Brain Blasting Laser

In a world first, a man was strapped to a bed in Paris and had laser beams fired into his brain. He not only survived but, amazingly, wasn't James Bond.

The revolutionary surgery was carried out at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital to destroy a brain tumor that wasn't responding to conventional treatment.  Drilling a hole in somebody's skull and piping laser destruction into it, on the other hand, definitely counts as "unconventional treatment" and destroyed the tumor.

A laser's ability to vaporise things is widely known - thanks to movies it was known long before it was actually true.  But in medical applications the trick isn't blowing things up, but convincing the laser to stop burning things up in a precisely controlled way.  In this case fiber optic cabling (like copper wire for light) was used to direct the laser to the correct location, and constant Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) allowed surgeons to monitor its progress on a screen - like a very expensive videogame.  And you only get one life.

Unbelievably, this incredible example of genuine Mad Science converted to humanitarian efforts is running out of funding. Apparently people think "curing brain cancer" isn't important enough for a few million dollars of funding.  (Note: America alone spends four billion dollars a year on cat food.)  We can only hope that somebody official gets their act together and budgets for some more research - because the sort of people who'll strap people down and set at them with drills and death-rays for their own good?  If they start having to look for money, don't be surprised to find them with a nuclear warhead, an active volcano and appearing on that great big screen over the UN council chamber.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Brain Laser

Comments

[knoxvilledaniel]

Auric Goldfinger & Dr. Evil would be proud ?

Lasers to " zap " blood clots & / or brain tumors were predicted - sort of - in the movie " Fantastic Voyage ", which was groundbreaking, even considering its STRANGE premise of shrinking human beings.

[jer35mx]

The high earnings industry focus on their things, there are a few "fools" that think in non-earning things, let's remember the 2010 quote "The rest of the solar system is for you, leave ¿Europe? alone". Sorry about the bad memory.