Brian Wang, a member of the CRN Task Force, brings these items to our attention:
1) Recent advances in nanotech devices point to new ways for developing inexpensive and effective cancer-screening devices.One of the most promising of these new detectors is being built by Charles Lieber, a chemist at Harvard University. In an article this month in Nature Biotechnology, he announced a highly-sensitive detector that can simultaneously find multiple cancer markers.
How soon a cancer-detecting nano-device will be available depends, to a large extent, on developing the technology for mass production, according to Lieber, rather than with overcoming basic science obstacles.
So, with molecular manufacturing, such tests definitely could be real time and for every person all the time, enabling constant and detailed health monitoring. A wealth of such information will help doctors determine the best and most effective treatments, tailored to individuals.
2) This AIDS detector on a chip, along with the previously mentioned cancer detector, shows that real time disease and pathogen detection will be an early capability that will be made cheaper, more capable, and ubiquitous by molecular manufacturing.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
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