Every civilization has its defining characteristics, good and bad, and when future historians write about the American civilization, they'll surely talk about the American refusal to allow imagination to be boxed in by class or profession or anything else. There are a lot of examples of this - the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Cornelius Vanderbilt (who, we understand, never learned to read and committed contracts and shipping and railroad schedules to memory), and Thomas Edison, among a long list of creative geniuses who changed the world.
We didn't see 60 Minutes, but we found this to be incredibly intriguing: when he was diagnosed with leukemia, John Kanzius said he couldn't stand seeing the faces of kids who were suffering. And he got sick of being sick from chemo. So he decided to take matters into his own hands and came up with a potentially revolutionary cure for cancer.
In a nutshell, he uses radio waves and metals to target cancerous cells and heat them up. That's a very simple explanation, but read the article if you didn't see the show. It's amazing. It's also amazing that he tested his idea in the kitchen with some hot dogs and pie pans.
His wife asked the question most people would probably ask: if doctors can't cure cancer, what makes you think you can? Simple answer: he figured there has to be an answer and he gave it his best shot - which may turn out to be a great shot. If the idea works - and it hasn't been fully tested yet - but if it does, there's no particular reason why it couldn't be used to treat every type of cancer.
Our guess is that earlier in the 20th century, there were some guys who won the Nobel Prize for science without a formal education. It's probably been a long time since that's happened though. If this works, Kanzius, who doesn't even have a college degree, will surely get a Nobel. A sweeping cure for cancer in our lifetimes? Too late for so many of our loved ones, of course, but a potential godsend for so many who are suffering.