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  • Nano-Technology Provides New Cancer Treatment Options

    Donation for Dana Farber Cancer Institute

    Within the last decade, nanotechnology has impacted the health care system greatly. This interest has provided an emergence of studies and experiments in the biotechnology and medical field and has provided us with new visions toward the future of medicine. Eric Drexler, author of the bible of nanotechnology, “Engines of Creation” proposed the idea that this new technology “is truly something wonderful that will change the world forever”.

    With this type of technology, new treatment of cancers and disease can occur by redesigning the molecular chains. Redesigning molecular chains is done by zeroing down into the atomic structure and manipulating the molecules to get new organisms, structures, forms, and materials.

    Nanomachines are one of the biggest nanotechnology successes being researched today. These semi-organic engines can be programmed to enter your bloodstream and target and destroy any invading cells such as, cancer cells or fat cells without harming any other healthy cells. They are only a few billionth of a meter long and contain hundreds of atoms. They do this by inserting carbon nano tubules into the cancer cells. These tubules then heat up the cancer cells and destroy them.

    Even though this new technique is taking off, it still is at the beginning stage. There are a lot of unanswered questions and it only exists in a laboratory setting or cancer treatment center. Further research must be done in order for this new technology to become public. However, with big corporations investing into the idea, nanotechnology is becoming a promising application.

    Researchers are still closely observing this new technology and have begun to force the idea to start applying it to practical experiments. But is the new technology safe? People are starting to wonder whether or not the new devices would be safe to put in our bodies. After all they are tiny computer programmed robots.

    These scientists believe that technology can be the cure to everything and is the next step to a new future. But the idea of engines in our body is a scare to some people and they believe that it is changing with humanity and the natural cycle of life. Jerry Mander, author of “In the “Absence of Sacred” believes that “technology has gotten out of control” and “If the world continues this way it could be swept away by the tide of cultural change, usurped by its own artificial progeny.”

    He states that: “Such machines could carry on our cultural evolution, including their own construction and increasingly rapid self-improvement, without us, and without genes that built us. When that happens, our DNA will find itself out of a job, having lost the evolutionary race to a new kind of competition…The new genetic takeover will be complete. Our culture will then be able to evolve independently of human biology and its limitations, passing instead directly from generation to generation of ever more capable intelligent machinery.”