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Science

Nanomedicine 100

Posted by Hemos from the how-we-can-change-ourselves dept.
ATOMA writes: " The book Nanomedicine from Robert Freitas is now available. And it's free on the Web. With 10 chapters, this is one of the most technical books on nanotechnology, along with Nanosystem from Eric Drexler. But Robert has said it's not his last one; we should expect another two books on Nanomedicine from him. "
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Nanomedicine More

Nanomedicine

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  • This is a major win. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is fantastic. With nanotechnology, we will be able to monitor people's health with amazingly fine resolution. Imagine being able to catch smokers reliably! We'll be able to cancel their insurance instantly, with no time wasted and no pointless legal garbage. Guilty. Bam! Done. Maybe we can finally free ourselves of that disgusting habit. Drug users won't be able to get away with it, either. Quit, or lose your insurance: No ifs, ands, or buts.

    We are looking at the possibility of being able to ensure a level of health that we've never even contemplated before. A whole new world is opening up, where we'll be free of all kinds of destructive crap.

  • You still don't get it. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    if there's a possibility to make such a technology that noone will be able to copy it but yet many people want it (which is surely possible in some fields), a corportation will hold a monopoly...

    Simple: If you don't want the product, don't buy it. If you do want it, pay their price or find another supplier. What, there is no other supplier? Tough shit. Meet their terms or do without. If it's an innovative product, you don't need it anyway, because by definition it's new, and you must therefore have lived without it for all these years ere now. So suck it up and do without, if you don't want to pay a fair price.

    in a truly "free" market, what prevents Huge Big Company from buying newsmalljuststarted and iwannacompetewithyou and shut them down?

    Nothing, other than an unwillingness to sell on the part of the competitors. If the customers really want them to survive, then they will be sufficiently profitable that they will survive. If not, then there is no need for them, and it can be inferred that the customers desire a monopoly. This is how a free market works: The customers get what they want, 100% of the time, no exceptions.

    needed-but-not-profitable areas

    A meaningless contradiction in terms. If something is needed, people will pay for it. If they're not willing to pay for it, obviously they don't need it very much.

    Could be done more efficiently and cheaply yes, but that's assuming everyone has the money to pay for it.

    In a truly free society, wealth will be created far beyond anything we can presently imagine in our government-chained state. Everybody will be able to afford anything they want.

  • If companies are freed from paternalistic regulation, they will be able to act in their own best interests. The principle of enlightened self-interest demonstrates that the consumer will benefit, because companies will do whatever most attracts consumers.

    I must disagree. It is true that companies will do whatever is in their self-interest but this is not always the same as the best-interests of consumers, quite often counter to the best-interests of labor, and nearly always counter to the "interests" of the environment. Without regulation it is easier and cheaper for a company to trick, disceve, and otherwise screw-over other parties than to act in "enlightened self-interest".

    The free market seems to benefit a few of us in the first world but harms a great many less fortunate. If you are interested, here are some links about what the free market is doing to other countries right now:

    Corporate Watch [corpwatch.org]

    Global Exchange [globalexchange.org]

    Campaign for Labor Rights [summersault.com]

    /joeyo

  • i don't gawk, i perl.
  • How many (important) inventions or dicoveries have been made in the last 50 years?
    The microchip could be one that has really affected our society, but it's only a bunch of transistors made smaller.

  • After "flipping through the book" and reading a few pages, I'm filled with hopeless optimism and the ability for science to continue to contribute to the health and well being of mankind.

    Is it just me or does anyone else stop every once in a while and marvel at what science has been able to accomplish for mankind?

  • So are you saying the science has *only* made things better, faster, more effecient, and more functional?

    Speech existed in nature and science *only* allowed you to speak to someone instantly anywhere in the world, record and archive speech for anyone to listen anytime in the future.

    Other than the fact that you understate the effect of science on modern society, you're right if you oversimplify enough everything already existed. Modern brain surgery existed already existed as a obsidian flakes.

  • Actually there are two paths to Nano nirvana. Thru biotech or thru "mechanics".

    Genetic enginering and all that squishy stuff is but one way to do it. Different technology = different solutions.

    So probably there will be room for both methods. The nano people are certainly aware of the biological solutions too.

  • A higher-level page on this topic and book is at:
    http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine

    This includes a FAQ; links to other nanomedicine sites including art, author interview, and technical papers; and a writeup on the two challenge grants totalling $40K which helped get the first book written and the second one started. (Foresight is 501c3, so donations to the project are tax-deductible in the U.S. under the usual rules. Your help is welcome!)
  • I paged through all ten chapters of the Nanomedicine article and I failed to find a single instance of the possible dangers of nanobots-run-amok, or the chance that a malevolent force could use them as a weapon.

    Like the cookie cutters in The Diamond Age hey? Those things are cool.. along with all the other nano-machines in that book.

    I think that as with most technology these days it'll only become mainstream after the military need it for something.

  • Making that statement, you imply that you are, that you indeed understand the implications of its use and all of the possible consequences. Is that what you meant to do? We won't know until we have it, and if were aren't and all die, at least we reached our maximum.
  • A classic mistake people make when thinking about the future is failure to think about things systemically. If I have sufficiently developed medical nanotechnology, then my body is self-repairing. In that case, what do I need medical insurance for? Smoking and using many other drugs will be relatively safe habits (still socially obnoxious perhaps, but that's a different issue).

  • One target endpoint of the research program Freitas lays out in Nanomedicine is to make the body self-repairing. That's where we're headed, so it's not irrelevant at all.

  • The Extropy Institute's Mailing List Archives, for example, contains recent discussions about encouraging the availability of "almost anything" manufacturing boxes (similar to Star Trek "replicators"), while discouraging the availability of "everything" boxes.

    To quote Eliezer S. Yudkowsky from that very same mailing list:

    What you're talking about is not analogous to the Thompson hack; what you're talking about is more like a compiler that would recognize *any* compiler, even a compiler written for Pascal instead of C++, and which would furthermore refuse to compile anything that could be used as a spreadsheet. I don't believe it can be done, even with limited AI.

  • The site's not all built, but Chapter 2 is there. It looks like it has enough hard science to be valuable, or at least refutable.

    Zax

  • Does anyone else cringe at the idea of nanobots made by Microsoft running around in your body???
    Would your whole body turn blue just before you died?

    Who do you trust?
  • what is your basis for that statement?

    yet another uneducated post.

    -nick o

  • great. yet another example of technology humanity is not mature enough for, yet keeps rushing into

    Well, you are right of course, but we don't really have any choice. It is impossible to really suppress any technology, even technology that is yet to be developed.

    If the well-meaning people of the world refuse to develop nanotechnology, the not-so-well-meaning people are going to go ahead and develop it anyway, for their own uses. It seems the natural state of humanity and technology is the arms race. It's unfortunate, and will probably get us all killed, but the alternative almost certainly will.

  • Perhaps you need to be informed of a recent advance in chemical detection technology. It's called a 'drug test'.

    If this was ethical, they'd be doing it, but fact is, it's not. If they ever tried it, the customers would just say, "You're going to do WHAT?!?!?!?" and storm out of the office.

    Lower rates are not worth the cost of freedom.
  • You might kno this but.... Everything with nanotech still realy revolves around the construction of the universal assembler. This is something that puts atoms together one by one, thus we can make these ultrasmall machines. You body does this already, but onlywith amino acids and protiens This book came out more like last october, because people were talking about it at the foresight confrence on Nanotechnology. I recently heard that the author has gone to work for Zyvex, a company trying to build the universal assembler. www.zyvex.com And for all your nano needs www.vjnano.com has all the articles you will ever want. And all of drexler's books are good, Nanosystems the least foretelling and most technical.
  • Is it just me or does anyone else stop every once in a while and marvel at what science has been able to accomplish for mankind?

    Well... &nbsp if you look at alot of the "science" that has been put forth, it's still the literal "reinventing of the wheel", eg., carriage --> car, glider --> plane, silk --> nylon, willow bark --> aspirin tablets, adding machine --> computer (and earlier posters mentioned even more fundamental harnessing of nature in the name of science and technological advances).

    Another poster mentioned that nanotechnology is already here with the manipulation of virii and bacteria. &nbsp Nanobots would merely be making artificial versions of those natural entities (and they'd have to be pretty damn good versions too, otherwise your body would immediately identify them as a foreign substances, reject them, and then try to nuke them!).

  • great. yet another example of technology humanity is not mature enough for, yet keeps rushing into

    You know, when you made this statement, it triggered something in my mind about those first manned space flights which eventually lead us to the moon. &nbsp When you look at the technology that they had then (or lack thereof compared to what we have today), it makes you wonder how we ever did it. &nbsp And there are those out there who believe we really didn't do it... ;-). &nbsp And now that we really do have all the "right stuff" to go to the moon and do some exploring, it's passe (in fact, it became passe after the first couple of moon shots, unfortunately).

    I guess I say this in terms of how humanity stumbles along after a dream, and often gets burned in the process, but the dream eventually does become reality... &nbsp This whole nanotechnology field is really still an "on paper" thing but leave it to us humans to "make it so" anyway...

  • So are you saying the science has *only* made things better, faster, more effecient, and more functional?

    No... &nbsp what I said was:

    "Well... &nbsp if you look at alot of the "science" that has been put forth..."

    I am a chemist with a degree... &nbsp Doesn't make me an "expert" in science but it does make me a scientist with a unique perspective, having not only studied the "natural" world but the history of scientific achievements... &nbsp And one of the first things one is taught is to never make such an all-emcompassing statement as "all" or "only", blah. &nbsp And I say again, "alot of" the science that has been forth has been re-inventing the wheel...

    ;-)

  • There's something about custom engineered viruses that just scares me. After the "super bug" scare when certain bacteria started showing up that were resistant to antibiotics, isn't it possible that a genetically engineered virus could mutate and start doing extremely harmful things?

    Just because we can create life doesn't mean we can control it.

    -Eric

  • needed-but-not-profitable areas

    A meaningless contradiction in terms. If something is needed, people will pay for it. If they're not willing to pay for it, obviously they don't need it very much.

    You're assuming noone lacks money. If you have any good reason for the fact that noone will lack the money to get what they need, then I'll consider that. Everything else you say makes good sense.

  • Well, you miss a point yourself I think.

    Remove the gov't and big corporations will jump any opportunity to screw the customer of more money. "Free to negotiate a contract" will need government and laws, because without those, a big corporation that is the only provider of a product will screw the customer of rights/money/etc, and who is free with that?

  • Free. Market.

    Oh yeah, I see the Free Market. But where did all the free people go...?

  • So tell me... how will a person that cannot work for some reason gain his/her part of this infinite wealth?

    I find it very hard to beleive that simply if we dump the governments of the world we'll all be able to just stroll along eating ice cream. You need more than that to back such a claim up.

  • Or, in other words: We tried government and it burned children to death in Waco. It has failed. We will now try something else.

    Sorry but you sound like a caveman here.

    - Me try boat. Boat no work. Boat hit iceberg and sink. Me try something else.
    - Me try car. Car run off road. Me hurt. Car no good idea. Me try something else.
    - Me try airplane. Airplane crash. Me try something else.
    - Me sit at home doing nothing. Nothing works. Ooooogh.

    The real, actual, fact, that has so properly been demonstated to you here, is: Without the government, the rich people will make themselves the new government. Humans want power. If you dont like it, try your non-government-society with aliens or cows or something.

    - Me no like Clinton. Government not work. Me not trust anyone who say government might work. Me refuse to listen. Me smart. Oooggghh.

  • No, no, of course not. That's absurd. If there's profit in it, and if there's no government to enforce monopolies, then there will always be competition. That's a basic law of economics.

    Under normal circumstances yes. Technology and inventions, coupled up with that same profit in it, if there's a possibility to make such a technology that noone will be able to copy it but yet many people want it (which is surely possible in some fields), a corportation will hold a monopoly... Also, in a truly "free" market, what prevents Huge Big Company from buying newsmalljuststarted and iwannacompetewithyou and shut them down?

    In fact, it is theoretically and practically impossible for any form of coercion, monopoly, or involuntary servitude (taxes) to exist in the absence of a government. Anything the government supposedly does for you, could be done more cheaply and efficiently by private enterprise. Governments are pure parasites. They have an infinite appetite, and no useful function.

    Well, I think governments are needed, or we'll lose order and alot of needed-but-not-profitable areas would go. But... governments are the worst kind of innefficiensies i've ever seen... Nothing's as good at buying less for more money than a government. Thats where I think the true problem is. Could be done more efficiently and cheaply yes, but that's assuming everyone has the money to pay for it.

  • Im not joking. Take a look at the current situation. Give companies the lawful power to make you accept any contract or license (UCITA, DMCA, shrink-wrap-crap, whatever...), and the market is still free. People, however aren't free, since the only product providers there are in some market parts will all use these methods. Means --> Free Market, yes, free people, no.
  • You're not claiming humankind invented water or oxygen or rocks do you? Or that water is a technology?

    We did invent religion thought, and isn't that the killer of all times?

  • "... government ... poorly funded ..."
    now there's an oxymoron


    --
  • I'd really like to see that happen...
    but it seems like nobody cares to fight this tiger. Conformity is the rule of the day.

    --
  • are there like any links where we can find Drexler's writtings on the internet, i mean... like indepth stuff... i've read interesting stuff liying around the internet, mostly short papers... does anything longer in lenghth exist?
  • We could run Windows on them! Blue Face of Death...

    Cheers,
    Simon B.
  • We won't know until we have it, and if were aren't and all die, at least we reached our maximum.

    Why don't you go ahead and die just now?

  • Why not? I want the world to know I have gonorrhea and i caught it from Hemos.
  • Yes Nanotech is one of the greatest and one of the worst things that can be invented. They can do wonders in the field of medicine and construction but they can also do wonders for the Anarchist or Terrorist. You never have to be near your target, you don't even have to be on the same continent. Just program and set them free. What is to stop them? On the same hand medicine will drastically improve. Construction can be done cheaper and more efficient and anyone can do it. Ultimately it all comes down to the person using the technology and why they are using it. We have to master our emotions and stop to think before we act. Understand each other and get a long before we really user Nanotech to its fullest.
  • We're cannot simply stop and wait when we'll be ready. If we do so we'll simply extinct.
  • Good point. Which raises a whole new question: it seems that currently everyone wants to make earthshaking decisions, but no one wants to bear responsibility for them. How can be this situation amended? What society will be good for nanotechnology?
  • I betcha no one else has YET. Maybe Priceline or Jeff Bozos :-)

    --
  • People keep thinking of a tiny R2D2 unit crawling around in your body. The truth of the matter is that the resemblence at the nano level won't be there. We're already doing this with the molecules that key into receptor sites (like beta blockers) so the bad reaction can't take place as well as molecules that assist the use of the bodies own chemicals (like diabetic meds for type II diabetes) that help bond to ill formed receptor sites. This is also the reason why a large portion of the currently working nanotechnologists are in the chemistry and biology fields rather than mechanical engineers.
  • The Foresight Institute [foresight.org] has full texts of 'Engines of Creation' and 'Unbounding the future' online.
  • Please report to the L'il Emergency Room, STAT!
  • Before the ineviatble discussion about the ethics and morale of this research field and its attached dream breaks out (and I already saw some postings along this line), let me jump ahead of the nay-sayers and state this:

    do you know what's the purpose of life?

    for those of us who distrust formal religion (anyone who's not totally blind about it does at least a bit) and dedicates at least some time to reading about scientific knowledge, the answer is a resounding NO.

    which brings me to my point... what tells you that the purpose of life for any living race isn't to survive at any cost? to ensure that humans never dissapear? reagrdless of the means... believe me people I don't just say this, after all i AM a vegetarian and care a lot about the preservation of animals and that sort of things. It's just that we just don't know.

    you look at any living thing and they're all designed to survive. even death could be considered a mean for a species to survive (otherwise there wouldn't be evolution right?). we're all hardcoded with that instict that makes us follow the pattern that will make the species survive.

    so what if there isn't much evolution can teach us at this point, and the only mean for us to evolve to survival is through our own means?. there's already plenty of us (some say more than the planet can hold with current resources), we live like five times longer than our ancestors, only the animal species we choose survive (except for like bugs and rats), there's no real threat from the animal world that will make us extinct (please leave ebola out of this). we're the only species capable of elaborate thought, the kind that takes the evolution process on its own hands, and on and on.

    bottom line, ethics is a word we invented. the only suggestions as to what's right and what's wrong come from religious books that made most family values that eventually became government laws. add all that up and you have people's common sense (which isn't so common and sometimes doesn't really make a lot of sense).
    leave the scientists be. let them work on new things even if they're risky at first as long as they're aimed at the overall betterment and survival of the species. if we stop programs that can save millions of lives because it will kill a hundred in the process (wasn't that the enola gay's payload?) we might be leaving our survival to an evolution process that's just too slow to keep up with our biggest threat, ourselves. the part of humanity that is not willing to sacrifice itself for the betterment of all.

    and BTW, those hundren people that may die? i'm sure there'd be plenty of volunteers out there that are willing to take the risk

    ok, enough ranting, and please don't just flame me, use intelligent arguments against my not so inteligent ones.
    saludos.
  • 100 years ago, electric cars and steam cars were more promising than internal combustion. Good thing they didn't decide right off the bat which to pursue.

    Maybe if they had, the gigantic oil companies of today wouldnt buy up any new inventions for electric cars to prevent electric cars from becoming better/popular... regardless of enviroment etc... An electric car can actually be much more efficient than a combustion-engine-car, because it can feed the engine any amount of power it needs... only problem is battery technology.

    Yes, it's good to go both ways... if you keep going at it both ways. Competition is good...

  • The trouble with using nanobot-type technology for reapiring the body isn't that - it's what else these nanobots could be used for.

    Here in the UK there was a recent case of a doctor who was killing his patients- Harold Shipman. How much easier does that necome with the use of nanotechnology? Just program the nanobots to modify the genes so the patient stops producing (say) insulin- you've now got someone who will depend on you for life, or worse. Autopsy reveals nothing wrong and so the doctor gerts away scot-free.

    Nanotechnology puts the doctor almost on a par with God. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but one that needs close examintaion and discussion.

  • Can you name one we WERE ready for? (Score:3)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @01:25PM (#1207751)
    Fire -- look at all the trouble that's caused.

    Wheels -- we are swamped by speeders and traffic cops.

    Levers -- Damned Greek wants to start moving the earth!

    Rocks -- people throw 'em at glass houses, for Pet's sake!

    Water -- Titanic runs into one version of it, sinks in another, people down in it.

    Oxygen -- contributes to all the problems with Fire, not to mention Water.

    --

  • Nanomedicine already exists (Score:3)

    by joshv ( 13017 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @01:10PM (#1207752)
    Why the attempts to fabricate from scratch little machines that can manipulate the material and biochemistry of our bodies?

    We have a ready made toolkit for doing just this. It is the finely tuned result of billions of years of evolution - the genes of the virus and bacterium.

    Biotech is the future of medicine - custom engineered viruses that attack cancer cells, or bacteria that eat arterial plaque. These things are designed to live in us already - a few tweaks can make them do some extremely useful things.

    -josh

  • TMTOWTDI -- competition is good (Score:4)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @01:21PM (#1207753)
    You should always have a backup plan, and a backup to the backup. The more backup plans, the better.

    Nothing wrong with going at something both ways.

    100 years ago, electric cars and steam cars were more promising than internal combustion. Good thing they didn't decide right off the bat which to pursue.

    --
  • I was a reviewer for Nanomedicine [nanomedicine.com] and I speak with Robert Freitas frequently. He is very serious about designing nanobot medical devices so they are non-replicating, have numerous failsafes, and do not create the possible problems most people envision. One reason writing all three volumes will take 6 years is the depth of analysis that has to be done to meet this standard. While it is doubtful that a single individual can think of everything, Nanomedicine [nanomedicine.com] clearly will lay the foundation for safe and very useful nanobots such as Respirocytes [foresight.org].

    The problems mentioned by Bill Joy in his interview [washingtonpost.com] point out how poorly informed he is. Anyone who has been in the computer industry as long as he has, should know enough to "read the manual(s)" before offering uninformed opinions. The problems regarding nanotechnology run amok have been discussed for many years in the sci.nanotech [deja.com] newsgroups as well as at conferences for the Foresight Institute's [foresight.org] Senior Associates [foresight.org]. The basic solutions involve making "safe" (e.g. reviewed, open source) designs available while at the same time developing defenses against nanotech run amok. The Extropy Institute's [extropy.org] Mailing List [extropy.org] Archives [lucifer.com], for example, contains recent discussions about encouraging the availability of "almost anything" manufacturing boxes (similar to Star Trek "replicators"), while discouraging the availability of "everything" boxes.

    Diamondoid or saphire based molecularly assembled nanobots used in medical applications will greatly exceed the capabilities in of "biobots" built on existing genetic machines (DNA, enzymes, bacteria, cells, etc.) because they are stronger, can pack the "code" more densely, and can have more complex programs than the rather "ad hoc" designs that nature has provided us with. Most of the first volume of Nanomedicine [nanomedicine.com] is devoted to determining exactly what the physical limits will be on power, communication, mobility, etc. Most of the applications will be discussed in Volumes II and III.

    Joy may be right that the technology poses a threat to the "human species", but that begs the question of "Why would you want to run on obsolete hardware?". Anyone who understands even a little astronomy knows that galactic hazards doom biological human forms to death at some point. Only those humans who choose to upload [unc.edu] have any hope of living the trillion or so years that seems quite feasible [aeiveos.com]. So while the hopes for biochemical humans are rather dismal even with Nanomedicine [nanomedicine.com], the long term prospects for humanity, based on what nanotechnology allows are quite good indeed.

    As far as nanotechnology background material goes, the best (nontechnical) source is Engines of Creation [foresight.org]. Other references can be found in Eric Drexler's CV [imm.org].

  • Ironic counterpart to Bill Joy article (Score:4)

    by marcsiry ( 38594 ) on Sunday March 12, 2000 @01:07PM (#1207755) Homepage
    The intense focus on the idea of introducting nanobots into the body for the purpose of medicine is the sort of thing Bill Joy warns about in an article [washingtonpost.com] reported on Slashdot earlier today.

    I paged through all ten chapters of the Nanomedicine article and I failed to find a single instance of the possible dangers of nanobots-run-amok, or the chance that a malevolent force could use them as a weapon. Without a consciousness that the technology could go wrong, or that it could be used for evil, Joy asserts that progress for the sake of progress could have dire consequences.

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