Slashdot Mirror
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."
here's one for salen t-company.com/product/PPF/ID/4200/new_prod_full.as p
http://diabetic-supplies.medical-supplies-equipme
Medi-Jector Vision(tm)Needle-Free Insulin Injection System
Accurate delivery of insulin injections from 2-50 units in 1 unit increments. Injector reusable for 3000 injections. No maintenance or cleaning required. Smaller, lighter weight and easier to use than previous models. Contains: injector, carrying case, training video, instruction manual, 2 Needle-Free Syringes (for easy and medium skin penetration) and 1 vial adaptor. Replacement Needle-Free Syringe kits sold separately.
what's amazing here?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
And they've had "needle-less" injectors around for a long while, however the current ones are expensive and rather inaccurate at dosing when compared to needles.
However, I must say I really don't care if they come out with a needle-less injector that works better. It's not the shots themselves that bother me, but rather the constant maintenance that people take for granted. I'd still need to do something. Right now I have a pump, and it's better than doing individual injections, but it's always with me. I'm waiting for the day when I no longer have to worry about this disease any longer because I've been cured.
Hypospray, anyone?
Sounds similar to the jetgun the military use to use. Does anyone know the difference?
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
So, will we get Tricorders with these?
I have no tag line
Someone got his blog pointed at slashdot, while I love the subject, its 4 days old, been on blogs for 3 days and a poor cut and paste job from the original Press release.http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/release s/2005/03/16_microjet.shtml :)
Read the press release, its better
And trust me.. It is not exactly pain-free.
This technology's already in the marketplace:u se/index.php
http://medevoice.co.uk/themedicalho
While they have not yet started tests on humans, the researchers said the range of the injector is well beyond what would be needed to deliver drugs through human skin.
So for God's sake, ask the nurse to check the settings before she pulls the trigger.
The coolest voice ever.
these have been around for insulin injections for years.. though not manufactored on a large scale.. here's a modern distributor, and here's an article about tests on pigs in sept of 2004 that went well.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
So it's still going to hurt? (Yes I'm a wimp)
I am trolling
I remember getting vaccinated in the 1960's (yes, I'm that old) and they used some sort of air gun that shot the vaccination through the skin.
That thing HURT!
This is a microjet
What happens when some crazy guy with AIDS starts shooting his blood at people and infecting them?
Good point. I really hope there needs be some proximity while 'injecting'. In that case it wouldn't really be different from an HIV patient attacking you with a needle.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
I was reading an article a few years ago about how they are going to try reducing the surface area with nerves with syringes by putting tiny hair-like fibres along it, similar to a mosquito's proboscis (which can't be felt by most people).
I have yet to see them use that idea, and if you ask me that sounded a lot more cost effective then this does.
since when does a pothead inject his 'pot' intraveniously?
For some drugs, like those that should diffuse into the body slowly over time, transdermal diffusion devices already exist right now. A prime example of those is the nicotine patch, and I hear there are patches for diabetes too.
:-)
As for lots of micro-needles vs. one big needle, it might not be all that new: I seem to recall getting some vaccine shot at school when I was a kid, where the nurse used some ring-looking plastic thing she put on her middle finger, with the business end of the device being a small, round "nail-bed" in her palm, and she slammed me on the shoulder with it, which probably accounts for the ugly mark I have there at that spot too
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
ôó
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?
AFAIK this isn't new... When I entered the US Army in 1969, almost all of the multitudes of shots that are given during the medical part of military induction were given by some kind of air gun, which was nearly painless.. I'd always wondered what happened to these air-guns.. Guess I'm from a alternate universe, if this is really new here in this universe... :->
LVDave
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
a good page to take a look at is http://www.cdc.gov/nip/dev/jetinject.htm Its the CDC's index to the technology and hasa lot of useful information
I look forward to serving our micro-jet overlords...
Everyone's doing it!
I got vaccinated with an "air gun" back in the day. it hurts, probably as much as a needle. But you can do a whole group of people quickly, 'cause you don't need to change needles.
Jet injectors have been around since 1940. They were designed to inoculate in Africa, but they kept on jamming because of dust and sand. It was tossed aside for a 3 pronged fork-like needle which you just stabbed someone a couple of times, or scratched them to vaccinate them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector
Finally, the last barrier to my upcoming heroin addiction (Fear of needles) has been overcome!
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Found a picture of one. It's not the one I've seen before, but it was used by the US military back in the 70's, called a Pet-o-Jet. There have also been a lot of patents on them going back into the 50's.
That is what I remember. It hurt. But it is good for treating people like cattle...
This is probably news sprung up since over the begining of the month it was the '10th Annual International Conference on Needle-free and Auto Injectors'
Major uses seem to be vaccination and insulin.
Most people dont realize that the needle itself doesnt sting much. Its the medicine. Some medicines when they come into contact with the flesh inside, sting like crazy. Others dont.
-Dracken
NURSE: doctor, you're hitting the bone
DOCTOR: Oh so I am. It does make a lovely scraping sound though.
As long as they are not replacing the cute nurse ...
I was about to reply with a John Madden BOOM! but then I realized the topic wasn't "Fracture Free Interceptions With NY Jets".
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
When I was a kid/teenager, I hated flu/booster shots. Og no like pain, pain bad, no pain.
Then, at the age of 23, I found a lump. It was cancer. While I didn't need chemo, I did get a lot of CT scans requiring an IV with a radiopaque substance (6 in my first year post-surgery) and bloodwork (12 in that same year).
After that, my GP strongly recommended I get a flu shot, as is suggested to anyone who's had cancer. I was a bit nervous (it had been years since I'd had one, partly because I was generally healthy, partly because I didn't like getting jabbed), but I got it anyway. And it didn't hurt. Let me tell you - after a few IVs and bloodwork needles, I can barely feel those flu shot needles anymore! I can't believe I used to be nervous about those damn things.
This year, I got a flu shot as well. And it didn't hurt.
I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis four years ago (at the age of 22). Then, the best treatment available was Avonex, which is given intramuscularly once a week. The needle is about 26 gauge and 1 1/4" long. With that needle, the pain was mostly psychological. There is nothing natural about stabbing yourself with a long, sharp object.
:-)
In fact, up until about a century ago, sharp objects piercing into your body has generally been a detrimental event. It meant that you were being bitten (with poison or germs getting injected past your outer layer defenses) or you were getting punctured by something that would result in an infection. So everything about your physical makeup and your psychology is evolved to consider injections to be a bad thing. In a twist of events, now it turns out that shard objects getting jabbed into your body is mostly a beneficial thing. But it will take a long time for evolution to change our aversion to injections. And with new technologies, it may not even be necessary for that adaptation to occur. I certainly hope this becomes the case in the *very* near future.
The nerves on the surface of your skin tend to cluster. So, the amount of pain related to the actual puncture of the skin varies greatly, depending on whether or not you happen to hit one of those nerve clusters. Sometimes the penetration of the skin would result in a strong pinching sensation; other times, I would not feel anything at all. For the intramuscular injections, it is also possible that you will hit another nerve on your way into the muscle tissue. That usually just results in a reflex reaction (you jump or twitch). The act of the actual injection is painless, since the solution is injected far below the surface pain receptors. But then you tend to get long-term dull pain similar to a charly horse; it's like a blunt end of a stick whacked you in the thigh and you have a nice bruise in your muscle. And $deity help you if you happen to hit your bone with the tip of the needle.
About a year ago, I switched therapies to Rebif, which is given subcutaneously three times a week. The needle is a smaller gauge and is signifianctly shorter (~1.5cm). It is unintuitive, but the subcutaneous injections, even though the needle is shorter and thinner, are much more painful than the IM injections, because the solution is injected just below the surface of the skin, where you have a lot more pain receptors. So it's not the needle really that I worry about. I hardly even feel that any more; it's the stinging sensation from the liquid getting pushed into the subcutaneous tissue just below the skin.
I use a spring-loaded injection contraption that hides the needle from my view entirely; I just hold the casing to my skin and push a button. The spring-loaded plunger pushes the needle in and presses the plunger of the syringe down to inject the medicine. I don't even worry about the needle any more; I worry about the sting with the liquid getting pushed under my skin and the subsequent itchy and burning red blotch that stays in that area for weeks afterward. So in my case, at least, the needle is a non-issue; this needle-less technology is neat, but it will not help with the pain associated with liquid getting pushed under my skin, and it will not help with the site reaction.
Wake me up when they figure out how to effectively administrate interferon-beta with a pill.
...and neither are most standard injections, when done properly.
I got my German Measles (rubella) vaccination with a pneumatic injector. I think this was in 6th grade, which would have been sometime in 1970-71 for me. I don't really remember it hurting any more or less than a standard hypodermic needle injection (which didn't really bother me much as a kid, anyway), but it was quick, taking maybe 10 minutes, tops, to administer to a class of 30 students. School officials really played up the fact that there was no needle involved, and I think this had the psychological effect of making it much easier on the students who were scared of any type of injection.
I'll admit I'm jumping the gun with my reply here, so I'll need to read a little more to see what the difference is between the old pneumatic injectors and this new-fangled device.
My Human Gets Me Blues.
It was used a lot later than the '70s. I joined the Navy in 1985 and I received a number of innoculations using these. I can't say for certain but organic ram suggests it continued until the mid '90s.
They weren't any less painful than a needle, but they were much quicker and they were foolproof. Literally anybody could use one. You just put it against the arm and pull the trigger.
I believe they were discontinued because of safety reasons. I believe they found out that there was a possibility of microdrops of blood being blasted back out of the skin, and then injected into the next person.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
I hate those damn butterfly needles. I don't know how they'll put a microjet inside the vessel to shoot the blood out to the container though; that's what would be necessary, from what I gather.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
It's been covered that needleless injections are probably 50 years old. Its been mentioned that people in africa and the army should be familiar with them. What hasn't been said is that these are so not new, that 9 years ago I saw on in a box that had the red tv box logo on it "As Seen on TV" Yup as in sold through infomercials.
It was painful to me. Some of our veterans' comments give a mixed respose. Some of them say it was painful, some say it wasn't, and some needed stiches due to movement during the "injection". I know that spraying liquid thru your skin can be painful, but with one who is skillful with a needle can make it damn near painless.
Are they thinking of how to numb the area? Or to apply a "spray on" tatoo. I think the spray on idea is much better. Just think, it could be used to apply semi-permanent makeup for the ladies!
Yes, most of these things hurt more than needles. A thin needle irritates far fewer nerve fibers than a rather traumatic hydropneumatic blast o' vaccination.
Most of the pain from an injection comes from the injection of the fluid itself rather than the needle puncture
There are interesting efforts to use microporation (through vaporizing the top layer of skin, using ultrasound, etc) to deliver vaccines/insulin/etc which could be less traumatic.
My first day at boot camp, in fact at arrival at boot camp we all lined up for pneumatic shots of some sort.
Granted this is probably much smaller, and works electrically rather than pneumatically.
29 years ago. Hmm Prior art?
Nearly all of the 23,487,892 injections I got while in the military (1996-2001) were done with a device fitting that description. How is this news?
Just curious,
What is the rationale behind getting flu-shots because you had cancer?
Did you get that weird taste in your mouth when they hit you with the radio contrast fluid?
Many drugs that can't be administered orally could be administered in a mist to the lung epithelium, such as insulin. As any good cigarette smoker knows, absorbing a drug through one's mucosa and alveoli can be quite effective. I'm unsure if this would work well with non-live immunization, though the lung does have a large quantity of macrophages that can act as antigen presenting cells.
I know a guy that was Vanessa's agent for a short time. She apparently really did have terrible, terrible skin (makeup and photoshop to wonders) and the Proactiv helped her a lot. I actually swear by it myself.
I never minded a needle being popped in emptied and being subtracted. As mentioned here it seems a good thing to eliminate the need of needles for that. But as the "recipient" it doesn't make much of a difference it seems.
Now, when they bypass the need sticking a needle in one's vein to tap off blood for analys I'll be cheering! That is just so uncomfortable.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Hallelujah!
Why choose white shoes?
I thought this technology has been around for quite a while? Isn't it really similiar to something that the military uses, and that they used to use in the 1940s-1950s? I know that both my mother and father and I think most kids of their generation (born 1945-1950), have permenant marks left by a vaccination in their arm, in which they didn't use a needle; they used a similiar method as the one described here to inject the vaccination.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
So, if it's not a thing of another past, would that mean it's still a thing of the (a?) present?
I quite agree. The last few injections I had I didn't know they'd done them. The key is to make sure you have relaxed your arm as much as possible. They rarely hurt then.
Misquitos somehow manage to inject stuff without us ever feeling it at the time. If we fealt it, we would swat the little beast, so it has evolved good pain stealth. It is the itchy after-affects that are the problem.
Maybe inject the vaccination into a bunch of misquitos and then let the patient stay in a closed room with them until they are done. Just find an anesthetic to mix in that one is not allergic to so that there is not after-itch.
A silly idea, but it might inspire a different approach somehow.
Table-ized A.I.
Unfortunately, I see nothing in the article that even mentions the issue of scarring, which imho should be a pretty big deal.
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
Most drugs that are taken IM can also be taken rectally. This is because unlike taking something orally, it bypasses the liver on the first pass.
IANAD, a nurse told me this.
They also have transdermal patches for many things including nitrolglycerine, scopalamine (seasickness), duragesic (mega painkiller)...
And they have a patch for birth control drugs, the ad has scantily-clad women with these things placed somewhere below their navel.
They could have saved a lot of money on this, just get a big band-aid and write "GET OFF ME" on it...
The multi-prong thing you had might have been a Tuberculosis "tine" test.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Ahh, the military.
It's good that they can take any relatively harmless apparatus like that and make it look like it's going to hurt like a some of a gun, and like it was built by the lowest bidder.
Thanks to advances in needles, there are insulin injection methods even for those of us that don't pump that are basically painless.
/.ers don't, but modern insulin needles (at least name-brand ones, if your pharmacy tries to sub in generics you're screwed) are TINY. The Becton Dickinson Ultra-Fine II/III series have almost invisible needles that are short and VERY thin. I rarely ever feel them. (Occasionally I hit a nerve directly - ouch. But most of the time they're not felt at all.)
You probably already know this but many other
Bloodsugar tests are a different story. My fingers are slightly callused from all the pinpricks - There are no real painless and definately no viable noninvasive bloodsugar monitoring techniques. Noninvasive bloodsugar monitoring is probably the second biggest Holy Grail in diabetes research (the biggest being an actual cure). The "alternative site testing" advertised by many modern meter manufacturers is highly overrated. If you read the manual of such meters you'll find that alternative site testing is inaccurate and gives a delayed reading and should not be used in many situations. (Of the 5-6 tests per day I run, only one is in conditions where AST is fine. And for that one test it's not worth changing lancet device heads.)
The thing I want most as a diabetic right now though is not painless/easier insulin injections (my NovoPen Junior with B-D Ultra-Fine III needles is both painless and convenient), or noninvasive testing (fingersticks are annoying but I'm used to it), it's CHEAP diabetes supplies. Bloodsugar meter test strips run on the order of $0.50-$1 per test. Insulin prices are skyrocketing. You're basically screwed unless you have a high-end medical insurance plan, which is TOUGH when you're a grad student.
But eventually, an actual cure would be damned nice.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Flu shot needles used to be huge and hurt like hell.
Starting 4-5 years after I became diabetic, most flu shots changed to much smaller needles similar to those used for insulin injections.
Now you can't feel flu shots at all, just like I can't feel 95%+ of my insulin injections because the needle is so small.
On the other hand, the flu shots tend to make your arm sore as hell starting an hour or so after the injection and continuing for a day or two.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
"Bioengineering students at the University of California..." This was clearly a bunch of students who needed a fix and had a project to turn in. Oh well... The best things in life seem to have all been invented at a time of desperation. More power to em!
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
My brother was working on this 4 years ago! He was the ONLY engineer at a company (powderject), which developed this technology from research done at Oxford University. The system used compressed gas at twice the speed of sound to inject powder directly into the skin with no feeling and no needles. It should be used in the USA soon to deliver the flu vaccine. Strangely, the best thing about it was that it only used 10% of the medicine needed for a normal injection, making the cost of a $100 injection to $10, and they still charge $100 for it.
I can confirm that. When I went to Navy boot camp in 1972 we got all of our many injections with no-needle spray injectors. I remember them as looking a little bit like an artist's airbrush.
Insert witty sig here.
back in the end of the 90s about using needle-less injectors to deliver microencapsulated drugs throught the skin. A team of us investigated the prospect, as injecting depot systems with needles causes lots of hold-up/loss in the vial and needle - and overfill is moreexpensive than normal. There was a ton of various injection technology back then, and it isn't like these people have stagnated innovation, especially as high-potency drugs are being investigated - so you need very small injection volumes. Insuling injections always seem to be pushing the market, but it is quickly adapted other places in pharma and biotech.
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
As a diabetic, I've tried lots of new gadgets (helps to have a doctor that's rather technologically literate)... and the Medi-Jector was the first device aside from needles that I've tried.
It's definitely NOT painless, but for around 5-10 units of insulin, it's rather "comfortable", but anything above that can be downright painful (more of a blunt pain than a sharp needle stick pain), and has also caused me welts. It's definitely not for injections where there's a lot of fat (stomach)... only for areas like the arms and legs.
Why are the University of California, Berkley students doing working on a device that with a quick search I see references dating back to 1968.
Man those students are on the cutting edge.
Maybe if all the hippie Berkley students would kick of the Birkenstocks, give up the weekly protesting group and actually study something, they could get up to date, and maybe even see about contributing something new to society.
Hey man that's coooool, got any Twinkies?
During the 60s, the Army gave me all my injections without a needle. One recruit had fluid (not sweat) dribbling down the inside of his arm after receiving a "shot" on the outside of the arm. The plague "shot" was especially painful--half the platoon was face down after receiving the needle-less injection.
IIRC, they stopped using that thing because it had a tendency to pick up bacteria from your skin and ram them inside.
rj
Now I've got to be frightened of air, too?
I think I got an injection recently that wasn't a needle - I didn't feel anything.... but maybe that was because I fainted! Andrew Gretton www.geocities.com/andigretton
Bioject has been doing this since 1985
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
An inkjet tattoo for the needleprobic.
Just think, that with the proper drivers, you can print from any application.
Needles don't always GIVE, you know. Sometimes they TAKE. Consider blood tests. Also I doubt this could be used for continuous intravenous flows.
So the fear of needles will by no means become a thing of the past. Besides, there will probably be people who are afraid of these things, too.
So advances in needleless injections are newsworthy? This in an era when tattoos and piercings have become commonplace? Even my pharmacist has facial piercings. Who's afraid of needles anymore?
I remember when I was a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, we had yearly tuberculosis tests. Some years they were given not with a syringe but with a device about the size of hand-held bycicle pump: the nurse would "pump" it once, i.e. pull the top half and press it back into the bottom half, this armed some spring which was enough for several shots. The device was placed on the skin but it had no needle, it made a hiss and fired a jet of liquid into the skin. Did not penetrate very far, just under the skin. When I first saw it, it was way cool. But that was about 25 years ago.
or indeed, an HIV patient attacking you with a gun :)
stay frosty and alert
...doesn't the military already use this for their "line up and get shot in the arm" vaccinations and the like?
To quote Health Canada: "people with chronic conditions such as diabetes, anemia, cancer, immune suppression, HIV or kidney disease". Apparently no differentiation is made between someone with a current tumor and someone who, like me, is "under close surveillance".
Part of it - from what I gather - is how nervous they are about my lungs. (Another part of my checkups is a chest x-ray and usually the ol' stethoscope on the back.) One of the carcinomas I had (it was a mixed germ cell carcinoma, one lump with multiple kinds of cancer) is a fast mover and heads right for the lungs. If I come down with the flu and then that little bastard makes an appearance, I'm in trouble. Not only will the symptoms of it be masked by the flu, I wouldn't be able to start the immune-system-punishing chemo right away. It might sound like a longshot - getting the flu and a recurrence of cancer at the same time - but people have wound up dead from longshots before.
Did you get that weird taste in your mouth when they hit you with the radio contrast fluid?
Nope, though they always tell me I will. And that warm gotta-go-to-the-bathroom-right-now feeling doesn't hit me in the bladder like they say. It gets me right in the bowel. Believe me, the longest minute of my life was that first scan I did, where I was simultaneously:
Holding my breath,
gagging on Esophotrast (it'll put you off anything sweet for a day and vanilla for at least a week),
and feeling like my colon was about to explode.
Fortunately, I'm going to a different place now and they don't use the Esophotrast. I'm also used to the minute of sphincter-clenching joy.:)
I thinkn the reason alot of drug users will not use I.M I.V drugs is due to a fear of needles, I feel this would be a very bad idea.
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
This reasoning is exactly why these systems are no longer widely used. There were quite a few documented instances where hepatitis B was transmitted through the use of contaminated jet injectors. For infection control purposes, it's a lot easier to use a disposable needle than sterilize an injector after every use.
I think needless injections were available decades ago.
History of Jet Injection
1936 First jet device patented to M. Lockhart, New Jersey
1940 Development of multiple dose jet guns
1947 - 1965 Introduction of jet injection into clinical use (ca. 2,2 Mil. injections reported)
1975 - 1995 Development of first "user-friendly" needle-free injectors
So a technology first patented in 1936 is geek news?
The sweet nurse on my ship was a lot better than a corpman with that damn air gun. Much better.
Maybe it was a first generation but this is how we were given injections when joining the US military, you just stood in line and waited your turn for a gun-like object with several tubes running from it to other equipment, and PSSSFFFT WHAM... It wasn't plesant.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Something like this was sold to diabetics back in the early 80s, if I remember correctly. I was a small kid then, and my mom decided to give it a try. After a few weeks of nothing but painful bruises, we both decided it the syringes were a better idea. Hurt like HELL!
So, needless to say, I have my doubts.
jas
Jason Van Patten
I still dont understand the fear of needles... I ALWAYS watch with fascination when I get an injection or have blood drawn. Just watch it go in, there's nearly no pain at all. maybe I should be a phlebotomist.
Free electronics!
Are you sure that wasn't a local reaction to the vaccination? Some vaccines cause a rather nasty local reaction that'll leave a scar, skin damage, etc. IIRC the Smallpox vaccine was big on that.
Ooooh, a hypospray! Another example reality catching up to science fiction.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
So I'm still a sissy, but the needles are smaller?:)
On the other hand, the flu shots tend to make your arm sore as hell starting an hour or so after the injection and continuing for a day or two.
Yeah, does it for me (though not this year's for some reason). I'm okay until the next morning, then my arm's darn near useless for the day. It's fine at my side, but if I move it, it hurts and sometimes just refuses to move more than half its standard range. But I suspect that's just my body raising hell with the dead viruses. Temporary arm use for flu defenses seems a fair trade-off.
I've seen ads in magazines for glucose test meters that state that the manufacturer will give you a rebate equal to the purchase price if you buy three months worth of test strips.
Which makes me suspect that the makers of the latest electronic test meters sell them at loss, even free in this case, because they count on a steady market for grossly overpriced consumables. Doesn't this sound familiar? Inkjet printer manufacturer discourage you from using refilled/aftermarket cartridges by claiming it's unhealthy for the printer. If they do damage it, the printers are so cheap you just buy a new one. But if there is a chance that an "unauthorized" glucose test strip might give an unaccurate result.... well there is no second chance when your life is at stake.
... didn't the Perry Rhodan series predict that in
the early 1960s already?
AFAIK this comes up every few years, as does the
painless tooth handling (sorry, English is not my
native language), but it's the same as with the
3 Litres per 100 km cars, or the car engines made
from ceramics, which didn't make it because they
don't make enough income (e.g. the ceramics because
they're too stable and don't break apart soon, like
in Asterix & Obelix "we need less durable stones").
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
Well all the people who have a fear of needles are now safe, but what about people like me, with the fear of 'injections'.
:P
For me, the problem isn't the needle, the problem is the fact that someone is injecting something into me. I'm not sure why I have such a phobia of it, but I will usually lay down on the floor and scream my way out of it.
The jet powered thing, to me, sounds just as bad! They should develop a tablet form of every vaccination
(Sorry if this kind of thing has been mentioned before XD;;)
I don't not believe there isn't a God.
I remember getting a dozen high pressure "needle free" injections in boot camp in 1974. Latinos had the worst of it, for some reason, they bled more.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
I have 4-5 meters in my house, all of which were free.
:)
2x Glucometer Dex (my old meter)
2x Accu-Chek Compact
1x B-D Logic
I didn't even have to deal with rebates or committments to buy test strips for any of them. The first Accu-Chek was free from my endocrinologist, the second was free from Accu-Chek themselves IIRC.
And yes, it's taking the whole "give away the razor, charge $$$ for the blades" business model to new levels.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Not being a diabetic I am not familiar with the technology, but I guess that there is no "aftermarket" or "generic" test strips available. All of these medical devices must have to be "FDA approved", and so the agency just does not approve for sale any test strips not made by the OEM for the meter, and the manufacturers for the meters lobby the FDA to keep it that way.
If they're not going to vaccinate you anyway, what's the point in doing the test in the first place?
fish and pipes