Popping Off the Pills
December 10, 2009
Are computers the way to go?
One look into the medicine cabinet of an average American can reveal an arsenal of orange tinted vials filled with meds to curb an onslaught of ailments — headaches, bacterial infections, sore muscles, depression, sexual performance, arthritis, high blood pressure, gout, you name it.
The number of pills spread out at the
dinner table can be daunting. And once old age hits, keeping track of all those little nodes requires a fully functioning mind, on or off pills.
One look into the medicine cabinet of an average American can reveal an arsenal of orange tinted vials filled with meds to curb an onslaught of ailments — headaches, bacterial infections, sore muscles, depression, sexual performance, arthritis, high blood pressure, gout, you name it.
The number of pills spread out at the
dinner table can be daunting. And once old age hits, keeping track of all those little nodes requires a fully functioning mind, on or off pills.
If the National Health Institute is spending its resources wisely, a team of grant recipients and developers will make pills a thing of the past while making tiny electronic devices that dispense liquid medicine the wave of the future. Theoretically the long list of rapidly spoken side effects that tail ends prescription drug commercials, which makes so many of them sound like a form of poison, will cease. Patients can be rigged up and "activated" for meds.
The new delivery method would utilize flexible polymers implanted in the body. Unlike other rigid devices, such as pacemakers, these new micro machines could rubberband their way into extremely specific areas, streaming drugs directly to the afflicted organ or system.
By narrowing the target, the hope is that modern medicine can go where it's intended to go and cure what it's designed to heal. Instead of treating your liver by risking your heart in the process, a polymer MEMS (microelectromechanical system) would stay on track. Ideally it would be the equivalent of a SWAT-trained sharpshooter in contrast to the drunk neighbor shooting off a BB gun in his backyard. Instead of meandering off into your blood stream, attacking the wrong organs and compromising some other functionality, the medicine would reach its mark without collateral damage.
MEMS developers at The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass. and the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston are on track to unveil a UFO-shaped device by 2014. The implant is designed to fit snugly at the base of the ear and can be used to treat a common form of hearing loss. The administered fluid, they claim, can regrow sensory cells, restoring a patient's lost hearing. Because the micro device is programmable, small enough to tuck inside the body, flexible enough to be unobtrusive, yet large enough to hold a year's supply of medication, the stress of counting pills and remembering swallowings would be null. All in all the device's volume would be roughly equivalent to one AA battery.
Long-term applications for MEMS technology go far beyond hearing. If successful it can be used to regenerate a range of cells, ultimately stopping — you guessed it — the aging process.
But what about the body's love of foreign objects? Imagine being implanted with several micro machines, each spewing meds. When California hospitals revealed that computer-operated MRI machines were erroneously administering X-ray dosages in dangerously high quantities, that was another signal that reliance on computers as a way to perfect health is a dubious venture. As for foreign objects, plenty of silicon breast implants have gotten rejected over the years. Soon we'll be coughing up batteries, computer chips, plastics, fibers and tubes. Or, with the help of commerce, we'll be able to go to a drug dispensary, log in to an iTunes for pharma drugs and download the days concoctions
Our exposure to machinery should be less and not more. But that all depends on natural health and our ability to improve it, maintain it and allow access to it through diet, environment and lifestyle. Whether it's CO2 emissions from cars, refried oils from McDonald's or smoke from cigarettes, the clear goal is to neutralize the stressors before we turn ourselves into portable IV drips. NewsSip
