Slashdot Mirror
Researcher Developing Tattoo Removal Cream
BarbaraHudson writes During tattooing, ink is injected into the skin, initiating an immune response, and cells called "macrophages" move into the area and "eat up" the ink. The macrophages carry some of the ink to the body's lymph nodes, but some that are filled with ink stay put, embedded in the skin. That's what makes the tattoo visible under the skin. Dalhousie Uiversity's Alec Falkenham is developing a topical cream that works by targeting the macrophages that have remained at the site of the tattoo. New macrophages move in to consume the previously pigment-filled macrophages and then migrate to the lymph nodes, eventually taking all the dye with them. "When comparing it to laser-based tattoo removal, in which you see the burns, the scarring, the blisters, in this case, we've designed a drug that doesn't really have much off-target effect," he said. "We're not targeting any of the normal skin cells, so you won't see a lot of inflammation. In fact, based on the process that we're actually using, we don't think there will be any inflammation at all and it would actually be anti-inflammatory."
No tattoo at all in the first place.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Getting a tattoo may or may not be stupid, it depends on the circumstances. But I'm having a hard time imagining a situation where having a tattoo removed is stupid.
On the plus side, it makes it much easier to get rid of that tattoo I got last night while drunk.
On the minus side, it makes it much easier for someone to remove your tattoo in your sleep.
Got a tattoo in college. I really liked it for about 10 years, then I decided I was done with it and wanted to move on to another phase of my life. So I did laser removal, and I would say it's 99% gone. You'd have to be pretty close and know where to look to find any trace of it. In short, I rubbed a thousand dollars on it and it came right off!
No ragrets
-Dave
So instead of having the tattoo ink spread out in a relatively benign part of my dermis, instead I'll concentrate it in my lymph nodes. It feels like this could cause problems. How does the body clear the ink from the lymph nodes? Is it broken down; or does it just stay there, possibly clogging the nodes, or acting as an irritant and maybe causing a long-term cancer risk.
Maybe we could also turn the research around. If there were ways to make less digestable or less "attractive" inks, or to pre-train the macrophages to ignore the ink particles, you could make longer-lasting tattoos that need less ink to apply and fewer touchups.
Yeah, now that they're removable, the drunk tats you see on college students are going to be a lot more inane.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Trees pump out all sorts of carcinogenic crap. The Great Smokey Mountains aren't smokey from man-made pollution or fire, after all. If the canopy isn't too heavy, living outdoors means susceptibility to skin cancer. Natural food, especially plants also contains all sorts of toxins. And water in nature can contain lead and arsenic and kill you too. But if you live like that, your chance of cancer might be cut down by getting bitten by a snake or attacked by a wolf or a bear or something, or just hypothermia.
This could help out a lot of misguided kids who went and uglified themselves, can't figure out why they keep getting rejected for jobs, can't wear a nice dress without looking like an octopus puked on them, or otherwise have defecated all over their skin.
Some ex-prisoners, too. Nothing like prison tats to mark you as an outcast, with all the social and financial downsides that involves (besides the complete drop to permanently lowest-class unemployable for most, I mean.)
Most tats -- not all, a very few are actually amazing bits of art -- aren't worth getting, and even fewer are worth keeping, confirmation bias and pure stubbornness notwithstanding.
This stuff works, though, and it'll change the entire nature of the industry. The idea that these aren't permanent will change the motivation and the sense of commitment, which could cut down on some of the outright stupidity. And for those who go forward, they'd no longer be outright screwing themselves when the styles change, or they run into one of the (many) bosses who view them as a mark of abject stupidity. Even that outlook might change, based on the knowledge that they aren't permanent -- I could see some saying, "You can work the returns counter as soon as you get 'John luvz Mary' off your forehead."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't think so. When I was a college student it never occurred to me that I would want to remove the tattoo. It perfectly suited me, and I didn't understand that I would change over time and outgrow the tattoo. This is how kids think. They think that the way things are will remain forever. Forever young!
Some advice for people considering this path -- only get a black ink tattoo. They are much easier to remove than a colored tattoo. The laser has to be tuned to the wavelength of the ink color, so if you have a tattoo that is black, red and green then you need to hit it with three separate lasers and the way one color responds may be different than other colors.
Also, set your expectations. By the time my treatments were complete (6 treatments, each 6 weeks apart), the tattoo was about 2/3 faded. then my body flushed the rest out over the following year. So I can't complain!
I keep wondering what will happen when the fashion for tattoos fades away but the tattoos themselves don't. The (mainstream) people who get tattoos don't seem to realize that today's fashion generally looks stupid after a decade or so. But unlike other fashions, tattoos are intended to be permanent. In fact, that's the primary selling point. Fortunately, if necessity is the mother invention, maybe technology like that described in TFA will provide answers.
Another thing in this category is gauges. Even if one assumes that people with gauges look cool now, they're unlikely to look cool in a decade. (Witness bell bottom pants from the 1970s as seen from the 1980s or later.) Won't they look stupid in the future with either a gauge or a giant hole in their dangling earlobes?
As an old timer, the whole idea of body graffiti seems a bit strange to me. Usually, graffiti is applied to someone elses' property, not your own. At best, graffiti is art, but at worst, it is just vandalism. So why would you vandalize the single-most valuable piece of property you own - your body?
I'm a math/science guy, and I have math symbols on my arms. If I ever regret my affection towards math and science, I might as well have some skin torn off.
Besides, the capital Sigma works great whenever somebody asks me "Are you series?".
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Too true. Why just think of it, Mike Tyson might be able to get a job a McDonalds once he got rid of his freaky face tattoos...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
If the macrophages do this with tattoo ink, they no doubt do it with other things, as well.
I wonder if using this cream to remove ALL the dead-macrophages-loaded-with-junk from the skin will result in effectively "younger" skin?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I had a friend who was in the Marines when he was in this late teen years in the early 1950's. In the mid 80's he showed it to me. I was just a round blotch of blue/gray.
Tattoo ink migrates over time. Muscle and skin age and change their shape. It's guaranteed that a tattoo will not stay the same as time passes. It will only look worse.
By the way, the reason that sailors and marines get tattoos is in case they are blown to pieces. A distinctive tattoo on a limb makes it more likely that that body part will be recognized by the survivors. That's why there are often tats on different limbs.
Whens someone gets a tat, and then says that it's to mark a point in their life, I often wonder if that means they are planning for future senility, or being blown apart. Just wondering...
Why is Snark Required?