Bacteria-killing Pencil 285
kahrytan writes "Mounir Laroussi, a researcher at Old Dominion University has invented a hand-held device that is dubbed a plasma pencil. The pencil generates a "cold plasma," which can be used to kill germs that contaminate surfaces, infect wounds and rot your teeth. In the future, it might be used to destroy tumors without damaging surrounding tissue. When he turns the pencil on, it blows a high pitched whistle as a glowing, blue-violet beam about 2 inches long instantly appears at one end. Stick your finger in its path and you only feel a cool breeze, but the beam is powerful enough to blast apart bacteria that's crawling on your skin. Such a device if patented, tested and mass produced could end up doing a lot of good. Disinfecting surgery tools, keeping open wounds open in hospitals, destroying tumors in hard to operate areas like brains, and even treating that simple paper cut. The story can be read at dailypress and old dominion university."
Patented? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if not patented, it could do a lot of good. Possibly even more.
patented? (Score:1, Insightful)
Does that mean if not patented it's not going to do any good?
does not blow apart bacteria (Score:5, Insightful)
fta, it produces highly reactive oxygen spiecies.
If such chemicals, such as peroxy radical, superoxide, etc are in fact produced, then to the extent that they get past your outer skin and react with live cells, the chemicals will produce cancerous and mutagenic lesions. If the chemcals get to the layer of living cells which is continously gowing and dividing to produce new skin, you would have to worry about skin cancers......
Cold plasmas are of great use in modifiying surfaces, eg this pen might be perfact for grafitti removal, activating plastic so paint will stick (the activation of polyolefins like polypropylene is a big business)
what has held back the cold plasma industry is the lack of cheap devices to play with; i have had to pay hundreds of dollars to have small (mouse sized) objects treated for a few minutes
natural selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Good news if it blasts 100% of the bacteria, 100% of the time.
Potentially bad news if it only blasts 99.999999% of the bacteria, thus selecting for super-tough microbes.
-kgj
Bioterror Agents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Bacteria-killing Pencil (Score:5, Insightful)
Our immune system is like a muscle, it needs to be worked to improve its strength. And, like a muscle, it can cope fine with reasonably sized loads. This doesn't mean you should go round feasting on raw burgers, but more importantly it does mean that it's not a big deal if your child (God forbid) plays outside, scrapes their knee or rolls in the mud. Actually, by keeping them inside your sanitised bubble you put them more at risk of developing asthma and other allergies, as studies have shown. In the same way that morons can't realise we got on OK without mobile phones at the movie theatre, we also got on OK without Carex Bacteria Assassination soap. Doctors prescribing all sorts of drugs to shut up hypochondriacs just exacerbates the problem further.
Slashdotters, do your duty and eat those nose pickings!
Why it's no good without a patent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Who is going to spend that kind of money if the minute they get approval, some other company can sell these devices without the clinical testing costs? The company that performed the tests will need to add $25 to $200 to the price of the device (in addition to manufacturing costs), assuming they sell a million of them. And the competitor will be able to undercut the first company on price.
The math is even worse on a risk-adjusted basis because so many promising products fail during testing. Thus, the costs of developing several failed devices must be paid for by each successful device.
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
The point is that without a patent, nobody will pay for testing, the device will sit on a shelf, and it will do no one any good. This is why pharma and medical devices will never be like OSS -- the invention of the first instance is an extremely minor part of the cost of development. Building a better medical mousetrap is nothing. Proving it is safe and effective and gaining govt approval is everything.
Re:Bioterror Agents (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and I have been sick of it from almost the moment it started. People, 9/11 was shocking, but it was just _one_ event! People in other places are confronted with terrorism all the time, and most are a lot cooler about it. And why wouldn't they? It's not like you can ever make security tight enough that no terrorist could get through; the only thing it is sure to accomplish is inconvenience and deterioration of civil liberties for everyone else. All to protect you from something that is less likely to kill you than your diet, the traffic, or suicide.
My advice? See terrorism for what it is; a minor threat to your safety brought about by fanatic maniacs who are angry about some (imagined or real) wrong your country has done to them. Get on with your lives, and don't let anybody (terrorist or politician) scare you into believing you need to sacrifice anything for your safety.
Re:I built on using a hairdryer and a nebuliser (Score:2, Insightful)
How it Works: (Score:2, Insightful)
As for the cancer element, I'm a little skeptical. It could be used to take out cancers, but you would need to cut the patient open, locate the cancer, and spray the tumor with magic cold plasma for a couple minutes, and then you get a dead and rotting tumor inside the patient's body. It's better just to remove the damn thing. For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide [wikipedia.org] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidizer [wikipedia.org]
Cheap devices are quickly tested and proved. (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt this will sit on the shelf long. A big dumb company might spend that much money testing out something that costs far more than this does. A cheap gadget like this will quickly be tested in every conceivable way by hungry graduate students at every University in existence like TLDs were. The results should start pouring out soon unless some jackass gets a pattent and demands fees which eliminate any price advantage the device has over mercury vapor lamps. In that case, we will have to wait another seventeen years and then some.
Until governments foot the bill for all medical R&D and clinical testing, patents are a crucial part of the medical device & pharma industry.
There's enough red tape as it is. Please don't make me go Federal for everything. Let them compile, analyze and publish statistics other people generate. Laws protecting patient privacy are fine. Making every institution apply for a Federal Grant just to buy a $50 device would be really stupid.
There may indeed be some non-obvious and inventive tricks in this device that deserve a patent. If so, we can hope the inventor licenses things out at a price that will insure widespread adoption and great riches for himself. If not, we can only hope that they don't get any patent and everyone can start testing.
Gov't foot the bill... With what money? (Score:3, Insightful)
medical patents are harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments (i.e., tax payers) effectively already foot the bill for a lot of drug and medical device development, even development that leads to proprietary, patented, commercial products. Furthermore, since the monopoly prices that result from patents end up being paid by government-supported health-care plans, they end up paying the rest of it, too, many times over.
In addition, the market is doing a piss poor job in creating incentives for companies to create the drugs that people actually need; companies have an incentive to create useless variations on medicines that treat symptoms of common diseases but don't cure them. What we actually need are medicines for currently untreatable diseases and medicines that cure.
Finally, a lot of the costly approval process is only in place because of the commercial development model; for many reasons, private companies are prone to bringing dangerous drugs to market without close government supervision. For drugs and devices developed with public funds, the approval process can be greatly simplified.
Overall, it would almost certainly be more cost effective for everybody to abolish drug and medical device patents altogether, have government and scientists set the goals for what to develop, and have all research, development, and testing of such devices paid for by the tax payer. Private companies can still get involved through contract work and work-for-hire.
Re:Gov't foot the bill... With what money? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, government doesn't run on tax dollars alone, but rather Government debt.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._government_debt [wikipedia.org]
So the national debt is larger than all US dollars in circulation? It really doesn't add up. In theory this money doesn't exist and doesn't matter what you do with taxes because people think that somehow the money they pay to the government has some type of application but it really just goes into a gaping black hole.
The whole reason the US government doesn't collapse is because the system props itself up through some strange levies of government loans and other Federal Reserve schemes. Seeing they can't just print money (like they did in Germany during the Weimar Republic which lead to 1000% inflation of the DeustchMark dollar) to pay for government things, they just have to owe a great deal of money. Since people expect the US government to be here in 200 years (and it does have some of the largest militaries and government system on the planet to backitself up) people just tend to accept the debt will be paid off eventually or at least they will make a profit on the internet in 10 years.
I sort of snicker every time they argue about raising taxes to pay for this or that or decreasing funding for a certain project because in reality they'll end up selling more government bonds to China or Japan.
So yes the government could very well pay for anything like funding for this pen if it wants without raising taxes or using your tax dollars. Don't get me wrong, if they were to do away with taxes all together then the national debt would spiral out of control and it is unlikley there would be enough buyers of government debt to keep up with the costs... Heck... We might be heading in that direction now if China doesn't keep buying our debt like they are now.
Re: Bacteria-killing Pencil (Score:1, Insightful)
People who are crazy with medications are like that too. I know someone who is on a half-dozen prescriptions for everything from allergies to arthritis to cholesterol, and they are the sickest person I know. They always have infections, sinus problems, headaches, etc. They went into surgery recently for their sinuses and the bleeding wouldn't stop. The doctor finally figured the arthritis medication was screwing everything up and the bleeding stopped after a couple days drug-free. Pretty amazing, IMO.
Re:The American Antibiotic Addicts (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:does not blow apart bacteria (Score:3, Insightful)
What tosh. By this reasoning the hydrogen peroxide solutions available in every drug store in the world are horribly carcinogenic brews just waiting to induce nasty insidious tumors at the slightest touch to the skin.