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Microchip Could Replace Pills
webhat writes "BBC News reports in an article that a microchip implanted in your body may be the end of swallowing pills. A microchip of a centimeter long was created with a sandwich coating of a drug (heparin) and a slow biodegrading polymer. As the polymer layer degrades the drug is released into the system."
The only problem would be that if it stuffed up, you could get an instant overdose :(
The different types of polymer degrade at different rates, but what we do not have here is polymers activated by some kind of electronic pulse that is controlled by some mini operating system / timer chip. This is just clever dissolving stuff, not some mini robot or electronic activation of dose release.
They're just using the word 'microchip' in the same way you might advertise microchips as fries that you can cook in your microwave oven. Bah!
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Ugh. The article is incredibly terse and glosses right over internal trauma. Sure, if all is peachy-perfect, but what happens when you're in an accident and your little chip gets smashed in the process, instantly releasing the entire contained dosages into your bloodstream. Simply fabulous. You'd think people would have learned from silicon, and even from the occasional problems with the in-your-arm-time-release-birth-control products. Is anyone really willing to make these tradeoffs? [Sure, go ahead, argue that this could be useful for non-trivial drugs for which massive dosages wouldn't matter.....if there is a drug you /should/ be taking every day, there should also be a lifestyle change that should reflect that....]
disclaimer: both my parents are pharmacists. i read too much of their continuing ed crud.
When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
Unless I'm really missing something here, I fail to see how this qualifies as a microchip in the sense that we commonly refer to it as.
This could be extremely useful in treating AIDS and tuberculosis in the 3rd world. Apart from the problems of many 3rd world people in ensuring that drugs are taken continuously, there is the risk that they will sell drugs or have them stolen by other sufferers who are not being treated. I do not know how dosage would stack up against feasibility, but the principle looks sound. There's also the possibility of slowly releasing chemotherapy right into tumors.
Obviously any new technology is going to have risks, but if people are going to die of something without treatment, and existing means of delivery are unreliable or worse, surely this has to be worth pursuing.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
While this particular device may not be what I'm thinking, I've long assumed that government prohibitions against drugs will eventually be made irrelevant by similar technologies.
So much of the furor over "drug abuse" is truly about drug dosage and unhygenic methods of taking them.
The whole argument against, for instance, coke, heroin and amphetamines becomes quite different when you take out overdoses, needles and high temperature pipes.
At that point you're left arguing against euphoria from the obviously puritanical moral position that really does underlie many people's attitude's towards drug use. But, while those people will remain, by getting separating off the social evils of bad hygeine, dangerous paraphenalia and the medical compications of overdose, it should be much easier to win the majority over to the side of free choice.
But it's not really going to be necessary to win people over, because just as the next generation of doage devices are maturing, so are micro labs. Chemical engineering is seeing a huge revolution in on-chip synthesis. It's obviously just a matter of time before illicit drug labs on-a-chip make their way into the consumer market. And coupled with new dosage devices, that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
It may be the only way to knock out the money element in the drugs trade which I personally feel is the single greatest source of damage and destruction to human life in the whole prohibition game.
As a doc, I say this would be wonderful.
Taking multiple pills a day can really decrease one's quality of life. Taking medicines with different schedules can be impossible for even the smartest of patients.
Medicine has advanced that we can really improve quality of life (and usually length of life) for the majority of diseases...
However one of the biggest problems we face is getting the patient to actually take his/her medications!
I can see this plan taking the following course:
1. Doc visit and prescription of an oral medication(s)
2. Patient returns for follow-up, adjustment of dosing, and screening for side effects
3. Repeat step 2 until patient is at steady state
4. Schedule implant
5. Continue to adjust doses as needed.
Of course, the next logical steps are chips that release medicines based on the detection of biological markers. If it detects the pro-BNP level is elevated... it releases some diuretics. If it detects the serum glucose is too high, it releases some insulin.
I know how much medicine has changed in just my years of practice... this is just one more advance that we will one day wonder how we lived without.
Davak
Let's be real -- the artical talks about HIV treatments and the like, but I can imagine this chip being a _lot_ more expensive than standard gel caps or pressed pills. I don't see African countries shelling out for this, when even standard medication is a blue sky concept for them (about the only thing they have plenty of).
Medicine is damn expensive, and maybe I'm overly cynical, but I can't see the big pharmaceutical companies getting all altruistic on us any time in the foreseeable future.
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