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NASA + NCI = Nano-Explorers For Humans
SEWilco writes: "NASA and the National Cancer Institute will collaborate in developing microscopic explorers -- devices in a pill-sized capsule to detect, diagnose, and treat disease inside the human body. Following the links you find interesting NASA devices, such as pill-shaped biotelemetry transmitters and a biotelemeter 'Trisponder' to read the data."
My father in law died of cancer last year. I've had friends die of cancer. I don't know anyone who has HIV. Yeah, great budgetting. The previous poster in this thread is right. It's disgusting that AIDS gets more funding than cancer. About the only way you can get HIV without having yourself to blame is through a blood transfusion. The rest, well you play the lottery and take your chances. Yet cancer can strike anyone.
This kinda crap makes me VERY angry.:(
I wouldn't want to see this technology in use if someone wrote a "virus"...
Who owns the NASA technology, anyhow? I know, we always hear about the benefits of "space-age" technology, but... do they license their patents, or does the gov't reap the benefits? And couldn't that money go towards NASA funding? Please?
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Infected blood from an outside source. Same shit different pile.
Actually, that isn't too likely to be the problem; the mother's and baby's blood only mix as the child is being born, and even then it isn't enough to pose too much of a threat (indeed, many AIDS babies are actually born without the virus and later get it from their mother's breastmilk).
I don't know if amnion carries the virus or not; not all fluids do. Saliva, for example, doesn't carry the virus, at least not in large enough quantities to pose any risk whatsoever unless you were to drink a gallon of the stuff (I think I'll pass). Last I checked only four bodily fluids actually carried the virus in significant quantities: blood, mucus, semen, and vaginal secretions. Other fluids don't seem to carry the virus, or carry it in such minute amounts that there's little to no real risk.
There are also reported cases of babies born with HIV whose bodies actually fight and kill the virus, but Doctors aren't quite sure why yet. Read about that years ago.
There was one case, and that one was later found to be just a mistake; the test was a false-negative.
Also, you talk about the only way to get AIDS without having yourself to blame being through a blood transfusion. That's not strictly true. Some AIDS-infected people actually use their disease as a weapon, infecting many people without them even knowing it. One famous example was a Florida dentist who secretly infected 25 people. There are also HIV-infected rapists; surely such a case is one where it's not the victim's fault that they were infected. And while I know of no cases of this next one, there's also the possibility of infecting someone unwillingly with a needle (we're not talking needle-sharing here; we're talking forced injection).
As for blood transfusions, the screening is so good now that it basically takes a freak accident for HIV-infected blood to get into the supply. So under normal circumstances, AIDS is quite preventable. But it isn't always; don't forget that.
This said, I do think it's a shame that AIDS research gets 20 times the money that cancer research gets. Not so much because of the preventability of AIDS as the fact that cancer still kills many more people every year than AIDS does, and it's been killing for a far longer time There's evidence of known cancer cases in ancient Egypt, whereas the first confirmed AIDS cases were in the late 70's/early 80's, and even the oldest hypothetical case is from the 50's. Don't get me wrong; both diseases are terrible things and need research. But someone in Washington needs to get their priorities straight, or at least recognize that cancer is still a massive threat.
But I doubt that'll happen anytime soon. One last tidbit to leave you with. For a long time, the CIA had a certain bit of spy technology with an interesting side-effect: it could be used to detect breast cancer far earlier than any technology of the time could. But before they released it to the public (which was only recent; sometime in the last five years), they had to be convinced that women's health was "an issue of national security." Guess it goes to show you where Washington's priorities lie.
Imagine if these things were networked. I wonder how much a sysadmin of this kind of network would get paid. Maybe they could even have a connection to the Internet. Your doctor could monitor your vital signs and then send back a message saying release this hormone or send this electrical pulse.
Problems might arise though. What if some scrpit kiddie pinged you to death. If you think about it these little things would whae to have wireless connections to the net which would be very slow. It'd be interesting to see what kind of attacks would be made on these devices to cause problems. Maybe a DHR(Distributed Hormone Release) that causes you to suddenly start getting really horny. But you could also use a DHR to make someone grow more.
I'd set up my old 486 as a firewall to prevent "malicious hackers" from breaking into me and causing some kind of meltdown. Maybe have the 486 notify a special Nano device that "pages" my brain with the person's IP and what they are doing.
I find HIV scarier than cancer because cancer is not contagious. There is NO WAY cancer could concievably wipe out the human race. There are regions of the Earth where upwards of 50% of the population is infected with HIV. I suspect that it its infection rate is increasing much faster than cancer rates are.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
That's quite a disgrace, seeing that AIDS is so much more preventable.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
Ok, who's going to tell them they are looking down the wrong end of the telescope?
- Andy R.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Ok, lets say you're sick. You swallow a pill to combat whatever is making you ill.
However that one pill isn't powerfull enough to fight off the illness by itself. You have to swallow its four friends, and then they all combine inside your body to form a super robot to fight together.
Sheesh this is starting to sound like Voltron. I hope they don't have some mega-sword which they start swinging wildly around inside of you.
Let's hope the virii don't start teaming up like this. Soon eveyone will have things popping out of them, al a Alien.
Ok, this post sounded like a good idea when I started
The following statement is true. The preceding statement is false.