Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Biotech

Nano Body Building 272

Posted by michael from the kidneys-on-tap dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article from Backbone Magazine, Douglas Mulhall, author of 'Our Molecular Future' tells us about the future of nanomedicine. He thinks that medical diagnosis will be the first successful steps, involving nanorobots which will raise alerts when they detect pre-cancerous cells. And twenty years from now, researchers envision that nanomedicine will be a trillion dollar industry. Around 2025, you'll pay $1,000 a year for a nanopill that will extend your life by suppressing heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases. Other scientists say that nanotechnology will be used to build synthetic bone and tissue, an opinion shared by Scientific American, which warns that growing replacement organs is still at least another 10 to 20 years in front of us. More details and references are available in this overview focused on how nanomedicine is going to totally take over healthcare in the 21st century. [Additional note: Slashdot described Mulhall's Law of Disassembly last February.]"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Nano Body Building More

Nano Body Building

Comments Filter:

  • yes but will it... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:07PM (#9168318)
    .. enlarge my penis?

  • Wow! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bishop, Martin ( 695163 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:07PM (#9168321)
    Around 2025, you'll pay $1,000 a year for a nanopill that will extend your life by suppressing heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases.

    And then they can mix it with viagra and make a pill that increases your life, AND your penis! Twice the spam too!

  • Gotta love the 21th Century (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Graftweed ( 742763 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:07PM (#9168322)
    Great, another thing to make us even more lazy and careless.

    Exercise and good diets? Nah mate, just pop in one of those new pills and you're sorted.
    • Actually, there's no formal proof that watching what you eat will *extend* your life span. Not paying any attention to it MAY shorten it however. Same goes for exercise. No, this pill or whatever form it takes is definitely the way to go. What I do foresee, however, is Westerners becoming some kind of Struldbrug club (see Larry Niven for what the hell that is) with worn out peripheral nervous systems. And your central nervous system, with its pattern of connections being your personality, will not be that easy to maintain. You could end up more demented than Ronald Reagan but still looking like J Lo (or whatever you prefer).
      • There is no reason that the same bots that are searching out and destroying harmful cells cannot also be repairing failing cells that you want to maintain. Your nervous system can be kept fully functioning, skin can look great, no mobility issues, etc. I just wonder what happens when the memory gets full.
      • Kim Robinson deals with issue in his "Mars" trilogy. The solution he envisages is sort of like a mental housecleaning, and the description of it working sounds like a psychedlic drug episode.

        I'm more than willing to risk the eventual craziness to live longer.
      • There's certainly plenty of evidence that diet and exercise, when chosen poorly, can contribute to shortening your life though. Curious that you see an imaginary pill as the way to go when a good diet and exercise is so clearly beneficial (and is here now).
      • And your central nervous system, with its pattern of connections being your personality, will not be that easy to maintain. You could end up more demented than Ronald Reagan but still looking like J Lo

        Imagine that, a scenario where people are physically healthy and youthful well into their late one-hundred-eighties. Who can say what psychological state such people would be in? If that state isn't a good one, what would we do with such people? Allow them to continue on indefinitely, youth and health fro

    • "21th"...maybe we should improve our schools before we improve everything else. What good will it do us to live hundreds of years if we still have children who think "21th" is a word? Perhaps nanotechnology can improve education as well. (No, I don't mean reusable paper, better databases, or e-learning, as suggested by Mulhall...I mean a real improvements in the learning process.) I do, however, recommend Our Molecular Future, the book mentioned in the article. While it is a bit presumptuous, it's a ra

    • Re:Gotta love the 21th Century (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:28PM (#9168443) Journal
      Exercise and good diets? Nah mate, just pop in one of those new pills and you're sorted.

      Yes, but who cares? The reason we have to exercise and diet is that we are adapted for non-civilized times. On the evolutionary scale civilization is young, young, young.

      Maintaining our current adaptations, and using technology to correctly and dynamically adjust our bodies to our current situations sounds optimal to me. (We want to maintain our current adaptations as a "just in case" mechanism; we probably shouldn't evolve our "natural" bodies to excessively depend on civilization.)

      There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a lower or higher activity level, any more then it's intrinsically wrong that you can't run 60 mph for an hour. If the health effects of inactivity are erased, that's just fine.

      Don't confuse effect with cause. Exercise is necessary for specific reasons. If the reasons are removed, then exercise is no longer necessary.

      Of course, this ignore something else: If you could give me a pill and give me a toned body right now, the odds are much greater that I'd engage in much more exercise then I do now, even if it weren't strictly necessary. The hump is what stops me; I've tried several times to start an exercise program, but I've got so far to go before it's really fun and not boring that I never make it over that hump. I mean, I feel all bad about it and stuff, but that doesn't help much.

      (Suggestions on how to make it fun aren't necessary, although perhaps they'll help others; I've thought of several but they all involve not living in an apartment.)

      Also, fundamentally, adequate diets will always be necessary; you will always have certain requirements and it'll be a long time before we have elemental transmutation built into our bodies ;-) But if I could stick a more efficient processing plant in you that ran off of sugar and a few trace elements, recycling everything else, would you still be bitching about how bad my diet of pure sugar is? Diet is relative, and if we adjust our bodies to match our diet, so much the better for us!

      You have been brainwashed into assuming that exercise and diet are some sort of Universal Constant, but they aren't. Study animal nutrition for real-life examples that exist today. You want to kill your cat? Try feeding it Vegan-style. I've talked to a vet who has seen this; it's quite sad.
      • You underestimate the other biological and psychological effects of doing sports - like better metabolism, which I don't think a nanopill can improve systematicly, and just the good feeling of doing sports, which in turn have biochemical reasons. You want to feel better without the sports? Well I guess you'll find a pill for this too...

        • Re:Gotta love the 21th Century (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Jerf ( 17166 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @03:20PM (#9168690) Journal
          You miss the point completely. The point is that if a pill could indeed do those things, then who cares? Arguing "well what if the pill can't do those things?", while a potentially interesting and fruitful discussion on its own, does nothing to answer my post, which assumes that a pill can do those things from the get-go.

          When a post has the form "If A, then B", it accomplishes nothing to argue "What if not A?"; this is why a logical implication is considered true automatically if the antecedent is false. If not A, then logically, my post is sound anyhow!
      • Of course, this ignore something else: If you could give me a pill and give me a toned body right now, the odds are much greater that I'd engage in much more exercise then I do now, even if it weren't strictly necessary. The hump is what stops me; I've tried several times to start an exercise program, but I've got so far to go before it's really fun and not boring that I never make it over that hump. I mean, I feel all bad about it and stuff, but that doesn't help much.

        I doubt you would really feel any di
        • It does not get any easier no matter what shape you are in.

          As someone who's be slowly getting in better shape over the last few years, I have to disagree with you. Certain activities that used to be a chore for me became a lot more fun. Now I do many activites (biking for example) for the sake of the activity instead of just to get in shape. Now it might be a change of attitute that did it, or I might revert in a few years...but for now, I think all it took was a few months of concentrated effort to ge

      • Re:Gotta love the 21th Century (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Afty0r ( 263037 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @05:17PM (#9169303) Homepage
        If you could give me a pill and give me a toned body right now, the odds are much greater that I'd engage in much more exercise then I do now, even if it weren't strictly necessary. The hump is what stops me; I've tried several times to start an exercise program, but I've got so far to go before it's really fun and not boring that I never make it over that hump.

        I'm six foot four (just under 2 metres tall), almost perfect body mass ratio, I have had at least semi regular exercise all my life, a reasonable diet and I have to tell you that there are very few forms of exercise that are "really fun and not boring" - and those that are, you need at least ONE other person to engage in :)

        I hope you don't read this post as condescending as what I'm about to say may sound blunt - but there is NO SUCH THING as a hump - exercise is HARD WORK, and if it doesn't feel like hard work then you're not exercising well.

        Go out, start again - this time when you think you're hitting the hump, remember that it's just the same as it has been for the past few days/weeks/months and you've just got to work through it mentally. DO NOT tell yourself "it gets better on the other side" or some such crap - it's always hard work - the exercise is not the reward, the increased confidence, fitness and feeling of self-worth is the reward, and you will ONLY get that if it FEELS like hard work.

        Get out there are do it - you're capable of it, and it's up to you to prove it.
    • At first, I wondered what it would do with the gene pool if it allowed people with poorer and poorer gene structures to stay alive longer and reproduce more.

      As it is, it isn't about survival of the genetically fittest anymore.

      But then, if we find damaged gene lines, I suppose that they could be fixed with some forms of gene replacement therapy, replaced with known good genes. That's still scary though if stuff like this runs amok.
    • I predict that any nano techniques will work better on people who are in better shape to begin with.

  • Social Problems? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:08PM (#9168325)
    Aren't people forgetting the social problems? Its like what the mathmatician said in Jurrasic Park: "They were so busy trying to see if they could, they didn't stop and think if they should" (or something to that effect). So if we have a generation (or two) of people living longer, what happens to Social Security? Or housing? Or land prices? Or the environment? Or heck lots and lots of other very limited resources! Would I take one of these pills if it was offered to me for $1k? Damn straight I would, but there are so many issues that I shudder at the effects this will have ~100 years down the road.

    • Re:Social Problems? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TykeClone ( 668449 ) <TykeClone@gmail.com> on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:15PM (#9168375) Homepage Journal
      You didn't actually think that you'd get to retire by 70, now did you?

    • Re:Social Problems? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pyromage ( 19360 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:16PM (#9168379) Homepage

      What effect? None. All of that's already going hell for just that reason. This magic would just be the nail on the coffin. Hell, it'd probably be better to finish it off anyway so we can start fixing it.

      And then the ethical problems. If you save lives (and don't tell me that curing heart attacks, diabetes, and cancer won't save lives), is it ethical to not do so? Is it better to watch them die, knowing that you could have helped, but didn't just so that you could get your social security check?

      To quote someone much smarter than I: If science is the source of problems, ignorance is not the solution.

    • Re:Social Problems? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MoogMan ( 442253 )
      Indeed. Put simply, it'll screw up natural selection... Sure nano technology is good in the short term, but we must ask ourselves if it is beneficial for us in the region of 1000+ years away.

      • Re:Social Problems? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by augmenter ( 681324 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:21PM (#9168405)
        When will you people learn? Natural selection doesn't have a goal, there is no road it follows. So, you just can't screw it up or change its direction: it doesn't have one.

        • Re:Social Problems? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Dimensio ( 311070 )
          Moreover, natural selection is simply the process of life forms being less able to survive to reproduce in a given environment. You're not even stopping natural selection, you're just changing the environmental pressures and thus changing the probabilities that certain individuals will be selected out of it. Natural selection still happens, and it's no better or worse for it.

          Such lack of understanding of what natural selection is leads creationist morons to think that evolution theory is "directly respon
      • Nonsense. The ability to use and afford nanotechnology will be just as much a part of natural selection as the ability to use and afford a bow-and-arrow or a plow.

        Nanotech replacing hearts, lungs, and alzheimer's infected brains will be no different than larger-than-nanotech replacing teeth with knives to cut food. Eventually, natural selection will favor those who don't even bother keeping the protein-based parts of the body in favor of the nano-engineered components. This will be a monumental step fo

      • Re:Social Problems? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hunterx11 ( 778171 )
        We already screw up natural selection with things like education and clothing and toothbrushes and wheelchairs. That is, most of the time our chances of reproducing are not really dependent on our genes. (On a side note, the funny thing about Social Darwinism is that even if Darwinism could be applied to society, the poor would be the most fit since in general there in an inverse relation between a person's wealth and the amount of offspring they produce.)

        This is not to say that natural selection does not

    • The older the people, the more conservative they become.

      Reminds me of Asimov's writings, where the first wave of space colonization eventually fails (among other reasons) because people live hundreds of years.

    • This technology doesn't affect (directly) how many kids you have, and has only a small effect on your chances of dying before having all the kids that you are going to have.

      So it won't have much effect on population. There will be a one-time bump as the lifespan increase from, say, 70 to 100, but it's not like the 75-year-olds are having more kids.

      Tell me, what do you think of immunizing children against common contagious diseases such as diptheria? Are you shuddering at the effects of that?

      (And on the

  • anatomynauts... (Score:5, Funny)

    by beeplet ( 735701 ) <beeplet@gmail.com> on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:08PM (#9168326) Journal
    I tried to read it, but never got past the word "anatomynaughts" in the second paragraph. Are those like a cross between astronauts, anatomy, and... nothing?

    Seriously, if you're going to make up words, at least spell them correctly. :P

  • Is the magic pill available in a bundle with (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Pyromage ( 19360 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:09PM (#9168336) Homepage
    my flying car? Can I get a discount if I get them both together? I'll pay another $500 if you throw in some cold-fusion!

    Wake me when they can demo the stuff.

    • The year 2025 returned your call, it left a message:

      "Sure, as long as you don't need it bundled with Duke Nukem Forever. I'm afraid that still hasn't hit the shelves yet."
    • But you can build a flying car (good luck getting a license to fly it anywhere useful). Buy one of those 1-man helicopter kits for $30k and toss an electic motor on the wheels for forward motion.

      Most people cannot drive without crashing a few times in their life. Putting those people into the air wouldn't help.

      Cold fusion works fine but you cannot get surplus energy out of it, so that'll be a little more than $500.

  • it's coming (Score:5, Funny)

    by axonal ( 732578 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:09PM (#9168340)
    Borg Technology
    Coming to a stardeck near you.
  • Right now I am eating pizza. I don't exercise enough and I am too fat, and at this rate I will die of heart disease by about age 38. I'm also drinking coke.

    So if in the future I could eat anything I wanted, never exercise, and still have perfect nutrition and physique... what will become of the world?

    A bunch of really hot, lazy, horny, well fed people having a good time? Sounds like heaven...
    • Hell, it'll probably just average out ;) By living unhealthily and taking magic pills, I can probably just manage a normal lifespan 8-}

    • Re:life in the future (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tiro ( 19535 )
      If you look at the future of the world-economy, it doesn't look quite so bright as that. Given limited natural resources, another 50-75 years of growth at current rates is unsustainable. The trade deficits in the U.S. can only be sustained for so long before the dollar crashes, and that will happen when the day comes that the U.S. is no longer seen as the safest bet for capital investment. It happened to Amsterdam, it happened to the City of London and it will happen on Wall Street.

      Also consider the meltin

      • Man, smell the coffee, it's a great day outside!

        You are far, far too gloomy. Amsterdam and London still exist (with plenty of big money action too). I think we'll probably pull through.

        Occurs to me that there was even less wealth hundreds of years ago... we always seem to pull through.

      • However now I believe that my generation could be one of the last to enjoy the good life on Earth.. at least until some of these problems get resolved, if they can be.

        I wouldn't worry. Over the course of history there were plenty of empires that rised up and fell into ruins. There was always a new empire to replace it, usualy seperated by a few centuries of babarism. Perhaps in a few decades/centuries it's our turn to vanish. I suggest we start building the Foundation and prepare for the coming of the bar

      • Re:life in the future (Score:2, Insightful)

        by edheler ( 715806 )

        You have an awfully depressing view of the future.

        Quite possibly the best thing which could happen to humanity would be for someone to invent a device/drug/whatever which would allow every human to live as an in-shape twenty-something until an accident killed them. If that were to happen we would have many incentives to actually fix a large number of our problems. Everyone having a long, healthy life would not allow the luxury of passing the buck to the next generation to solve the problems of our making

        • Good point... but can you teach an old human new tricks? How long will it take before they realize they will have to live in the world they create? Will it cause major wars as countries "plan" ahead by hoarding resources?

    • Re:life in the future (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @04:05PM (#9168917)
      A bunch of really hot, lazy, horny, well fed people having a good time? Sounds like heaven...

      Really? That doesn't sound to me to be much closer to heaven than we are right now. Read Flow [amazon.com] by Csikszentmihalyi, or, if you don't feel like spending money on books or going down to the library, perhaps you might consider the gigantic mountain of evidence you see everywhere around you on a daily basis that tells you that the Good Life has within epsilon of nothing to do with Fine Wine, Money, and Orgasms. Or to put it another way: imagine someone in 1800 saying how wonderful it would be when the time comes around when people don't have to farm their own food, don't have to work 12-14 hour days, and are totally free to realize their own potential. In a society that great and advanced, happiness would be the law of the land and nobody would ever be depressed, right?

    • The future is now! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mec ( 14700 ) <mec@shout.net> on Sunday May 16, 2004 @04:31PM (#9169022) Journal
      A bunch of really hot, lazy, horny, well fed people have a good time? Sounds like heaven...

      Compared to the mass of people in, say, the 17th century, we already are all of those things!

      Hot: regular bathing and clean clothes every day
      Lazy: I don't have to work 12 hours a day 6.5 days a week just wresting my food from the earth
      Horny: Not sure about that compared to 300 years ago, but it seems like people have a lot more resources for sex now that their food, clothing, and shelter are much easier to provide
      Well Fed: Pretty obvious
      Having a good time: This is more subtle, I'd say most people in developed countries have lots more opportunity to pursue a good time; whether they actually succeed or not is up to them

    • No, it's more likely to be a bunch of really hot, lazy, horny, well fed people making war on each other because they are pumped up on hormones and have nothing better to do (all the good jobs already having been taken) and because there are entirely too many of them elbow to elbow.

      Oh, and they'd be making lots more kids. Who would grow up the same way (and have even less education/learning/wisdom than the previous generation, because what's the point of *working* for something if you can get most or al

  • Go all the way (Score:2, Informative)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 )
    As long as you're going to have little nano robots carry out your body's natural functions, why not go all the way, i.e. brain in a vat?

  • you love the guessing game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sjwaste ( 780063 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:11PM (#9168354)
    Don't we all? When a technology barely gets underway, everyone pours out their guesses as to how far it will be in 20 years. Remember Conan doing those "in the year 2000" sketches? I swear back in the 50's people thought we'd have flying cars by now!

    Like any technology, the research dollars will probably go towards those projects with the highest expected returns. I might be a cynic, but rather than curing a disease, I'll bet we'll find a new flood of cosmetic upgrades.
    • I swear back in the 50's people thought we'd have flying cars by now!

      Well, I guess they were right [slashdot.org]. . .

    • I might be a cynic, but rather than curing a disease, I'll bet we'll find a new flood of cosmetic upgrades.

      From a biological standpoint, health and beauty are very closely related. In fact, you might say the best way to make someone beautiful is to make them healthy first. That's not be how we do things now, but it will be the best way once we have the technology.

      • Yeah, and then watch them run off and get hepatitis
      • Sorry, but that's crap. Beauty is a totally subjective standard, but health isn't.

        I know this really ugly former Marine sergeant who runs 10 miles a day. He's ten years older than me (in his 50s) but he could outrun, outlast, outfight, and outdrink 99.9% of anyone, not to mention people who are "beautiful" - and then get up the next day and do it all over. If there's anyone I've ever known likely to live to be a hundred years old, it's him.

        His only lament is that he's so damned ugly (he is, even spea
    • back in the 50's people thought we'd have flying cars by now!

      That sure does come up a lot. The fact is there is one. It's pointed out here all the time, that Moller skycar. The barrier for everyone having a flying car is not the technology, it's the practicality. Air traffic control is already a difficult thing to keep in check. That's with proffesional pilots and proffesional upkeep on the vehicles. The public just isn't clamouring for flying cars. Medicine is a whole other animal. People are dying to

  • Double entendres and all that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:13PM (#9168369) Homepage
    "Skin is being sprayed by ink jet printers onto surfaces. Then it grows."

    My inkjet printer already does that.

    Then "it" certainly does grow.

  • nanoo nanoo (Score:3, Insightful)

    by maxbang ( 598632 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:14PM (#9168370) Journal

    Ah, jeez. We just had a post regarding buzzwords and their annyonace/dangers. Here we go again with a round of theorizing based on the latest tech craze to hit the mass media. I can't wait for this to develop into the umpteenth bad science Hollywood blockbuster. I can see the pitch now: "And there's this ship that's made out of nano-titties, and it's the only way to make it into the Earth's core or else the climate will shift from nano-blizzards from nano-stars and cause a nano-age of nano-ice. Now gimme my 100 mill or I'll nano-size your penis."

  • I hear a lot of predictions about what nanotechnology might be able to do in 10-20 years. Can someone point me to some articles showing what researchers have been able to do with nanotechnology today?
  • "(Because of nanomedicine) death will be caused almost exclusively by accidents, wars, homicides and suicides. There will be no medically caused causes of death like heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases."

    You'll be a 200-year-old, withered, repulsive, barely-coherent husk of a human being... but dammit, you'll be healthy!
    • Well no, because if nanomedicine can do this much for real problems, imagine what it'll do for plastic surgery. Artificial skin isn't even that difficult to grow compared to bona fide organs. People will look pretty much whatever age they want to be.
    • Actually if the nanobots are set to work producing healthy cells and are replaced annually.

      Unlike the regular cells in the human body which age, the nanocell producers will be replaced fresh... no sagging, no wrinkles, no problems.

      Heart gets too old? no problem, we just grow a new one using your own DNA, and then use nanobots to replace the scar tissue with healthy tissue after the transplant.

      If all goes well, eventually the entire human body will be repairable/replaceable/modular. Rather than Death, yo

      • Improving the genetic pool of the human species through genocide is frowned upon. But what about improving it via granting virtual immortality to those who have traits we want to encourage. Giving them the opportunity to have offspring, after offspring after offspring.

        Would that be a brave new world to live in? I wouldn't mind seeing people maintaining the genepool, but I sure hope we first make corruption a capital crime. Else the future will be full with countless copies of Bush Jr and simular.
        And for

        • Well the obvious solution is to grant me immortality first. And then leave me to give the final approval as to who else can be granted immortality.

          Let's see, do I approve of me, yes. There see, process works great! ;)

  • Proprietary Nano? (Score:4, Funny)

    by JRSiebz ( 691639 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:18PM (#9168395)
    Let's start a petition now for the software in the 'nano-bots' be open source. I don't need all of the security and stability flaws of M$ with the coding genius of Diebold operating running around in my bloodstream.

    And they'll never catch on at all unless they're low carb :-P haha

  • Toxitity issue (Score:5, Informative)

    by UrgleHoth ( 50415 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:19PM (#9168397) Homepage
    One issue I've not read in the articles posted here is the one concerning the toxicity [sfsu.edu] of nano materials, such as buckyballs.

    Also, right now on wbur [wbur.org] is a BBC documentary on nanotech.
    • http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/2 9/0328251&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=191

      You obviously weren't paying attention. There's a nice little search box at the bottom of the page (you turn it into a real link, I'm lazy).
    • One thing about nanotech that people need to understand: all it is is precision chemistry. The stuff that the press hypes as "nanomaterials" are just molecules produced using nanotech. But there's nothing that makes nanotech inherently more dangerous than "old school" chemistry. Some of the chemicals that are produced are dangerous. Some are not. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be careful about what we develop using nanotech, but rather that it doesn't pose any fundamentally new dangers.

      Buckballs may

  • Scary. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Exiler ( 589908 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:20PM (#9168404)
    How long till we have Johnny Mnemonic-esque super corporations playing profits and dividends with life and death? Not that the current ones are much better, but if they could have control over your 'medicine' after you ate it, imagine the extortion possibilities. Get ready to bend over and take the corporate suppository.

  • Future spam (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Black Art ( 3335 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:29PM (#9168446)
    I am expecting the flood of spam for "Natural Nano Bodybuilding Pills".

    Who would have thought that our junkmail filters will need to be programmed to filter out "nano nano".

  • $1,000 a year? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rolux ( 99682 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:32PM (#9168463) Homepage
    Around 2025, you'll pay $1,000 a year for a nanopill that will extend your life by suppressing heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases.

    What percentage of the world population will earn $1,000 a year by 2025? (And if that percentage turns out to be surprisingly high because so many of those who don't make $1,000 have died from AIDS by 2025 -- would that weaken or strenghten the argument?) Heart attacks and diabetes seem to be pretty rampant in the North and West, but globally, when you think the "future of medicine", you'd rather think AIDS, and think $1 a month. Call it Nanoprice -- if there has to be something nano to it...

  • And what about athletics? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ezraekman ( 650090 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:35PM (#9168476) Homepage
    Around 2025, you'll pay $1,000 a year for a nanopill that will extend your life by suppressing heart attacks, diabetes and other diseases. Other scientists say that nanotechnology will be used to build synthetic bone and tissue...

    In other news, a similar pill allowing for massive increases in strength and muscle mass via constant electric stimulation was banned for use in most public sporting events, though several athletes have been caught in a massive sting operation. However, due to newly-released self-destructive nanobots contained in the pill, it has become very difficult to track the use of such mechanisms.

    Seriously, while the potential benefits from such technology will, in my opinion, greatly outweigh the dangers... I can see the potential for some pretty heavy "fairness" implications coming up. We'll see...

  • Great, like traffic isn't bad enough as it is... (Score:4, Informative)

    by HockeyPuck ( 141947 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:36PM (#9168481)
    According to Robert Malthus... His hypothesised that (unchecked) population growth always exceeds the growth of means of subsistence. Actual (checked) population growth is kept in line with food supply growth by "positive checks" (starvation, disease and the like, elevating the death rate) and "preventive checks" (i.e. postponement of marriage, etc. that keep down the birthrate), both of which are characterized by "misery and vice". Malthus's hypothesis implied that actual population always has a tendency to push above the food supply. Because of this tendency, any attempt to ameliorate the condition of the lower classes by increasing their incomes or improving agricultural productivity would be fruitless, as the extra means of subsistence would be completely absorbed by an induced boost in population. As long as this tendency remains, Malthus argued, the "perfectibility" of society will always be out of reach. Can we really deal with a population that lives to be 150? 200? If the earth's populatoin is just over 6Billion... would we sustain a population of 7-8 Billion? I live in the sanjose area and they are buildings/houses on every hill in the area, of which 5 years ago the hills were still covered in grass. And the higher the population, the quicker we consume resources...
    • Do you have an economics degree? Malthus was shown to be wrong about his conjecture that population would be limited by available land mass...accoring to him we shouldn't even have been able to make it to 1 billion...
      • No i don't have a degree, but people now are living into their 80-90s yet social security still kicks in at 65.

        What would happen if the avg person lived to 100-110 yet social security still kicked in at 65? You work for 45 yrs (assuming you start at 20), and then get 35yrs of social security?

        Plus the more people the higher the demand for resources (food, gas, land/housing). Plus people tend to want to live on the fringe of society (suburbs..) rather than in cities so population density within the cities
        • OTOH, we've managed to get along pretty well when life expectancy went up by a huge factor during the 20th century.

          Why? Because productivity's increased. That's how we were able to get social security in the first place, really. And we have a whole new set of technologies set to come out during the 21st century that will further improve production: biotech, nanotech, robotics...we might also finally get a moon colony or something.

          Also, industrialized societies have generally tended to move below the level
    • Fsck that, people will get bored long before they live that long, and suicide rates will skyrocket. Or people will just stop ordering the pill when they are done with life. Seriously.

      Also, theres a good chance that people will wait a lot longer to have kids if they live to be 200. And, if advances can grow replacement organs and the like, why can't they grow more food to feed the masses? Perhaps nanobots could turn people into plants, so you just soak up some rays and, BAM! There's your meal!

      Ok, so t

    • Well guess what, Malthus was wrong. Real life examples show that in the absense of some kind of social motivating force, when people become prosperous they stop having as many kids. This is where the stereotype of the farm family with a dozen kids vs. the suburban "nuclear family" of two parents and two kids comes from.

      When underdeveloped nations first become prosperous there's a generation or two of lag before the birth rate drops, but currently many industrial nations are actually experiencing negative

  • Hairloss (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:44PM (#9168519) Homepage
    As I'm sure many others of you with male pattern baldness are wondering, WHEN THE HELL WILL NANOTECH CURE HAIRLOSS?!?!?!

    Seriously, with all of todays modern medicine, the best we can come up with is Minoxidil which speeds regrowth and Propecia which inhibits DHT. And you need to keep paying for these or your hair goes bye bye, not to mention if its Minox dependant, you lose all the hair you regrew with the Minox when you stop.

    I can't wait till serious science deals away with these monthy costs and gives me a one time cure for hairloss. I don't care if it is a couple thousand dollars, because in the long run, that is worth not having to apply topicals/take pills and constantly worry whether or not they're working.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Americans and their obsession with hair. If you're going bald, shave off what's left, get a nice even finish. I've never met anybody male or female who cares if others are bald, and I've got a few mates who went cue-ball at 18, and it's never bothered them. I've even got a couple of mates who find bald women sexy! Personally, I've got the ability to grow a nice head of hair, but it's been getting a regular #2 recently, and I've spend a fair amount of time in the past with it as bald as I can get it with a r

  • Are we ready for Immortality? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moosifer ( 168884 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:46PM (#9168530)
    All this no disease and living forever stuff is wonderful. Until you start thinking about other issues like the psychological implications of "immortiality" or more importantly, the practical issues of over-population. Maybe it will be metered, being available only to the rich. Or will lobbyists, civil liberties groups and insurance companies make it available to the masses? No amount of water conservation will enable us to sustain global populations of 20 billion people. But even if we figure out how to synthesize resources (shouldn't this come before the immortality quest?) what about space? As it is, I can't afford to buy a house in the Bay Area - what happens when the poplation quadrples because no one gets sick or dies, and the tech-elite remain vibrant and economically viable until they're 150 or older? This really is all great stuff, but we're not prepared for a total end to our current survival principles. We don't seem to be introducing these advancements in a reasonable order.

    • Re:Are we ready for Immortality? (Score:4, Funny)

      by strook ( 634807 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @03:08PM (#9168623)
      No amount of water conservation will enable us to sustain global populations of 20 billion people.

      Yeah, and 640k should be enough for anybody....

    • You're right, we should just keep letting people die from disease that we /could/ cure, just because of some potential problems.

      Shit man, you think if we can figure out how to biologically live forever that we won't be able to figure out how to do so politically, geographically, and so on?

      What makes you think that we won't be able to set up efficient solar-powered desalination plants, or create who the hell knows what else given our new 120+ year working careers.

      LOL Imagine: 93 Years J2EE Experience. D
    • "No amount of water conservation will enable us to sustain global populations of 20 billion people."

      If you're immortal, taking the slow boat to Alpha Centauri doesn't sound all that bad any more.

  • Waiting... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Merovign ( 557032 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:47PM (#9168536)
    Half-life 2 is delayed, Doom 3 is delayed, the new Skyline GT-R is put off 2 years, and now I have to wait 20 years for this cool pill?

    I guess they're all trying to teach us delayed gratification.

    And it will probably cost $1000 is 2004 dollars, or $12342 2025 dollars. Though the first public doses will probably be available only through a Pepsi sweepstakes.

    • Re:Waiting... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Quattro Vezina ( 714892 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @03:03PM (#9168607) Journal
      Half-life 2 is delayed, Doom 3 is delayed, the new Skyline GT-R is put off 2 years, and now I have to wait 20 years for this cool pill?

      Hey, the pill will still be out before Duke Nukem Forever is. As an added bonus, it'll help you live longer, so you may very well be alive when DNF is released thanks to this pill.

  • Just need to last til 2025 (Score:3, Funny)

    by doormat ( 63648 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @02:51PM (#9168551) Homepage Journal
    And by then $1000 will be a pittance!
  • I forget the names of the groups I used to read back in the day (back when tin [tin.org] was a hot new project), but I do recall the very lively life-extension threads (and other such wonderous topics as "What would we do as a society of immortals?"). A common prediction went like this:
    If you can live until 2020, you will be able to live until 2040. And if you can live until 2040, you will be able to live forever.

  • THIS IS BAD! (Score:4, Funny)

    by drayzel ( 626716 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @03:11PM (#9168636)
    I am an expert on nanotechnology because I read Micheal Chrichtons book 'Prey'. They will swarm and then set us up the bomb!

    Thanks to M.C. I am also an expert on genticaly recreated Disosaurs (Raptors are bad), Time Travel (Old things are bad), Alien Intelignce (Spherical things in the ocean are bad), Japanese business practices (Horny S&M loving Japanese guys are bad), and countless other cutting edge issues... all of which are BAD.

    ~Z

    -LAUGH-
  • In case anyone is interested, the article does not discuss bodybuilding [exrx.net].

  • I'm skeptical of the predicted dates... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Eric Smith ( 4379 ) * on Sunday May 16, 2004 @03:37PM (#9168781) Homepage Journal
    I'm skeptical of the predicted dates because technological advances are usually either much later than predicted, or else show up completely unexpected. And since nanotech medical is expected...

    Still, I hope they're right. I'm 40 now, and if I start taking better care of myself, I might actually make it to 2025.

    My biggest health problem has been obesity, and I've managed to lose about 65 pounds since September 2003 on a low-carb diet. I've still got at least 50 lbs. to go, or 85 lbs. according to my doctor. He says for my height (6'0") I should weigh 185, but I weighed more than that when I was in high school and was in good condition.

    Anyhow, if I can get down to a reasonable weight, and keep the pounds off, I think I'll have a much better chance of living long enough to take advantage of these nanotech advances.

  • " Around 2025, you'll pay $1,000 a year for a nanopill that will extend your life"

    By then I'll be dead.. And the year after I die they will announce that they have unlocked the secret to immortality...

    Son of a bitch...........

  • The Big Problem. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MadMacSkillz ( 648319 ) on Sunday May 16, 2004 @05:06PM (#9169242) Homepage
    The big problem with anything in the future that makes us twice as smart, fast, strong, good looking, whatever, is that rich people will be able to afford it and poor people won't. If we're not careful, 100 years from now we'll be divided into a society of super humans and, well, the rest of us grunts, who will be delegated to God knows what unsavory tasks. I think our only hope would be... gulp... capitalism. Some bright business suit types saying, "Hey, if we could mass manufacture this cheaply, we could sell it to EVERYONE!" Of course, that still wouldn't solve the problem for extremely poor nations. Will THEY end up being the grunts doing the manual labor for piss poor wages? Oh... that's right... they already are doing that, making us sneakers and whatnot. I'm not crazy about where this is all headed. Sadly, nobody asked me...
  • Will all of these nano-pills be open source? :P
  • I agree that it is very important to work on creating artificial organs, but wouldn't it make more sense to start with blood? We seem to have a constant shortage of blood, and very few people donate on a regular basis.

    I am O- and give blood components every two weeks, knowing full well that if I should ever have a need for blood there is a good chance that none will be available for me.

    We spend a lot of time and money collecting blood, and I think that an artificial source would end up being cheaper
  • Try grape seed extrat. It contains a lipase inhibitor which prevents your body from digesting all the fat you eat. Caloric restriction, coupled with proper nutrition, is the one proven way to extend lifespan and prevent aging in almost all creatures, including people.
  • Have any of these scientest stopped to think of the impact this kind of technology would have on society and the world on whole? If everyone lived to be 100 just imagine the consequences!! Increased pollution, social security _would_ go bankrupt, unemployment could go up (since peopel would retire later), etc. I think this line of sciene is highly unethical and could have diare consequences for everyone. What do you think?

  • Outer Limits (Score:3, Funny)

    by mgcsinc ( 681597 ) on Monday May 17, 2004 @03:47AM (#9171536)
    There's an episode of the Outer Limits where they try something similar to this, and the guy ends up growing gills and eyes on the back of his head as a result of the robots trying to make him better.

Slashdot Top Deals

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. -- Albert Einstein

Close