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Needle Free Injections With Microjets
IZ Reloaded writes "Do you hate needles? In the near future, the fear of needles would be a thing of a past. Bioengineering students at the University of California, Berkeley have developed the MicroJet. It uses an electronic actuator that could one day propel vaccinations, insulin or other drugs through the skin of the patient - without the device even touching the skin - with far less pain than a hypodermic needle."
hopefully someone will link or replace this article link - it's awful!
"The researchers even joke that the MicroJet injector could be used to make getting tattoos much more bearable."
heh heh heh.... wait.. that's not a funny joke at all.
and the article fails to address the issue that this technology could become so painless that you do not even realize that you are receiving drugs. This becomes very scary.
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It'll probably only work with injections that go into tissue instead of veins. Accuraccy doesn't matter as much with them, so close enough out to be fine. Also, didn't they already do this some years back? I remember seeing pictures of devices that looked uncomfortably like a pneumatic nail gun that could inject medicine through the skin with pressurized air. Is this just a less sinister-looking version, or did the old one have a habit of giving people embolisms or something?
I'm right there with you. I had about a half dozen "shots" with that thing in one day. Pain-free is not something we associated with it. And that's not counting the folks who were cut because either they or the tech's hand were moving when they did the injection. IIRC a couple of people ended up with stiches.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
If there's anything time has told...
... it's don't doubt Star Trek :)