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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."
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.
Now when can i get one implanted that makes THC?
captcha:conveyor
I wonder if they could make these factories produce insulin, dependent on concentration of glucose? That would be cool for diabetics.
What could possibly go wrong. This is cool and wave of future but I'll sit back as long as I can to wait for bug testing.
Did anybody else think of nanohives from Shadowrun when they read the title?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I mean how a cell (like bacteria) have a bit of DNA, mechanism to transcribe that to RNA and use rhibosomes to translate that into a protein. This thing does similar stuff except it isn't designed to replicate itself. Hmm, I don't have access to the original though, what does it use for energy to do all of this? (Since a cell might use a mitochondria to do cellular respiration. Ok, a bacteria doesn't have those but it can do something similar.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Woot! Another step towards improving the human immune system. Something like this sounds oddly similar to something I said last October:
"It would be nice if one could program the current immune system with a broad range identifier would eliminate all but the rarest of virus infections. Then the next step would be to somehow analyze foreign invaders to give scientists advance warning. Then a way to create fixes automatically. David Weber gave a shot at imagining something like that but with alien tech implants and nanotech in his Troy series. Some DNA rewriting in the first book as well. How accurate he was I leave to you."
The 'way to create fixes automatically' part would fit in well with this article. Now they just need a detection method, a way to communicate to the human host, and something to link it all together. Whee!
I'm going to save a ton of cash and outsource mine to India.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Don't get me wrong, this is a nice achievement.
But calling this "mini-factories", "programming", and "nanotechnology" is a clever reframing to make a combination of standard molecular biology techniques that are very far from actual medical use appear more hip and high tech.
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 ... like I said there's a downside to it too
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
if things get out of hand.
Just imagine soldiers and ordinary people with implants to make steroids inside the muscles and painkillers dripped directly the bloodstream without all those icky syringes!
I'm imagining an entire populace government-healthcare-mandated to have these laser-controlled nanofactories that can, besides their publicized abilities, also produce mild or heavy tranquilizers, or other mind/mood-altering drugs.
People protesting? Flash a laser and they're not so interested any more...can't really remember what it was they were mad about. Violent mob? Flash, and they fall unconscious. Government/police wants to question someone? Flash, and they get a dose of sodium pentathol or other similar drug. Government wants to set-up someone? Flash, and they get a nice big dose of rohypnol ("rufies") and star in an embarrassing video they don't/can't remember.
There's huge potential for abuse here.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
organic unprocessed whole FOOD.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Hackable people.
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.
But the nanoparticles still have to be pumped in the body, so this will not remove the need for device like insulin pump.
It will be fine once we figure out how to Jailbreak ourselves.
t will be fine once we figure out how to Jailbreak ourselves.
Just beware of that "early termination" clause for unauthorized access!! I'd hate for my body chemistry to "get bricked", as it were. ;)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
So you also miss the good old days playing Syndicate :-)
I didn't mod your post but I can see why someone would have flagged it troll. It's a bit snarky. ;-)
However, your point is still valid and came to post this exact point: will you have a choice to not accept these "ultraviolet rays"? As much as we would like to, we don't control what our cells do. And there is a lot of good that this technology can do. How long until this becomes weaponized and used not only to cure, but also to control?
I will admit, however, there is some time before this debate absolutely needs to happen, This doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen now. If all it takes is ultraviolet radiation to program the cells, all it takes is some paranoid politician or evil genius to just pump people full of insulin to make them have a coma.
We don't live in Shouldland.
I didn't mod your post but I can see why someone would have flagged it troll. It's a bit snarky. ;-)
I just don't see any "snark" there. Maybe my "snark-ometer" needs recalibration. The only thing I see that someone could get their panties in a twist over is the mention of government-run healthcare as the vehicle for universal mandatory adoption. I simply thought it current, topical, and relevant in keeping with the recent SCOTUS decision.
If that's the case, someone needs to learn to be a little less thin-skinned. It wasn't a political bash. Trust me. Anyone familiar with my past posts would know that, when I DO come down on something, there's no doubt about it. I don't mince words, and I don't mind calling a spade a spade regardless of BS PC etiquette or delicate Liberal/Progressive sensibilities.
This ain't that.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The thing is, it wouldn't really enable much in the way of behaviors that the governments of the world can't do right now, if they feel like it.
It would be a fairly trivial task to simply fake a video of someone who they want to set up, or why even bother with that when it's even easier: "So and so was found to have large amounts of child pornography on their system" and said person is basically fucked for life.Who needs to roofie them?
Sonic weapons, tear gas, other "less than lethal" tools are being used against protesters and even when they are completely abused and police are caught on camera doing horrible shit, nobody cares. Remember that veteran who had his skull cracked during the OWS protests and it was caught on film? Or how about that woman in the wheel chair who was simply trying to get away but was tear gassed and pepper sprayed and that was caught on video? Or how about those protesters who were kneeling, hands on head, and that cop walked by spraying them in the face? Nobody gives a shit except for the people protesting and a few others. We don't need a pharmacopia to turn people passive as clearly they already are.
I don't disagree that there is the potential for abuse, but not much more really than is currently available by any number of methods, and it doesn't seem like there's much of a need for it.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
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?
Wait, do you somehow imagine that the War on Drugs is to stop people from taking the illegal substances?!? Here are the top five lobbyists against drug legalization:
1) Police Unions. They get big budgets and more powers every year the drug war goes on. If it stops, the gravy trough dries up. They would hate this.
2) Private Prison Industry. If people aren't taking illegal drugs, we can't put them in prison, and the gravy trough dries up. They would also hate this.
3) Alcohol Industry. These guys probably wouldn't mind -- PROVIDED the implants don't affect your ability to enjoy alcohol.
4) Pharmaceutical Industry. These guys would DEFINITELY have a problem - no cocaine, no Prozac; no heroin, no Vicodin. It would be a nifty trick to selectively block some specific serotonin uptake reinhibitors or opiates but not others...
5) Prison guard unions. See 2 above, but throw in government-run prisons as well.