancer cells are better supplied
with blood than other cells in the body (which is generally true). By
injecting metallic nano particles into the bloodstream, these particles will
be carried preferentially to cancer sites (which again is generally true for
the first few minutes after injection). His machine is then used to zap the
patient and all the nano particles will heat up to 65 degrees centigrade and
destroy the cancers (wishful thinking but true if it could be achieved)
leaving the rest of the body unharmed.

The principles are basically correct but the nano particles will not
differentially seek out tumour sites in the way he hopes. The time variables
and circulation patterns in different individuals are too great. What
happens if the cancer is interfering with general circulation as it often
does? Current research is aimed at finding compounds which will bind to
specific tumour sites using specifically engineered proteins. Once this has
been achieved, then metallic or other types of particles can be added to the
protiens and used to target tumours. Then any specifically tuned radiation
source could be used to heat the particles adhering to the tumours to kill
them - or to release a poisonous compound designed to kill only the tumour
cells.

Research in this area has been going on for years and is starting to signs
of considerable success. One problem is that if you suddenly succeed in
wiping out all tumour cells in the body in one hit, what will happen to all
the waste products created by the dead cells? The kidneys and liver will be
overwhelmed and the patient will expire from toxic shock. This is just one
step on the way to developing a cure and there will probably never be a cure
that involves just being zapped with microwave radiation for a couple of
minutes, The cancer has all gone, but the patient dies from the side effects
of the cure. The best option is to kill the tumours a bit at a time and
allow the patient to recover between treatments. Either that, or a new
'cure' will be needed to flush out all the poisonous compounds as a result
of the dead tumour cells rotting away inside the body.

As for sticking your hand in the path of a microwave beam, a one kilowatt CW
transmission only causes a sensation of skin warmth for a few seconds
exposure. Obviously other damage occurs at deeper levels in the body, where
there are fewer pain sensor cells. The demonstration looks spectacular, and
makes for a good news story but doesn't actually prove anything.

The idea of one man working alone in a home laboratory inventing what
multi-national research corporations with billion dollar budgets cannot is a
very appealing one. Unfortunately history shows that it is the well
financed, research labs that tend to succeed, not the one man band. Edison,
Marconi, and Bill Gates for example, were all pretty wealthy, connected and
had a good deal of support behind them before they succeeded in dominating
the world with their inventions. Even Tesla was doing alright for a while,
until Edison 'proved' that his way of doing things was better - the
advantage of having better financial support and that it was more practical
and cheaper to install a proven technology using copper wire. Copper wire
had been used for low power signalling applications for a long time before
it was used to distribute power.

If there is anything of scientific merit at all in this 'invention', one of
the multi-nationals will undoubtably have already been developing it and not
revealed the details due to patent law requirements.

Hopefully I am wrong and we will all see a universal cure for cancer rolled
out to hospitals in a couple of years time. Once cured, we will then be able
to go out and kill ourselves by driving too fast in our hydrogen powered
emission free cars.

Scientific progress works by building step by step on the work of others
that have gone before. That's the way the world has worked for at least the
last 6,000 years since the Babylonians, Greeks and early Arabic
civilisations developed the scientific method. Individuals may have a Eureka
moment, but it takes time for new theories to become accepted and its the
people with financial muscle that ultimately get to exploit new innovations
and make even more money.

Finally, if you look at the history on invention, you will find many
instances of new technology being invented almost simultaneously around the
world throughout the centuries. This points to a perhaps deeper underlying
principle that technology has to reach a certain stage before the next step
can be achieved. It may well be that a multiband 99% efficient HF antenna
can be built into the form of a six inch cube. However, that will probably
need room temperature superconductors to become available. Once that
happens, people will be 'inventing' these antennas all over the world.

Rant mode off

Mike G0ULI