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Bacteria-killing Pencil
kahrytan writes "Mounir Laroussi, a researcher at Old Dominion University has invented a hand-held device that is dubbed a plasma pencil. The pencil generates a "cold plasma," which can be used to kill germs that contaminate surfaces, infect wounds and rot your teeth. In the future, it might be used to destroy tumors without damaging surrounding tissue. When he turns the pencil on, it blows a high pitched whistle as a glowing, blue-violet beam about 2 inches long instantly appears at one end. Stick your finger in its path and you only feel a cool breeze, but the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin. Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing a lot of good. Disinfecting surgery tools, keeping open wounds open in hospitals, destroying tumors in hard to operate areas like brains, and even treating that simple paper cut. The story can be read at dailypress and old dominion university."
``Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing allot of good.''
Even if not patented, it could do a lot of good. Possibly even more.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
before we see light sabers.
Ah, once more we see the miracle of science. Seriously though, devices like these are excellent news to people with skin problems (like tumors).
Using GNU/Linux -- Windows-free zone!
Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing a lot of good.
Does that mean if not patented it's not going to do any good?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing allot of good.
Patents have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not something will do good. The web browser (in and of itself) wasn't patented, and look how it took off. Plugins to web browsers turn out to have been patented, and look at the pain it causes for web authors who have to change their methods for invoking plugins.
No, patents are only good for making sure an "inventor" gets money for their "invention". In this case, a patent is probably warranted, but don't make the mistake of thinking that the patent is what enabled the device to do a lot of good.
But the question is. Can you write with it?
now I can kill these annoying crabs at home without risk of serious injury
allot of good
Woah... flashback to third grade there. Are the editors not awake this early in the morning?
A light sabre for sanitation freaks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If he really wants to give it a workout, he could always try it on whatever that sluggishly-flowing brown stuff is in the Elizabeth River on the west side of campus...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
The best thing is that it kills bacteria in a way that doesn't encourage resistant strains, like anti-biotics do. It just blows them to pieces!
I don't understand how this can blow apart bacteria but not blow apart your skin cells. Can anyone explain? Also, why call it a pencil? It doesn't write anything. Might as well call it a stick, rod, or magic wand perhaps.
It's "a lot", Bob.
It must be really sharp! I mean, those bacteria are pretty small.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
... Looked suspiciously like a salt shaker.
The applications for dentistry might be interesting.
See plasma tweeter at (among other places) http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/cwillis/tweete r.html /J
It says it might be used to destroy tumours without damaging the surrounding tissue. How does the beam know which cells are bad and which aren't? I smell a rat.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
While this is a cool invention, it is clearly being over-hyped. If you RTFA, the device develops a jet of oxygen radicals. Somehow this stream of highly reactive particles is supposed to cause "no harm, when it is directed at human skin" (from the Old Domion link). But "the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin" (from the Daily Press link), and "such a device could destroy tumors without damaging surrounding tissue" (from the Old Dominion link). --- If the device can really distinguish between "bad" cells and "good" cells, that would be an invention worthy of a Nobel Prize. But of course it can't. We already have devices that sterilize inert medical instruments quite efficiently-way more efficiently than waving a tiny beam across their entire surface area. It may have a niche for sterilizing items that are temperature sensitive (and not overly sensitive to highly reactive charged particles). But it clearly won't be a "miracle beam" that can kill bacteria in a wound while leaving healthy tissue unaffected.
/K
that said light sabers would be impossible to make.
lol
Technoli
Phrases like that make my pet goat puke.
Wow! Killing off the bacteria on your skin does seem like a really good idea at first doesn't it?
You know...if you made the beam superheat things instead of cool them and about 3 feet longer, it would STILL kill bacteria and be a helluva lot cooler!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
basically, this device produces a bleach like gas that chemically inactivates surfaces; it inactivates the outer layer of your skin just as much as the bacteria, but since the outer layer is dead skin cells it does not matter
...lots of other uses
fta, it produces highly reactive oxygen spiecies.
If such chemicals, such as peroxy radical, superoxide, etc are in fact produced, then to the extent that they get past your outer skin and react with live cells, the chemicals will produce cancerous and mutagenic lesions. If the chemcals get to the layer of living cells which is continously gowing and dividing to produce new skin, you would have to worry about skin cancers......
Cold plasmas are of great use in modifiying surfaces, eg this pen might be perfact for grafitti removal, activating plastic so paint will stick (the activation of polyolefins like polypropylene is a big business)
what has held back the cold plasma industry is the lack of cheap devices to play with; i have had to pay hundreds of dollars to have small (mouse sized) objects treated for a few minutes
Why would we want to keep wounds open?
... the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin.
Good news if it blasts 100% of the bacteria, 100% of the time.
Potentially bad news if it only blasts 99.999999% of the bacteria, thus selecting for super-tough microbes.
-kgj
-kgj
The article claims it can be used to "mop up bioterror agents". Is anyone else sick of how every new invention is measured by it's usefulness to fight terrorism?
While it's easy to focus on the positives, what would be the long term ramifications for such a device? The end of the summary mentions using this 'pencil' on a paper cut, which I find rather disturbing. Seriously, it seems as if bacteria (or, more rhetorically, GERMS) are replacing paedophiles in terms of evoking hysteria for protecting THE CHILDREN (OMG). If you watch any soap or bleach advert on TV, they tend to anthropomorphise bacteria as gruff-voiced killers that will strike your toddler in his highchair the minute your back is turned. The companies also make enthusiastic claims that they KILL ALL KNOWN GERMS DEAD. FOREVER. TO DEATH. KILLED. How 'killing something dead' is not at all redundant, I do not know.
Our immune system is like a muscle, it needs to be worked to improve its strength. And, like a muscle, it can cope fine with reasonably sized loads. This doesn't mean you should go round feasting on raw burgers, but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud. Actually, by keeping them inside your sanitised bubble you put them more at risk of developing asthma and other allergies, as studies have shown. In the same way that morons can't realise we got on OK without mobile phones at the movie theatre, we also got on OK without Carex Bacteria Assassination soap. Doctors prescribing all sorts of drugs to shut up hypochondriacs just exacerbates the problem further.
Slashdotters, do your duty and eat those nose pickings!
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
So THAT'S how E.T. cured Elliott!
Who is going to spend that kind of money if the minute they get approval, some other company can sell these devices without the clinical testing costs? The company that performed the tests will need to add $25 to $200 to the price of the device (in addition to manufacturing costs), assuming they sell a million of them. And the competitor will be able to undercut the first company on price.
The math is even worse on a risk-adjusted basis because so many promising products fail during testing. Thus, the costs of developing several failed devices must be paid for by each successful device.
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
The point is that without a patent, nobody will pay for testing, the device will sit on a shelf, and it will do no one any good. This is why pharma and medical devices will never be like OSS -- the invention of the first instance is an extremely minor part of the cost of development. Building a better medical mousetrap is nothing. Proving it is safe and effective and gaining govt approval is everything.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Eat lead bacterial scum!!!
I am Spartacus
I hate Linkin Park as much as anyone, but sometimes their lyrics are pretty damn accurate...
CRAAAWLING ON MY SKIIIN
THESE BACTEREA, THEY WILL NOT HEEEAL!!
Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing allot of good.
I had an English teacher called Mrs. Allot once. She was most definitely Allot of Bad, though...
One good turn - gets all the covers.
The outmost part of the skin is made of dead cells. You really can't kill them twice. Seriously.
wikipedia has a writeup on russian efforts with plasma and stealth for planes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth
Supposedly a few years ago now some russian fighter overflew a US carrier group undetected except for visual as it passed over. I don't know if it is a true story or not, but it got reported in the press.
The plasma pencil is interesting. It wan't clear what it does with prions though (BSE-CJD reference), one of the critical problems they are facing in hospital with sterilzaion of surgical instruments.
I believe there are lots of kinds of radiation against cancer but that the usual kind (not heavy particles) is basically used to create compton electron pairs which make the same oxygen ions which kill cancer cells. A mask is used to make beam match tumor shape, and beam power / type changes tissue depth / absorption characteristics. Heavier particles tending to go deeper and make more trouble when they reach their deflection depth. Anyway this is about what I can remember from past reading and a tour of a very cool heavy particle (carbon atom) accelerator for anticancer in Japan (1 of 2 in the world, developed at Berkeley which no longer runs it, now only in Japan and Germany). Anyway what I mean to say is that presumably you could draw this thing over a tumor once you cut someone open and it is easier than doing radiation, but I would like to understand how it is better than a scalpel. For example do the radicals produced follow the cancer processes as they ramify through the surrounding tissue.
It sounds like it will hurt good cells too if it is strong enough to kill cancer cells..
What about viruses? They might be stronger due to their solid polyhedral shape? Could frequency be specified to hit flagella or other features (assuming they'd act like antenna)?
And what if you just stand in a giant beam? Would it be much different from say standing in a chamber of ozone? Could similar effects be achieved by radio-based energization of ozone?
Well it is cool but hard to understand. Maybe a surgeon in the room could answer? Seems like the ideal tool for a robotic microsurgeon, blast apart cells one at a time.
Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing allot of good.
Very interesting how it would do allot of good if patented.
For those who don't know, "Allot" is an term coined by US political leader Trent Lott. It basically means "extremely profitable for Trent Lott and his friends".
As you know, Mr. Lott has been through significant trauma lately - one of his beautiful homes was tragically lost in new New Orleans. With allot of good, he will be rebuild above and beyond its original splendor. Some other people lost their homes too.
..Isn't the copy of it. Its the blue-LED-and-little-fan pseudo device that will soon be sold to prevent heart atacks, cancer and ingrown toenails at www.greatprovenhealthstuff.com for only $2500.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Please can you update your goatse link to something like http://goatse.rubmyballs.net/ as the existing one only directs to a pic of an inferior goatse pumpkin
Thanks
Goatse Watch
" it blows a high pitched whistle " 2600hz?
The article didn't say whether or not it was a #2 pencil...
Great Spirits have always encountered violent opposition from Mediocre Minds - A. Einstein
Cancer removal cream already exists.
http://www.cancerx.org/leg_&_arms.htm
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Even though the lyrics says that it's the wounds that will not heal...
[/pedant]
RoseColor red={0, 0xffff, 0x0000, 0x0000};VioletColour blue={0, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0xffff};find / -name *mybase*|chown you
"Killing something dead" is completely redundant. That's one of the things that makes it such a great slogan for advertisments.
But overall, you're definitely right. My old roommate would eat just about anything off the floor, and our kitchen floor was not anything resembling clean. It was pretty gross to watch him eat that stuff, but his immune system must be close to bulletproof by now. He and his girlfriend had their house flooded during Katrina. When they went in to check it out, the house was trashed, mold everywhere, etc. Every time they've gone there since the flooding, the girlfriend has spent the next couple days sick as all hell, while he was no worse for wear.
Although it's easy to take it too far, the saying "whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" has some truth in it.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
i think when mass produced and used this will start a new era that doesnt include the touched-be-infected kids game, we used to play when we were young
The words pencil and penicillin both derive from the same word penicillum, which is a double diminutive of the latin word for tail. I will not name that word, else I'll be modded Troll ;-)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
How long before someone upgrades it to make it more powerful? Or someone points the thing at someone's eye. Or... (I know, you shouldn't always look at the negative) It's a great idea, but should it be sold as a public device?
KeepTrackOfIt.com - Find the lowest gas prices in your area graphically
1. Insurance. If the device fails to pass, then the insurance pays for it.
2. A group of companies get together to foot the bill.
Note that these two minght not be incentive enough, but there are other tools besides patents and government funding with which to provide the incentive to bring a product forward.
but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud
I'm reminded of an aunt & uncle of mine who were beyond neat freaks, but were absolute germaholics going back to when they had their son in the late 1960s. Neither of their kids was allowed outside otherwise they'd get dirty, and everything in the house was regularly bleached, dry cleaned, vacuumed or just renewed if it had even the hint of dirt. It was a pain going to their house, both of them as OCD as you could get. Last time I was there the toilet was bleached by my aunt after I used it. If there was even a hint of illness at school, both cousins just simply weren't allowed to go until it was all-clear.
In the end one cousin did get gravel rash on the elbow running out the school gate when he was 10, and had to be hospitalised for weeks, because he near died from the resulting infection. The first flu that his sister got when she was 13 also almost killed her. Both now (in their 30s) have the most intense asthma, find difficulty putting on normal weight and have regularly come down with weeks-long illnesses needing hospital stays from things that would give a normal person the sniffles & sneezes for a couple of days.
I'm not a bio major or anything (yet) but here's how I assume it works: The stream of 'cold plasma' is just energized oxygen and helium, packing extra electrons. When it comes into contact with a bacteria, it oxidizes the bacterias cell wall, causing them to lyse. Bam, no more bacteria. There isn't any real danger of the bacteria evolving an immunity, as we've been throwing similar tactics at them for a long time, and you probably have some in your home: Hydrogen Peroxide functions on basically the same principals.
As for the cancer element, I'm a little skeptical. It could be used to take out cancers, but you would need to cut the patient open, locate the cancer, and spray the tumor with magic cold plasma for a couple minutes, and then you get a dead and rotting tumor inside the patient's body. It's better just to remove the damn thing. For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidizer
Oh my god, I think I'm going to puke.
His bone was exposed due to the skin cancer? That hole in his wrist was huge!
"Killing something dead" is completely redundant...But overall, you're definitely right.
;)
Perhaps my choice of words could have been better (How 'killing something dead' is not at all redundant, I do not know - i.e. I'm wondering how they can say such a thing seriously), but in my original post I was agreeing with you; that it is stupidly redundant and cheap emphasis for indoctrination's sake, as shown by my own addition of FOREVER. TO DEATH. etc.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
OMG its a sonic screwdriver! Pencil shaped and can fix anything! http://www.tenthplanet.co.uk/doctorwho/workingfold er/toys/medium/screwdriver.jpg
The difference is, antibiotics kill the weakest germs first so if you stop too soon, you're breeding stronger germs.
This would most likely kill the most accessible germs first or if nothing else, just kill the ones it was used on. ("Hey Doc, I think you missed a spot"). I suppose it's also possible that germs with stronger outsides might be given an advantage but it doesn't seem quite as obvious as with drugs.
cheers,
Kris
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
I doubt this will sit on the shelf long. A big dumb company might spend that much money testing out something that costs far more than this does. A cheap gadget like this will quickly be tested in every conceivable way by hungry graduate students at every University in existence like TLDs were. The results should start pouring out soon unless some jackass gets a pattent and demands fees which eliminate any price advantage the device has over mercury vapor lamps. In that case, we will have to wait another seventeen years and then some.
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
There's enough red tape as it is. Please don't make me go Federal for everything. Let them compile, analyze and publish statistics other people generate. Laws protecting patient privacy are fine. Making every institution apply for a Federal Grant just to buy a $50 device would be really stupid.
There may indeed be some non-obvious and inventive tricks in this device that deserve a patent. If so, we can hope the inventor licenses things out at a price that will insure widespread adoption and great riches for himself. If not, we can only hope that they don't get any patent and everyone can start testing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing... Governments do not have money to foot the bill for anything. God, I really wish people everywhere would realize that ALL governments operate with TAXPAYER money. In the U.S., if you ask people around you how much they paid in taxes last year the majority will say something along the lines of "I didn't pay anything, they payed me X dollars." Everyone everywhere should get the mindset that every single dollar, pound, yen, or whatever monetary unit they use, spent by thier government is their money. Just in the cleanup and recovery from this years hurricane Katrina and Rita billions of MY FAVORITE DOLLARS have been utterly wasted. Just in Alabama, FEMA has paid millions to move unoccupied travel trailers around, and put them into $19 a day trailer spots at various state parks where they remain unoccupied. Why unoccupied? Maily because most of the people who need them didn't come to Alabama and because only a small percentage of travel trailer parking spots in Alabama state parks have sewer hookups. Most travel trailers have gray and black water storage tanks on board and they empty those at designated terminals at the various interstate rest stops. FEMA will not let anyone occupy one of thier trailers unless the parking spot is equipped with it's own sewer tap. So they pay millions to park unoccupied trailers in the state parks, instead of parking them in the many large unused parking lots that abound around the state where large stores, such as Winn Dixie, have closed, and tow them around from place to place. That's one example of MY F'ING MONEY going to waste. Can you tell I'm p'd? I don't mind the government using tax money to help with such disasters. I don't even mind, much, when that money is used overseas because such aid to other nations is one way of making friends and alies in the region. However, USE IT WISELY. Stepping off my soapbox... I went into that little tirade to say this: It's the "it's the governments money" attitude that leads to such egregious waste and overspending being tolerated. If the people would just shed that attitude things would be much better, not only ih the U.S. but everywhere.
"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." --Pericles
A TRUE commie nerd wouldn't live in his mom's basement.
He would live in the State's basement, and code on the State's computer and eat the State's twinkies (since a TRUE commie nerd wouldn't believe in private ownership of anything).
They said the same thing about X-rays, too. How safe they were particularly.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
Governments (i.e., tax payers) effectively already foot the bill for a lot of drug and medical device development, even development that leads to proprietary, patented, commercial products. Furthermore, since the monopoly prices that result from patents end up being paid by government-supported health-care plans, they end up paying the rest of it, too, many times over.
In addition, the market is doing a piss poor job in creating incentives for companies to create the drugs that people actually need; companies have an incentive to create useless variations on medicines that treat symptoms of common diseases but don't cure them. What we actually need are medicines for currently untreatable diseases and medicines that cure.
Finally, a lot of the costly approval process is only in place because of the commercial development model; for many reasons, private companies are prone to bringing dangerous drugs to market without close government supervision. For drugs and devices developed with public funds, the approval process can be greatly simplified.
Overall, it would almost certainly be more cost effective for everybody to abolish drug and medical device patents altogether, have government and scientists set the goals for what to develop, and have all research, development, and testing of such devices paid for by the tax payer. Private companies can still get involved through contract work and work-for-hire.
Such a thing was invented long long ago.n dustry%20.shtml
Check out
www.rife.org
www.jwlabs.com
http://educate-yourself.org/gw/rifedeathofcanceri
http://www.navi.net/~rsc/ablood1.htm
electricity kills bateria fairly easily (3-5 volts usually).
Viruses can be killed using certain frequesncies that
match their resonance.
I'm really scared by America's 'antibiotic culture'. In my office alone (twelve people), there are seven currently taking antibiotics, most for non-bacterial or non-serious conditions. Some are taking them for what I know are allergies, some to 'prevent' getting sick, some because they have a viral cold, and one for a sinus infection that I know is fungal in nature.
Three people have 'stockpiles' of antibiotics they keep from when they get prescriptions in their desk, and they share their different meds with each other.
Doctors prescribe antibiotics as a cure-all to get whining patients out of the office, and if they do try to suggest real cures that are less appealing to their patients they can kiss their revenue stream goodbye.
I stopped going to my doctor when he prescribed me Arithromycin(sp?) for a fungal ear and sinus infection. Any idiot who knows some biology knows that you can't fix a fungal problem with antibacterial agents, it will hurt more than it helps. American patients won't stand for 'eat a healthy low-carb diet for a week and get plenty of rest' when they can go next door and get 'take these antibiotics and call me if it gets worse, we'll give you a CAT scan and suggest surgery.' Your body's indigenous bacteria are a tremendously important part of your digestive and immune systems, killing them only clears the path for viral and fungal agents.
I gave up antibiotics about eight years ago, and my immune system is rock-solid. Sure, I get the occasional sinus infection or cold, but I change my diet and pamper my immune system and it usually clears up in a day or so. Every start-of-school the whole office gets sick, most people were totally out-of-commission for a week; I was sick for only two nights. I had a fever, so I drank an assload of salty chicken soup and wrapped myself up in a bigass blanket to 'burn off' for the night.
What REALLY burns me, besides that my friends and coworkers are happily skipping down the path to superbugs, is that the whole thing is subsidised by my health insurance payment. There's nothing like paying $350/month for everyone around you to abuse the system while you never need a doctor.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I wonder if this thing will destroy prions? I know a couple doctors who are terrified of prions, since autoclaves don't destroy them & a lot of disinfectants don't work either (and some of the ones that do are so vicious that they require a lot of hazardous material handling).
Slashdotters, do your duty and eat those nose pickings!
You don't have to tell me twice!
--David
this has to be sometype of bot. its posts dont even make sense.
Conversation over holophone. Mother: Jimmy got suspend suspended again.. Father: God dammit WHY ? Mother: He's sprayed the #2 Plasma pencil on little Roberts 3th eye. He lost it so we have to pay for the growth of a new one. Father: OMFG. Mother: It's gonna cost 893748934 credits Father: Im gonna send that kid to earth... blah blah.
RUPERT! I TOLD YOU TO WATCH THE BAGS! You were looking at the boys again, WEREN'T YOU.
I'd think, it would be hotter, not cooler.
The weather's cool, when you can play hockey outdoors.
In Canada, at least...
... about their "room temperature" though. From the article:
But the plasma pencil's plume is just 34 degrees Celsius (75 F), which is about room temperature.
Isn't that roughly twice normal room temperature? Who here has their room as hot as 34 degrees C?
I make wine and my wife makes beer in our home. The current sterilization procedure for bacteria prevention involves the following:
1) Rinse out container with hot water
2) Soap out container (dishwasher soap) with awkward brush. Get all surfaces well wetted.
3) Rinse 3x to remove soap residue
4) Bleach container to 1% in hot water and let sit for 1 hour (massive headaches- bleach fumes- vent out the window)
5) Rinse container 4x to remove bleach residue
6) Mix Sodium Metabisulfite and Citric Acid in 1:1 ratio and coat all surfaces inside container for 30 sec - 1 minute. Fumes are nose + throat searing
7) Rinse 4x to guarantee removal.
8) Cap with plastic.
Takes about 1.5 hours for 2 jugs to go through the entire procedure.
Give me a portable plasma generator that can do the entire surface and I've just increased my productivity significantly as well as having less time downstairs and more time drinking the 'fruits' of the labor.
But the question is. Can you write with it?
You must be new here. The question actually is: Can it run Linux...
I'm a doctor, not a field reasearch practitioner!
I RTFA and looked at the picture, which looked Photoshopped. And while cold plasmas exist, what they described is not a cold plasma. And really, how does a stream of oxygen radicals distinguish between bacteria and human cells? It all sounds too good to be true, and I think it IS too good to be true.
I'm on immunosuppressants, you insensitive clod!
"So, I don't see how either of these ideas get us way from patents or similar rights."
Welcome to slashdot, were we see evil even in the good things in life.
Seriously, it seems as if bacteria (or, more rhetorically, GERMS) are replacing paedophiles in terms of evoking hysteria for protecting THE CHILDREN (OMG).
"This is a recorded message from Your County Sherrif department. This is to notify you that a GERM has moved into the 2300 block of Pleasanview Drive and has complied with state and federal regulations notifying us of his residence."
Remember the one about the doctor wandering around a hospital with a thermometer tucked behind his ear? Someone points it out to him, and he says 'Damn, which arsehole has my pencil?'
Well, they just ruined that joke...
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
American patients won't stand for 'eat a healthy low-carb diet for a week and get plenty of rest'
Many Americans have heard about the dangers of the Atkins nutritional approach. What kind of "healthy low-carb diet" did you have in mind?
I'm sure that grad students can do so valuable preclinical work -- showing that exposure to this devices doesn't cause cancer in human cell cultures, showing that the device kills X% of type Y bacteria with Z seconds of exposure, etc. But that won't get the FDA's approval. Where do the grad students get the money to test the device on 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 patients? Clinical testing is expensive. It requires real doctors on real salaries and if far beyond the scope of the labors of a grad student.
There's enough red tape as it is. Please don't make me go Federal for everything.
I agree 100%. Personally, I think the current system of patents on medical products is broken, but that a government-funded approach would be far worse for the reasons that you state.
But if the government does not pay for clinical testing, who does? And if some private company pays for it, how do they get paid? If large scale clinical testing is a prerequisite for ensuring the safety and efficiacy of medical products, then we either need a system of government funding (bad) or patent/government protection for those that spend the money on clinical testing (bad). I'll not suggest the option of dispensing with clinical testing and letting anyone sell anything in the medical arena.
The greater issue is that medical products aren't like TLDs or OSS. Medical devices have potentially lethal effects and are highly regulated. Gaining approval is much more costly than getting a few people to try your software or arguing a case before a standards body or OSS development team.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It's interesting that you say that. Back in high school there would be epidemics of the cold, only a matter of time before you got it. One teacher however never got sick, and it always amazed us since we even witnessed him eating rejected sandwiches out of the trash barrel. Worked his muscle I guess.
Thank you for a non starwars joke
This would most likely kill the most accessible germs first or if nothing else, just kill the ones it was used on. ("Hey Doc, I think you missed a spot"). I suppose it's also possible that germs with stronger outsides might be given an advantage but it doesn't seem quite as obvious as with drugs.
Good points.
We might want to isolate and breed super-tough bacteria -- say for use as interstellar messengers, capable of surviving indefinitely in hard vacuum. Give the little boogers photosynthetic capability, and hey presto! it's the Andromeda Strain all over again.
-kgj
-kgj
Had B made an exact copy of company A's implementation then they would be infringing on A's copyright (or some other similar law.)
Copyright does not apply to processes. "Some other similar law" in this case would in fact be patent law. For example, one way to "evergreen" (extend a useful lifetime of) a drug patent is to patent the chemical once it works in rats and rabbits, patent an improved invention incorporating the chemical a few years later, and then submit the improved invention in the New Drug Application. This was used in the case of Prilosec® (omeprazole) and its popcorn-style kernels-within-a-capsule, which AstraZeneca managed to con(vince) the FDA into thinking was better than the more common enteric double coating.
And even if they created an exact copy wouldn't they still need to go through testing to get their copy approved?
Yes, but there isn't nearly as much testing. A generic version of an existing medication is associated with an Abbreviated New Drug Application. For instance, the makers of Prilosec had to prove that omeprazole itself is safe and effective, but a maker of generic omeprazole would have to prove only that its product is as good as Prilosec. It's less difficult than getting a new chemical approved from scratch, but until AstraZeneca's patent on "enteric popcorn" expires, it'll still be more difficult than the typical generic app.
"Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry."
I'm glad to see that you're not promoting government funding, even though the patent office is overburdened and sloppy. There are two things wrong with government funding.
1) Decisions about which products even get funded for the approval would be given to bureaucrats. Even if they were consistently knowledgable, they have no real pressure to get it right. At least today, the people who decide what gets funded have a personal stake in getting it right, whether it is their own careers or their own money.
2) It is NOT the government's money, it is YOUR AND MY MONEY!!! I do not want to pay more taxes so some bureaucrat can spend my money as he choses. Thanks, but I'll decide for myself whether I want to risk my money on getting medical devices approved, and in which funds or projects to invest.
Does anybody else think this thing looks like a prototype for a lightsaber?
Ooo god..... I really hope not. People with fungal sinus infections are really sick. There is a fifty percent death rate for people who catch this type of disease unless you mean something else because sinus infections caused by fungi are rare for healthy people.
Wow... That is odd. Experience shows me that doctors are usually careful about prescribing medication for diseases that have dual causes (ie. Viral, bacterial, or fungal). Also it's a good thing you did stop going to that doctor because I have never had anything prescribed to me that was topical for a sinus infection.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Rejected sandwiches?
physicsweb.org has a couple of articles on this cold plasma. It's really kind of cool and not really a germ freak item.
I've read that UV can kill the bacteria around teeth and they will actually regenerate - I don't know how practical it would be to get those kinds of results. These cold plasmas are the same thing to germs as UV laser diodes.
What is this "Europe" you speak of? Never seen it, sorry.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I always knew there was some real research being done on that campus somewhere. I did a alot of researching current marijuana prices, brewing beer and engineering new ways to smoke. I did invent a bong that had valve on the carb that you could screw a whippet (no2) onto so you cleared the bong with nitrous. I always though it was fairly brilliant. Go Monarchs!
70% ispropanol kills just about everything, including fungus and will keep them from sporulating (don't use a higher % than that or they will form spores and can then grow later on). You might want to try the soap, to remove the greases/oils and then the alcohol - just slosh it arond and then let it air dry.
..........FULL STOP.
I've always envisioned future showers like this:
You walk in a stall, and laser just works from bottom to top and cleans everything. Well, we're one step closer!
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
People who are crazy with medications are like that too. I know someone who is on a half-dozen prescriptions for everything from allergies to arthritis to cholesterol, and they are the sickest person I know. They always have infections, sinus problems, headaches, etc. They went into surgery recently for their sinuses and the bleeding wouldn't stop. The doctor finally figured the arthritis medication was screwing everything up and the bleeding stopped after a couple days drug-free. Pretty amazing, IMO.
Reminds me of this Onion article:
French's Introduces Antibacterial Mustard
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39464
(I still can't believe nobody has said it yet - is it because it's saturday?)
/. cliché jokes, welcome our new bacteria-killing overlords.
I, for the honor of the underrated
(Applause)
Thank you.
"blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin." expands to "blast apart bacteria that is crawling on your skin."
Which should be "blast apart bacteria that are crawling on your skin"
All I ask is that journalists be literate; you know, tell possessive apostrophes from contractions, singular from plural, stuff like that. Is that too much?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
As far as this being used to remove tumor cells, I again think this won't be usefull. Often tumor cells are TOUGHER than regular cells. When tumors are removed, one does so with a WIDE margin - i.e. I keep the tumor covered with a layer of normal, healthy tissue, so that I NEVER see the tumor. This ensures that any non-visable micro fillaments aren't left behind to grow. Intralesional removal of tumors have a 100% recurrence rate - this is a bad thing. Anyway when tumors tend to get larger than 5cm, the person will probably need chem and/or radiation therapy anyway, for all of the micro metastases.
..........FULL STOP.
You should be using potassium met. Also you don't say the amount of water. The citric acid levels are way too high. You can cut to about a 1:5 ratio.
... she can also sprout the barley and make her own malt if she doesn't do this already.
IE. 1 tsp met with about 1/5th tsp acid or acid blend in 1/2 gallor or 2 liters of water is fine. Then for the wine you don't need to rince with water after and you can usually skip the soap / detergent cleaning protocol.
If the carboy is clean to start with just sterilize it. If it is dirty usually a clorine based soap product such as diversol will do a much better cleaning job than dish soap.
If you use diversol make sure you rince 3 x. As stated above: Sterilize with K-met.
For wine don't bother to rince. For beer you need to rince. Also be very careful with beer that you never have any residual soap residue because it will destroy the head. You should ask you wife to mash and make her own wort as well!
At least half the Chinese grad students in the US are industrial spies. The FBI is overwhelmed with them. See this.
Look up Rife http://www.holman.net/rifetechnology/ (Read the history section) and it has been shown to work currntly. http://www.rt66.com/~rifetech/ is another link http://www.rense.com/general31/rife.htm http://www.renewedlife.com/article/?id=28
What got me interesting in this is reading Clarks book the cure for all diseases , I built the zapper and it works well, while not plasma based.
Makes you really wonder why this is all supressed. Take back a History of the AMA journal and the needs of advertising revenue to pay for it.
While at it might as well check out Moray another vein but http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/archive.htm link 1. Free Electricity Generated from the Radiant Cosmos (esp page 3 where the pantent examiner wouldn't allow the patent cause he couldn't concieve of the idea.)
I had to reply to this as it makes absolute sense to me. Years ago I did a basic food handlers course, the instructor asked for our opinions as to why cases of food poisoning were on the increase. At a time when food hygeane regulations and enforcement were on the increase. My reply was that our natural ability to resist infection was being eroded. I passed the course but got rogered by the instuctor for my reply.
Most Chinese grad students in the US are industrial spies. The FBI is overwhelmed with them.
Whatssamater, /.? Afraid of 3 billion Chinese users reading this?
This doesn't mean you should go round feasting on raw burgers, but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud. Actually, by keeping them inside your sanitised bubble you put them more at risk of developing asthma and other allergies, as studies have shown.
:) Does anyone know if UV is currently being used to any success in food processing or water purification? A focused beam may be more effective at any rate - but could it make food radioactive?
Well, perhaps raw burgers will be possible. Mind over matter indeed, especially if you eat edible raw burger
Waxing prophetically, soldiers will be more willing to fight in jungles. Or governments will be more willing to send troops.
The possibilities for disease treatment - zap specific cells or viruses.
There is a balance between overuse of antibacterial products and hygiene. Vaccines, clean operating rooms, and prophylaxis have helped people live longer and stronger.
Devices that kill germs may allow people to treat themselves in times where no professional is available. People who can't pay for treatment will have some recourse.
Astronauts on the moon, going to Mars, or even leaving the solar system will have another essential tool.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
The guy wrote a research paper about it and filed for a patent. Therefore, the idea is out in the open and published and everyone is free to test it. There's nothing secret about it. That's how research works.
Did you really mean that? Really? Did they at least buy you dinner and a drink first?
Perhaps you meant something more along the lines of "mocked"/"picked on"/"joshed with"?
In my part of the world, rogered is only used when somebody means having intercourse, and I've never heard it used the way we use screwed with :)
Actually, I think it's just companies trying to make more money disregarding any possible consequences of their actions.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
... shouldn't that be "Pencillin"?
PLEASE tell me that site is a parody or a joke and I just missed the punchline!
The solution is for the government to quit using our money to subsidise something that we'll be charged huge prices for eventually anyway. The solution is for the pharma corporations and other medical reasearch companies to pay their own way,
That's a stupid solution because the free market does not work for health-related R&D or services. Health is properly a government function, not a free market function, because market mechanisms provably produce the wrong (suboptimal) outcomes. No amount of wishful thinking by ideologues changes that fact.
Furthermore, we have decades of practical experience with government sponsored research: it works well--a lot better than anything private companies have been doing.
"Perhaps you meant something more along the lines of "mocked"/"picked on"/"joshed with"?" Twas only a figuer of speach. You know, like, pedantic motherfecker.
We've invented the light saber.
Does anyone know if UV is currently being used to any success in food processing or water purification?
Yes.
A focused beam may be more effective at any rate - but could it make food radioactive?
No. And it's a good thing, too, since you're already eating it.
what about a fridge with these plasma pencils lining the interior. that would bring a whole new type of food preservation method about.
Is THAT your lightsaber?! Bwah-ha-ha laughed Darth Vader sinisterly.
I knew I would eventually have a justification for being a slob.
"But I don't want the kids to grow up with compromised immune systems. It won't hurt if they eat a few bugs along with those Cheerios on the floor."
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
My wife and I talk about that sort of thing all the time. And living in the country, we see it all the time too. Out here, we have e-coli in our water, and anthrax in our ground. (we raise goats, a high source of anthrax) City folk who come out to fairs and such are always getting sick. In fact, sometimes a few of those city neat freaks will, sadly, die from just drinking the water here.
When working on our farm, my wife and I purposely don't worry about cuts and scrapes. They help us build up our immune system against all the bacteria in the ground. And this ground is ALIVE! If you walk out here in soft souled shoes, like Hushpuppies, it'll eat away the souls within a day. (As my wife found out the hard way) We do still wash our hands before we eat, but that's about it. Soap and water. We also drink unpasturized goats milk.
All our anti-neatness paid off though. Last year my wife, while trimming goat hoofs, cut her thumb about half an inch deep from the tip down with the dirty blade when the goat kicked her. We put hydrogen peroxide on it, and kept watch on it, but she never got infected. Now all she has is a light scar.
We figure that if the terrorists ever attack the US with an anthrax bomb, we're pretty immune. I read online some time ago that goat farmers in other countries are immune to anthrax attacks.
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
Ahh, yes, we did just -fine- before Semmelweis and Lister.
holy shit
Indeed, the first place I'd point an experimental device for killing small things would be at my testicles, too.
Good job, son, you're doing the genepool proud.
Because it goes better with sharks !
Have you ever tried puting frickin' hydrogen peroxide on sharks' head ? They won't be happy at all.
Or Shark with frickin' alcohol on their head ? They'll end up wich a frickin' hangover.
Frinkin' laser is the only thing you should mount on a sharks' head !
Because laser is just better and easier (tm).
[ducks]
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
'Twas
figure
motherfucker
you need to kill the bacteria before you put in the filling... gas, as you know when ther is a bad smell, gets into cracks very well.. if there are bacteria in tiny cracks, a gas is the best way to go
I see your point. I do know that Phase 1 clinical trials, for pharma products in the U.S., involve testing on healthy volunteers (usually on the order of 100 to 1000 people). These are people seen by doctors paid to do just the clinical trial (not other treatments) so the test subject (or their insurance company) is not the payor. So 100% of the Phase I costs are paid by the company with the new product because the doctors aren't doing it in the course of routine treatment.
Later phases involve patients that do need treatment. I suspect this creates some added cost due to added documentation that goes above and beyond the usual treatment regime and medical records keeping. But the bigger issue is that I doubt the patient's insurance company (in the U.S.) would reimburse for experimental treatments (I don't know how Medicare or other countries handle this). Thus the full cost of treatment probably gets paid by the company with the experimental drug. I'm sure cancer treatment isn't cheap (you may know this better than I), so covering the treatment costs on thousands of patients is quite costly.
Does your facility do clinical trials? I'd be interested in what the doctors say about who pays for what when a clinical trial is involved.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Why? What was the answer he was looking for?
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Update: Another journalist also reported on the device. The Article has a picture of the plasma pencil. The Article is here.
\
I did read the whole post, but I think you may have missed my point. My point was that without the exclusivity provided by patent law, drug companies don't have much of a financial incentive to put a new chemical through expensive clinical trials. The FDA's regulation isn't limited to drugs either; many medical devices, possibly including this "Bacteria-killing Pencil", are regulated in much the same way as drugs, such that no person shall market the device to the public unless and until it has been proven safe and effective to the satisfaction of FDA regulators.
Or did you want a point by point response to each main clause?
However, if there is no practical value, such as if marketing of the device is prohibited because it has not been approved by the FDA, then the ability of the device to do good is irrelevant.
The majority of slashdot users... are socialists / communists. Heh and here I've been going nuts trying to rationalize all these idiotic statements in terms of capitalism.
Apparently some government funding is already present.
I will also point out, as others no doubt have, that most of the funding for basic research (especially medical research) in the United States comes from the U.S. Government. "The Marketplace" does little to no investement in the development of new drugs. Rather they focus on the marketing of existing drugs in new ways. Indeed two of the latest medical wonders AZT and Viagra were both developed by the U.S. Government and the subsequently sold to private companies for a pittance unter the terms of the Byah-Dole act. The massive cost of AIDS drugs is not about recuperating research costs (the U.S. Taxpayers already took care of that). It is about one company controlling a vital medicine that they neither developed nor cared forand charging people through the nose.
Your assertions that things will go nowhere if IP is not present misses the fact that the IP is not the motivating force for those doing drug development. U.S. Tax dollars fund the research not future profits. The profots go soley to the marketers not the inventors and they do not fund future research.
No, the ability of the device to do good is relevent. The value of a system that prevents devices with the capability to do good from being usable is the question.
The patent system is not fatally flawed, certainly, but to suggest that we need it to do good is ridiculous.
The value of a system that prevents devices with the capability to do good from being usable is the question.
So now you're arguing against the need for an FDA, not the need for a patent system. Please continue, in your journal if need be.