Nanotechnology in Medicine

cencini writes "Here is an article from the MIT Technology Review regarding the future possibilities of nanotechnology in hospitals and genetic engineering. " There's been some recent coverage of the possibilites of using nanotechnology in medicine including a Wired article earlier this week. As always, this is merely one facet of what nanotechnology can - and will do.

Let's start simple

Why can't we just start with some lower-tech things like implanted sugar sensors and insulin pumps. Or how about medication dispensors for bipolar disorder, etc. I know there is preliminary work being done with implanted insulin dispensors, and I guess somebody has to be thinking about way out there. Perhaps I wish that a bit more of that intellect would be directed toward making things like the implanted insulin real, sooner.

Greg Bear touches on this with the 'therapied' people in several of his novels, and casts it in a rather Orwellian way. But there is a fine line between fixing a few known chemical disorders and mass population-drugging. Perhaps we need to explore and define that line, publicly. Otherwise no doubt governments, multinationals, NGOs, and whatever other boogymen we dig up will do it for us.

We clearly don't want the educational system in charge of implanted ritalin.

Social issues with this technology?

I think this technology is amazing, but like many other medical technologies that are available, I fear it will lead to a larger gap between rich and poor. I can just imagine a world where those with money live to ther 120's due to the wonders of modern science while the impovershid(sp??) wither away. I've said this before to friends and will say it again: technology is moving at a much faster pace than we can deal with at a socio-political level. We need to get away from scientists and engineer shoving technology into people's faces and saying "this will make your life better" to a world where there is open public discourse about a medical method before it is widely used. Somewhat of an utopian dream? Probably, but I think it's something we should work towards.
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Deepak Saxena

Re:Social issues with this technology?

"Impovershed."

Today's poor enjoy antibiotics and vaccines which are rather inexpensive commodity items. Sixty years ago antibiotics did not exist, and for some time after that they were quite expensive. They came down. Smallpox vaccine got so cheap the disease is now extinct in the wild, and polio is not far from the same fate.

The "gap" may "grow" in absolute terms as technology moves faster and faster, but in terms of years it will probably stay about the same. Today's hyper-expensive breakthrough is tomorrow's best standard of care, and in 20 years it is available in clinics in Africa. The march of progress tends to turn anything useful into a commodity. Don't worry too much about determining who gets what. People turn their efforts away from areas which are political footballs, and if you spend a lot of political capital hammering the outfits which bring these advances to market about their contributions to "social injustices" you will just have fewer advances to argue about.
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Hemos, read this!

I've been unsuccessfully trying to find this link [techreview.com] every time you've posted a nanotech story. In this MIT Tech Review nanotach special issue, several articles discuss how, while nanotech research is proceeding well, virtually every expert working in the field feels that Eric Drexler-type nanoassembly is impossible. Basically, the Drexler mentality has been popular among CS people who can think of greta ways to use that technology if it existed but hasn't caught on among the people who actually have to deal with all the weird forces at nanoscales.

Unfortunately it's not available online but you might want to see if you can find a hard copy.