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HP's Inkjet Technology Used to Administer Drugs
jedrick conner writes "Hewlett-Packard's microneedle technology, used in its inkjet cartridges, could soon be used in transdermal patches to deliver a time-controlled release of drugs to patients.
Still at the prototype stage, the patch will likely be 25 mm square in size and 3 mm thick. It will incorporate an array of microneedles that are between 75 and 100 microns, which will penetrate the top dry layer of the skin, also known as the stratum corneum.
Above the microneedles is an array of wells, [and] those wells can hold one or more drugs, the device has "an active mechanism to push the drug through the needle"."
DAMN! I thought this was FUNNY. Too bad I don't have moderator points...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
A) People who purposefully work their blood pressure up to get a calming jolt
B) People who learn to be angry without any physiological manifestations (aka sociopaths)
I recall reading an article discussing a study of criminals who had gone through anger management. Their conclusion was that the only thing some criminals learned was how to mask their anger from others until it was too late.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I've made this comment before so I'll just summarize the key points.
When you get right down to it, the real drug war is, as William Burroughs pointed out, between those who seek euphoria through drugs and those who seek euphoria by controlling other people's access to drugs. It gets painted as a health issue, but really this is not what drives the intensity of the battle.
The health issuses are almost exclusively about dosage control and dosage methods and don't even get into the issue of whether a person has a right to control their own perception of euphoria. Once you take those dosage issues out of the black market drug game, you radically refocus the argument onto the real issues of control and euphoria.
You can confirm this mentally by asking yourself what are the symptoms that the drug wars are said to be working to prevent? Fatal IV overdose is the classic example. Disease transmission such as AIDS is another one that isn't really about the drug, be it heroin, cocaine or meth, but the delivery method. Then there are the problems caused by excessive doasage. In many cases the psychotic episodes some drug users experience in which people go temporarily insane and harm themselves or others in a drunk-like rage are due to non-fatal overdoses that would be prevented by a controlled dosage device. These classic icons of the drug wars are all, in fact, dosage issues.
Once you exclude dosage issues, the only problems you can associate with drugs are related to the fact that they are illegal. Indeed, these two issues are intimately related but the people who get their best high off of controlling other people enjoy separating these two issues.
If you had reliable dosage control and you reduced costs through decriminalization the real issue would emerge which is that there is simply a large segment of the population that craves control over other people's lives in much the same way a junkie craves heroin. Our society is infected with control addicts.