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Smart Pill Reports on Body from the Inside

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looks-fine-from-here dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In the 1966 movie "Fantastic Voyage," scientists enter the submarine Proteus, which is miniaturized so they can go inside the body of Jan Benes and save him. While such feats may be a ways off, a new smart pill "enters and exits the body through preexisting orifices" and reports on what it finds along the way, including temperature and pH. Sounds a bit creepy, but apparently it can lickety-split diagnose a disease that otherwise requires lots of uncomfortable probing."

3 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Some artist did this by delire · · Score: 2, Informative

    It seems you're talking about STELARC and that the work you're referring to is this.

  2. Pill Camera by Trailwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    I had this procedure done about six weeks ago. The pill sized camera takes hundreds of pix and transmits the images to a unit I wore on a belt. After the time was up, the nurse opened the receiving unit and showed me the flash memory cartridge used to store the images.

    Happily, I wasn't required to view the resulting pix, and the camera ended up in the local sewer system.

    Painless, and you can do what you want while waiting for the six hours or so pass.

    Here is some info about the procedure.

  3. Thank God. by DashItAll · · Score: 2, Informative

    True stories of medical horror coming up. Avert your eyes! I have Chron's Disease, and one day I started bleeding profusely out of my anus. I was rushed to the hospital, and had a greased fiber-optic cable threaded up through my rectum. IT WAS THE WORST THING EVER. All I can remember is the nurse saying repeatedly "he's waking up again", and me going "nnnnnoooononggogoonnoo!" and the doctor going "Man! He's still going. Give him some more Demerol."