Friday, Nov. 29, 2002 | 10:55 a.m.
Paul McGuff was a country doctor at heart.
He made house calls and he once accepted 12 jars of strawberry jam as payment from a patient.
But he was no simple country doctor. A man of high intelligence and deep thought, he made medical history in the early 1960s by using a laser beam to vaporize human cancer cells that had been transplanted into a hamster, paving the way for a technology that would save untold thousands of human lives.
Dr. Paul Edward McGuff, who also blazed a trail in the field of chelation therapy -- the removal of toxic metals from the blood -- after arthritis robbed him of his surgical skills in the early 1970s, died Nov. 22 of heart failure and cancer in Las Vegas. He was 85.
There will be no local services for McGuff, who moved to Las Vegas 12 years ago but was a seasonal resident since the 1970s.
"He was a genius who was curious about everything and read everything he could get his hands on," said Johnye Banks, longtime office manager of McGuff's medical practice in Houston. "And he just loved being a doctor. He never wanted to retire."
McGuff was featured in the Jan. 11, 1963, issue of Life magazine in a story about his laser surgery breakthroughs.
Jay Overly, owner of The Cosmetic Lazer Center in Las Vegas, said McGuff's early work was vital to the progression of modern laser surgery.
"He was one of the early pioneers of applying laser to living tissue," Overly said. "He made a significant contribution to our body of knowledge."
Overly, who has been involved in the medical laser industry in Southern Nevada since 1979, said lasers have been used "to treat everything from flat feet to dandruff" and today are used for kidney stones and sinus surgery.
The National Academy Press Sources for Medical Technology website credited McGuff with bringing together the most brilliant minds in laser surgery's earliest days.
"The watershed event for medical research may have been the First Annual Biomedical Conference on Laser Research organized by Dr. Paul E. McGuff of Tufts New England Medical Center," the website said.
McGuff later became director and chief laser surgeon at the Medical Research Foundation Institute of Biological and Medical Science in Boston.
McGuff's 1966 book "Surgical Applications of Laser" detailed his theories and early work in the field.
Born Dec. 7, 1916, in Indiana, McGuff had an early interest in engineering and initially attended Indiana University for that field. During World War II, however, an increased demand for doctors encouraged him to switch careers.
McGuff earned his medical degree from Indiana University and a doctorate in surgery from Tufts.
After his experiments on animals, McGuff became one of the first laser surgeons to operate on humans. When his government funding for research was curtailed during the Vietnam War, he toured France, Germany and other European countries, teaching doctors there his laser surgery techniques, Banks said.
McGuff later worked at clinics in Canada and New Orleans.
By 1972 McGuff's arthritis got so bad he could no longer perform surgery, Banks said. So he opened a private practice in Houston, where he did mostly diagnostic work and became a proponent of chelation therapy, the process of removing lead, arsenic and calcium blockages from the body, Banks said.
In his spare time McGuff enjoyed writing music, though his songs were never published. He retired to Las Vegas in 1990.
Last year McGuff was diagnosed with cancer. The irony was that he did not escape the disease he helped many others defeat.
"He just said 'That's part of life,' " Banks said. "He had such a good attitude about everything."
McGuff is survived by his wife, Frieda McGuff of Las Vegas; two daughters, Jane McGuff of Boston and Patricia Martin-Schneider of St. Francisville, La.; three sons, Paul Martin McGuff of New Orleans, Paul Charles McGuff of Austin, Texas, and Michael McGuff of Houston; 13 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
The Neptune Society of Nevada handled arrangements.
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