WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- More than 1.3 million people will get cancer this year, and 570,000 will die from it.

A man with no medical training whatsoever may be on the right track for treating the disease, reported WPBF-TV in West Palm Beach.

John Kanzius and his wife, Marianne, retired to Sanibel Island, Fla., in 2002, but any thoughts of a relaxing retirement were postponed six months later, when Kanzius was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia.

He was 58 when he was diagnosed and decided he would fight the good fight, but felt he had lived a full life.

"There's nothing good about today's modern treatment for cancer," said Kanzius.

What disturbed him was watching young cancer patients struggle.

"You could see the life go out of their bodies," he said.

While undergoing chemotherapy, he endured a lot of sleepless nights. It was during this period of prolonged insomnia that the former broadcasting executive had a new mission.

Although he wasn't naive enough to think he could cure cancer, Kanzius felt maybe something in his engineering background would come in handy. As a former owner of radio and television stations, Kanzius had a lot of electronic equipment around the house.

"I began one night trying to see if I could transmit high-energy waves through a short space," he said.

Kanzius told his friend, Dr. Robert McDonald, of Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center in Fort Myers, about cutting up his wife's pie pans to help send radio waves from point A to point B.

"He said he was able to cook hot dogs using this, and I was blown away," McDonald said.

Kanzius continued to fine-tune his work to see if the radio waves could be targeted to attack specific cells. He discovered that neighboring cells were unaffected. He now now holds seven patents on his technology.

In recent months, Kanzius' work has gotten the attention of some very important researchers who believe he's on to something big.

At the University of Pittsbrugh Medical Center, the first Kanzius protoype is being used by Dr. David Geller, who is testing the radiowave theory on lab rats with tumors.

"I think this has potential to be cutting-edge technology; it's certainly novel," said Geller. "There's nothing out there like it."

UPMC isn't the only place working with Kanzius' invention.

Dr. Steven Curley is a program director at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where Kanzius underwent treatment.

"Current radiofrequency treatment requires literally sticking a needle or needles into tumors and turning on an electrical current that will heat the tumor slowly," Curley said.

Curley sees two major advantages with the invention.

"First, it's external and noninvasive -- no needles placed in the tumor or the body. Second, it would allow us to treat tumors much more rapidly than current equipment allows us to use," he said. "The ability to noninvasively treat somebody is truly the holy grail of cancer."

Curley's team has ordered two of Kanzius' prototypes to begin testing on pigs and rabbits. Preliminary data should be available within the next few weeks, and if it lines up, tests could begin on humans within two years, pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Kanzius said it's been amazing that the medical field has come to him and he hasn't had to beg for government funding.

Diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., spearheaded a $200,000 grant to test Kanzius' invention.

"This new idea for treating cancer sounds innovative and very, very promising," said Specter.

Kanzius said the momentum from his idea has snowballed and is now a full-fledged avalanche.

"To think that two to three years from now, I might be able to watch somebody that's been treated and have a doctor say to that person, 'You've been cured' -- that would be all I'm looking for," said Kanzius.

As for his own health, Kanzius said his cancer is in remission.