"Mini-Factories" To Make Medicine Inside the Body 79
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."
Nanohives (Score:4, Insightful)
Did anybody else think of nanohives from Shadowrun when they read the title?
nice job reframing (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Pharmaceutical Lobbyists (Score:4, Insightful)
You realize who's going to make a killing manufacturing these nanofactories, right? The pharmaceutical industry. Even more amusingly, look at who funds the facility [mit.edu] where most of the research took place. Yes, those Koch Brothers.
Go pander your conspiracies somewhere else.
Re:Imagine the possibilities! (Score:4, Insightful)
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