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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.
A light sabre for sanitation freaks.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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 must be really sharp! I mean, those bacteria are pretty small.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
... 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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
I dunno about other applications, but if they can make this efficiently clean larger areas, my employer would probably employ them for the rest of their lives to do nothing but make these things. You see, we make medical devices, implants. They have to be made carefully for a bazillion reasons, but each added bit of care drives up the cost. A big engineering constraint on their design is the fact that they must be able to withstand heat, fully assembled, for long enough to be permanently sterilized. If you can sterilize them cold, not only can you make designing them easier, but you can use a whole set of materials that actually works BETTER than what we use now... we just couldn't use them before because they couldn't be sterilized.
So despite what you may think about cold sterilization not being an improvement, it is. A big one.
Erik
PS: Malda, get Kupu.
(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.