ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE -- Finding magnets attractive

By DERRIK J. LANG - The Associated Press

Magnetic kneepads. Magnetic insoles. Magnetic hairbrushes. Magnetic bed sheets.

You may have seen these alternative pain-relieving products online, or heard your grandmother raving about such remedies. But do they work?

QUESTION: Can magnets cure ailments?
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ANSWER: Research findings so far do not firmly support claims that magnets are effective for killing pain, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
However, that doesn't mean they're totally without use in medicine.

Magnets have been used in surgery to remotely direct instruments. And Robert Campbell, a pharmaceutical sciences professor at Northeastern University's Bouve College of Health Sciences in Boston, recently developed a way to deliver drugs to better attack malignant tumors using external magnets.

In the laboratory, Campbell found that using an external magnet helps chemotherapeutic drugs get to the tumor and stay there longer.

"The magnets that we're using are small, not bigger than a dime," he says.

Really? So does this mean you can grab one off your fridge and use it when you've got a boo boo?
Nope. The magnets Campbell has been using in his cancer research are about 100 times stronger than the household variety - or those found in magnetic kneepads, insoles, hairbrushes and bed sheets.