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"Mini-Factories" To Make Medicine Inside the Body

Diggester writes "A group of scientists from MIT and the University of British Columbia have created 'mini-factories' that can be programmed to produce different types of proteins, and when implanted into living cells, it should distribute those proteins throughout the body. The scientists have initially triggered these 'factories' into action through the use of a laser light to relay the message of which proteins to produce."

5 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. Pharmaceutical Lobbyists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Just wait until the pharmaceutical lobbyists get our clueless lawmakers to make protein synthesis illegal.. Then, the next step will be to make the lymphatic system illegal too. Illegal copying of cells is a violation of copyright law.

  2. I wonder.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if they could make these factories produce insulin, dependent on concentration of glucose? That would be cool for diabetics.

  3. Re:Nanohives by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its definetely moving into a cyberpunk future. /slap on mirrorshades

  4. I smoke like crazy and wouldn't want that! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not going to happen and you wouldn't want arbitrary amounts of THC in your system all the time either.
    I know.. I'm on week 8 of my toke break and starting to be able to do some work again. Couldn't sit down
    and type for a long while, was about to lose my job. I started getting better by week 6. Even THC is not
    something you want to abuse too much, it is fat solvable and stored in body fat and I still feel like I'm
    high sometimes.

    Don't get me wrong, THC is still an infinitely superior alternative to anything big pharma wants to put into
    you, it is a fantastic anti-depressant, controls blood pressure, moderates your immune-system (if it's too
    depressed it ramps it up, if it is switched on "too high" it dampens it just like Vitamin D3 does incidentally)
    and gives you anti-government thoughts and other insights into life and the universe. On the downside it
    can build up in your system, destroy your concentration and it takes away your dreams during REM which
    may be a huge issue all by itself. It also makes you superlazy. I know. I've smoked A LOT and at some point
    the dosage you need to get high enough is also the dosage that gives you negative side effects. However that
    is me smoking weed like some people smoke cigarettes so any anti-marijuana zealots lying out their asses,
    don't quote me for I understand the upsides and downsides none to well both from having consumed it
    and from having stopped it.

    I'm week 8 of the toke break out of 12 and no there are no huge withdrawal effects (as it is still released in
    my system slowly), I got no huge cravings for it and I'm quiet a bit more active and yes dreams have come
    back. I'm also slightly less lazy probably coming down to my natural ingrained level of laziness at this point.
    Oh I'll be back to smoking in a few weeks, on the weekends after dark because I do not want to miss out
    either on the health benefits nor of course on getting high every so often but one thing I know for sure is
    I would not want anything in my system that produces THC all the time ... like I said there's a downside to it too
    if things get out of hand.

  5. Re:Imagine the possibilities! by BlueStrat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see my post got modded "Troll".

    To those who think I'm trolling, I'm not.

    Just think for a minute: What kind of wet-dream would it be for the government's "War On Some Drugs & Poor People" types to be able to make it mandatory that everyone's implants time-release constant levels of medications & proteins that would prevent a person from getting "high" from illegal substances? Or even make them violently-ill? They already make pills that make someone violently ill if they drink alcohol to treat alcoholics.

    Looking back over the past, do you really trust them not to go that far. or try like hell to? Especially after a few decades?

    Who gets to control the implant(s)? Can the control be overridden/hacked? How do you secure that control? How can you be sure that what they tell you it can do is all it can do?

    Frankly, without so much security and personal control protections built in that it almost makes it useless for emergency-type patient-unconscious-or-unresponsive scenarios, this concept scares the crap out of me.

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.