Nanomedicine

ATOMA writes: " The book Nanomedicine from Robert Freitas is now available. And it's free on the Web. With 10 chapters, this is one of the most technical books on nanotechnology, along with Nanosystem from Eric Drexler. But Robert has said it's not his last one; we should expect another two books on Nanomedicine from him. "

Comments

Good point -- let's patent them QUICK!

[A nonymous Coward]

I betcha no one else has YET. Maybe Priceline or Jeff Bozos :-)

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We're doing it now

[coreman]

People keep thinking of a tiny R2D2 unit crawling around in your body. The truth of the matter is that the resemblence at the nano level won't be there. We're already doing this with the molecules that key into receptor sites (like beta blockers) so the bad reaction can't take place as well as molecules that assist the use of the bodies own chemicals (like diabetic meds for type II diabetes) that help bond to ill formed receptor sites. This is also the reason why a large portion of the currently working nanotechnologists are in the chemistry and biology fields rather than mechanical engineers.

Try foresight.org

[Chris Worth]

The Foresight Institute has full texts of 'Engines of Creation' and 'Unbounding the future' online.

Paging Dr. Tiny, Dr. Tiny....

[dragonfly_blue]

Please report to the L'il Emergency Room, STAT!

ethics addressed

[Docrates]

Before the ineviatble discussion about the ethics and morale of this research field and its attached dream breaks out (and I already saw some postings along this line), let me jump ahead of the nay-sayers and state this:

do you know what's the purpose of life?

for those of us who distrust formal religion (anyone who's not totally blind about it does at least a bit) and dedicates at least some time to reading about scientific knowledge, the answer is a resounding NO.

which brings me to my point... what tells you that the purpose of life for any living race isn't to survive at any cost? to ensure that humans never dissapear? reagrdless of the means... believe me people I don't just say this, after all i AM a vegetarian and care a lot about the preservation of animals and that sort of things. It's just that we just don't know.

you look at any living thing and they're all designed to survive. even death could be considered a mean for a species to survive (otherwise there wouldn't be evolution right?). we're all hardcoded with that instict that makes us follow the pattern that will make the species survive.

so what if there isn't much evolution can teach us at this point, and the only mean for us to evolve to survival is through our own means?. there's already plenty of us (some say more than the planet can hold with current resources), we live like five times longer than our ancestors, only the animal species we choose survive (except for like bugs and rats), there's no real threat from the animal world that will make us extinct (please leave ebola out of this). we're the only species capable of elaborate thought, the kind that takes the evolution process on its own hands, and on and on.

bottom line, ethics is a word we invented. the only suggestions as to what's right and what's wrong come from religious books that made most family values that eventually became government laws. add all that up and you have people's common sense (which isn't so common and sometimes doesn't really make a lot of sense).
leave the scientists be. let them work on new things even if they're risky at first as long as they're aimed at the overall betterment and survival of the species. if we stop programs that can save millions of lives because it will kill a hundred in the process (wasn't that the enola gay's payload?) we might be leaving our survival to an evolution process that's just too slow to keep up with our biggest threat, ourselves. the part of humanity that is not willing to sacrifice itself for the betterment of all.

and BTW, those hundren people that may die? i'm sure there'd be plenty of volunteers out there that are willing to take the risk

ok, enough ranting, and please don't just flame me, use intelligent arguments against my not so inteligent ones.
saludos.

Re:TMTOWTDI -- competition is good

[Stary]

100 years ago, electric cars and steam cars were more promising than internal combustion. Good thing they didn't decide right off the bat which to pursue.

Maybe if they had, the gigantic oil companies of today wouldnt buy up any new inventions for electric cars to prevent electric cars from becoming better/popular... regardless of enviroment etc... An electric car can actually be much more efficient than a combustion-engine-car, because it can feed the engine any amount of power it needs... only problem is battery technology.

Yes, it's good to go both ways... if you keep going at it both ways. Competition is good...

Potential for more Shipmans?

[aliastnb]

The trouble with using nanobot-type technology for reapiring the body isn't that - it's what else these nanobots could be used for.

Here in the UK there was a recent case of a doctor who was killing his patients- Harold Shipman. How much easier does that necome with the use of nanotechnology? Just program the nanobots to modify the genes so the patient stops producing (say) insulin- you've now got someone who will depend on you for life, or worse. Autopsy reveals nothing wrong and so the doctor gerts away scot-free.

Nanotechnology puts the doctor almost on a par with God. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but one that needs close examintaion and discussion.

Can you name one we WERE ready for?

[A nonymous Coward]

Fire -- look at all the trouble that's caused.

Wheels -- we are swamped by speeders and traffic cops.

Levers -- Damned Greek wants to start moving the earth!

Rocks -- people throw 'em at glass houses, for Pet's sake!

Water -- Titanic runs into one version of it, sinks in another, people down in it.

Oxygen -- contributes to all the problems with Fire, not to mention Water.

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Nanomedicine already exists

[joshv]

Why the attempts to fabricate from scratch little machines that can manipulate the material and biochemistry of our bodies?

We have a ready made toolkit for doing just this. It is the finely tuned result of billions of years of evolution - the genes of the virus and bacterium.

Biotech is the future of medicine - custom engineered viruses that attack cancer cells, or bacteria that eat arterial plaque. These things are designed to live in us already - a few tweaks can make them do some extremely useful things.

-josh

TMTOWTDI -- competition is good

[A nonymous Coward]

You should always have a backup plan, and a backup to the backup. The more backup plans, the better.

Nothing wrong with going at something both ways.

100 years ago, electric cars and steam cars were more promising than internal combustion. Good thing they didn't decide right off the bat which to pursue.

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Nanomedicine and nanotechnology can be safe

[bradbury]

I was a reviewer for Nanomedicine and I speak with Robert Freitas frequently. He is very serious about designing nanobot medical devices so they are non-replicating, have numerous failsafes, and do not create the possible problems most people envision. One reason writing all three volumes will take 6 years is the depth of analysis that has to be done to meet this standard. While it is doubtful that a single individual can think of everything, Nanomedicine clearly will lay the foundation for safe and very useful nanobots such as Respirocytes.

The problems mentioned by Bill Joy in his interview point out how poorly informed he is. Anyone who has been in the computer industry as long as he has, should know enough to "read the manual(s)" before offering uninformed opinions. The problems regarding nanotechnology run amok have been discussed for many years in the sci.nanotech newsgroups as well as at conferences for the Foresight Institute's Senior Associates. The basic solutions involve making "safe" (e.g. reviewed, open source) designs available while at the same time developing defenses against nanotech run amok. The Extropy Institute's Mailing List Archives, for example, contains recent discussions about encouraging the availability of "almost anything" manufacturing boxes (similar to Star Trek "replicators"), while discouraging the availability of "everything" boxes.

Diamondoid or saphire based molecularly assembled nanobots used in medical applications will greatly exceed the capabilities in of "biobots" built on existing genetic machines (DNA, enzymes, bacteria, cells, etc.) because they are stronger, can pack the "code" more densely, and can have more complex programs than the rather "ad hoc" designs that nature has provided us with. Most of the first volume of Nanomedicine is devoted to determining exactly what the physical limits will be on power, communication, mobility, etc. Most of the applications will be discussed in Volumes II and III.

Joy may be right that the technology poses a threat to the "human species", but that begs the question of "Why would you want to run on obsolete hardware?". Anyone who understands even a little astronomy knows that galactic hazards doom biological human forms to death at some point. Only those humans who choose to upload have any hope of living the trillion or so years that seems quite feasible. So while the hopes for biochemical humans are rather dismal even with Nanomedicine, the long term prospects for humanity, based on what nanotechnology allows are quite good indeed.

As far as nanotechnology background material goes, the best (nontechnical) source is Engines of Creation. Other references can be found in Eric Drexler's CV.

Ironic counterpart to Bill Joy article

[marcsiry]

The intense focus on the idea of introducting nanobots into the body for the purpose of medicine is the sort of thing Bill Joy warns about in an article reported on Slashdot earlier today.

I paged through all ten chapters of the Nanomedicine article and I failed to find a single instance of the possible dangers of nanobots-run-amok, or the chance that a malevolent force could use them as a weapon. Without a consciousness that the technology could go wrong, or that it could be used for evil, Joy asserts that progress for the sake of progress could have dire consequences.