'60 Minutes': Watch the Kanzius machine work Video

'60 Minutes': Watch the Kanzius machine work Video Transcript

>> Wow, this is it, this is the laboratory?

>> John: This is the laboratory.

>> Oh my gosh, oh look. This is one of his very first machines, and here's how it works. One box sends radio waves over to the other creating enough energy to activate the gas in a fluorescent light.

>> John: Then I can see the radio waves.

>> Turning the light on?

>> John: Turning the light on.

>> Then he put his hand in the field to show us that radio waves are harmless to humans. Now wait a second, you put your hand in there and nothing happened?

>> John: Yes, nothing happens, no.

>> So, right from the beginning you're trying to show that radio waves could activate gas and not harm a human -- anything else?

>> John: Yes, exactly, that was the --

>> 'Cause you're looking for some kind of a treatment with no side effects, that's what you're -- that's what's in your head?

>> John: No side effects.

>> But how could he focus the radio waves to destroy cancer cells?

>> John: So the question became, once I was able to transmit this signal from this point to this point, could I really heat anything?

>> And heating was important because?

>> John: Without heating you couldn't kill the cancer cells. True I could build a circuit, but would it really heat anything, that was the next $64,000 question. [sound effect]

>> John Kansas spent about $200,000 just to have this more advanced version of his machine built. He knew that metal heats up when it's exposed to high-powered radio waves. So what if a tumor was injected with some kind of metal and zapped with a focused beam of radio waves? Would the metal heat up and kill the cancer cells but leave the area around them unharmed? He did his first test with hotdogs.

>> John: And I'm gonna inject it with some copper sulfate.

>> And what you're trying to show that just where the copper sulfate is and nothing else it will heat up?

>> John: Right, and I'm going to take the probe right at the injection site.

>> To show us the temperature. Kansas placed the hotdog in his radio wave machine and we watched to see if the temperature would rise in that one area where the metal solution was and nowhere else.

>> John: And when I saw it start to go up I said, "Eureka, I've done it." I said, "I've got to shut this off and see whether it's still cold down below," so I shut it off, took my probe, went down here where it wasn't injected and the temperature dropped back down, and I said, "God, maybe I've got something here." ^E00:02:36