This weeks topic of nanotechnology got my mind running a mile a minute, I didn't know what to focus on. There has been no shortage of movies about nanotechnology, from little robots that can kill you to the opposite, robots that can go into your body to save your life. When it really came down to it I was most curious about nanotechnology and its application with medicine. When I searched for nanotechnology and medicine I was surprised to find out that it is a young but rather large field, it is called Nano-medicine which means "the medical application of nanotechnology" (1).
The first way nono-medicine could prove helpful to the medical world is through chemotherapy. What could potentially happen is you could put nanotechnology into the chemotherapy that would allow it to attack specific areas of the cancer thus making it a more successful treatment (2). If this became possible the world would become a very different place. If we could direct the chemotherapy to attack certain cells and guarantee that the cancer would be taken of it would become a very popular form of treatment. Approximately 39% of men and women will get cancer in their lifetime (3) while we can't make those numbers diminish greatly we can reduce the number of people who die from cancer.
I became extremely interested when I found out that they are trying to put robots into people. It reminded me of a movie I saw when I was younger, the name escapes me right now but it was about a guy who gets shrunk down and goes inside a body and ends up saving the person. I never thought this could be true until I read about doctors and scientist actually trying to develop such robots. Scientist said that this could be possible within the next 5 to 10 years (4). I'll believe it when I see it, I'm not sure if it is going to happen within the next 10 years but I can definitely see it happening. I am happy that I had the opportunity to research this topic because it made me more aware of what is going on in the world. It is amazing that all of this is going on and not a lot of people know about. I hope that this blog also allows people to look at resources and make others more aware of what is going on. We need to get the word out about how helpful this technology could be to the world's overall health.
Bibliography
1.)"NanomedicineBookSite." NanomedicineBookSite. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.
2.) N.p., n.d. Web.
3.) "Cancer Statistics." National Cancer Institute.
4.) "KurzweilAI | Accelerating Intelligence." KurzweilAI Robots in the Bloodstream the Promise of Nanomedicine Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.
Pictures
Figure One:N.p., n.d. Web.
Figure Two:"NanomedicineBookSite." NanomedicineBookSite. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.
Figure Three:"What Is Nanotechnology | Introduction to Nanotechnology | Nanotechnology Documentary." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 24 May 2015.
Hello Blake, your post really opens my eyes, and I really enjoy reading your post. I know that people can benefit from nanotechnology, and I heard about using nanotechnology in the medical area before. However, I didn't really know how it works. After reading your post, I did research by myself. Even though scientist said it could happen with 5 to 10 years, it is still in the early stage, I am totally agree with your point, and I believe it will happen in the future which can save a lot of people's lives.
ReplyDeleteI liked your post this week. I also talked about chemotherapy but did not include a section on robots. I did not know scientists are developing roots to put inside humans. This is very interesting and frightening at the same time. It could be a huge violation of human privacy. I also doubt that 5-10 years is a reasonable time for this to occur.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your opinion that the field of nanotechnology in medicine is so fascinating and important, specifically in cancer therapies. The success rate of cancer therapies can increase significantly if nanotechnology guaranteed that only cancer cells are targeted on a cellular level, with no casualties of healthy cells. I mentioned in my blog that there are certain nanotechnology that can be employed for cancer treatment, but that there’s still a long ways to go. There’s much potential in this field and I am very excited to watch this field develop in the future.
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