Nanorobots for Drug Delivery?

Roland Piquepaille writes "The idea of using nanorobots to deliver drugs and fight diseases such as cancers is not new. But there are still lots of issues to solve before nanorobots can diagnose our diseases and treat them. Now, an international team of researchers has designed a software and hardware platform of a nanorobot to be used in medical applications. The researchers think their nanorobots could become available around 2015. 'The proposed platform should enable patient pervasive monitoring, and details are given in prognosis with nanorobots application for intracranial treatments. This integrated system also points towards precise diagnosis and smart drug delivery for cancer therapy.'"

Terrorism

[Tablizer]

Imagine Al Quida putting a Beowulf Cluster of these in a politician or world leader, making them do strange and dangerous things.......wait a second!
     

Correct me if I'm wrong..

[Zombie Ryushu]

But isn't this how the Borg assimilate people? by injecting nano-robots into the jugular vein of your neck and then the machines attack your Renal glands, central nervous system and brain? How long before treating sickness becomes routine optimization? In general the machines believe they are doing the Humans they assimilate a favor by repairing damage and making enhancements to bodily organs.

Slow advances

[HandsOnFire]

Willian Illsey Atkinson wrote a book called nanocosm. I didn't find it that great a read, but he goes on to say that people have misconceptions of what nanobots would be like and how they would work, if we ever make them and get them to work. We have slow progress when it comes to making nanobots to cure illnesses mainly because we have many poeple touting the great potential, but we have very few people willing to learn quantum mechanics and biology. Instead, you have medical doctors who think you can build something equivalent to a car in the nanocosm, and nanotechnology researchers who might think that these robots would only have to perform a simple operation. (But they are limited too, since it is very hard to engineer and build anything at this scale)

Re:Yeah right

[Dachannien]

I can think of much cheaper ways to kill people. Practically any other way, in fact.

Dream much bigger about the potential here!

[gsgriffin]

Dude, if these buggers can be hacked and RF to communicate and upload code that can influence organs and glands in the body, I could envision a wireless device that would bring about the right response when you get to the bar and find that amazingly hot babe. Just imagine, the worst pickup line is only used to provide enough time to upload the code and release the chemicals in her body. You can continue this thought and potential...

Pervasive monitoring

[raddan]

I suspect that pervasive monitoring, not disease treatment, will end up being the big gain with nano-devices. The starting point for diagnosis at the moment is a patient's description of the symptoms. A person with bio-sensors "installed" will allow a doctor to examine a patient's vital signs directly-- I think this will help to greatly improve a doctor's initial diagnosis, because symptoms are often not a good indicator of what is happening. And the best thing about this kind of device is that it will allow testing to happen over a period of time. Were you to give these to healthy people, you could also establish a "baseline" to compare against when they are in ill health in the future.

There are some obvious privacy concerns here, but were bio-sensors to be inserted in a large number of people, this would greatly benefit epidemiology. That's an application of nano-technology that I would like to see happen, and I think it would revolutionize medical knowledge.