The nuclear fight against cancer now emerging

When you think of nuclear particle accelerators, you probably think of massive pieces of equipment like Tevatron. But now these beasts of physics will be making headway into the field of medicine for cancer treatment.

Just like its name suggests, these machines accelerate protons to the speed of light (or nearly that fast, anyway). Doctors are then able to direct the particles into tumors. By doing this, they are trying to treat cancer more efficiently so that stray radiation is minimized. That means fewer side effects!

The catch is that this equipment is extremely large, and very expensive. Therefore the cost of treating cancer this way goes up considerably. Opponents of nuclear medicine say this limits the less-expensive alternatives, because doctors will feel obligated to prescribe this type of treatment if it's available. With only 5 proton therapy centers in the US, taking up over 200 tons and costing more than $100 million, it's easy to see why doctors would want to take advantage of them. Who knows -- maybe one day we'll see a particle accelerator in every hospital as the cost of technology declines. That's probably a long way off, but the more prevalent this equipment becomes the cheaper it will be to use.