Microchip Could Replace Pills

webhat writes "BBC News reports in an article that a microchip implanted in your body may be the end of swallowing pills. A microchip of a centimeter long was created with a sandwich coating of a drug (heparin) and a slow biodegrading polymer. As the polymer layer degrades the drug is released into the system."

Pills

[User8201]

I wonder if the microchip catches a virus what THAT does -- could be lethal, right?

Microchip, but not computer controlled release...

[fruey]

The chip's surface is covered in little grooves, where drugs can be loaded.

It is then covered with different types of polymer which slowly biodegrade releasing each dose at a different time.

The different types of polymer degrade at different rates, but what we do not have here is polymers activated by some kind of electronic pulse that is controlled by some mini operating system / timer chip. This is just clever dissolving stuff, not some mini robot or electronic activation of dose release.

They're just using the word 'microchip' in the same way you might advertise microchips as fries that you can cook in your microwave oven. Bah!

End of prohibition.

[ahfoo]

While this particular device may not be what I'm thinking, I've long assumed that government prohibitions against drugs will eventually be made irrelevant by similar technologies.
So much of the furor over "drug abuse" is truly about drug dosage and unhygenic methods of taking them.
The whole argument against, for instance, coke, heroin and amphetamines becomes quite different when you take out overdoses, needles and high temperature pipes.
At that point you're left arguing against euphoria from the obviously puritanical moral position that really does underlie many people's attitude's towards drug use. But, while those people will remain, by getting separating off the social evils of bad hygeine, dangerous paraphenalia and the medical compications of overdose, it should be much easier to win the majority over to the side of free choice.
But it's not really going to be necessary to win people over, because just as the next generation of doage devices are maturing, so are micro labs. Chemical engineering is seeing a huge revolution in on-chip synthesis. It's obviously just a matter of time before illicit drug labs on-a-chip make their way into the consumer market. And coupled with new dosage devices, that's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
It may be the only way to knock out the money element in the drugs trade which I personally feel is the single greatest source of damage and destruction to human life in the whole prohibition game.

Won't pass FDA

[Graemee]

So, how do you get it out if you have a reaction to the medication? Vomit? No, then Xacto or Dremel?