The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: March 11, 2007

Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: CURING CANCER WITH ANTI-MATTER

by Hazed

Anti-matter is one of those futuristic substances that you don't generally hear about in real life, so my interest was definitely piqued when I saw the word in the headline of a medical news story recently.

Techniques developed by atomic physicists are being used to develop a new generation of cancer treatments to replace radiotherapy, and one day doctors could even be using anti-matter, the story said. In a recent experiment carried out at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, cancer cells were successfully targeted with anti-matter subatomic particles, which killed the cells.

That's an experiment which might have future potential, but right now applications from particle physics are already being used in cancer treatment to avoid the unpleasant side effects of radiotherapy.

In conventional radiotherapy, X-ray beams pass through the entire thickness of the body, so that many organs and tissues receive unnecessary radiation. With beams of charged atomic particles most of the energy can be delivered to a particular point, targeting the cancer and having little or no effect on the rest of the body. The amount of radiation affecting normal tissues can be reduced to half or even one tenth, at the same time as zapping the cancer with a higher does.

For more details, including a list of the numerous benefits offered by this new treatment, read the BBC news story.


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page