If cancer was a person, we’d be first in line to kick them right in the crotch.
Thankfully though, massive tech companies are stepping in to potentially reduce the death toll from this nasty affliction, companies like Google, and their mad science department known as Google X.
Google X are known for sending balloons filled with internet around the world, their glucose detecting contact lenses for diabetics and of course their self driving cars, as well as a myriad of projects which fall just shy of world domination. The labs are now focusing their attentions on the problem of disease, both of the heart and the cells.
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A new pill, which is filled with patented Google X nanotechnology, hopes to pinpoint cancer cells and other disease particle as they enter the bloodstream, and then show up whether there’s a problem on a wristband which concentrates the particles and asks them what’s wrong.
Yes, I did just say nanotechnology. Whilst 90’s science fiction, Star Trek and Metal Gear Solid to name a few, have always portrayed nanotechnology as an insidious method of social control or tampering with the human body, Google X’s ideas seem much more down to earth.
Instead of transforming the patient into a soulless cyborg or controlling their bodies through manipulation of internal organs, Google’s new pill simply releases a cloud of nanoparticles into the bloodstream which attach themselves to cancer cells and the like with antibodies.
Its hugely complicated, but in layman’s terms the particles stick onto the bad cells and then can be used to detect them by measuring how many are in the area, using magnets in the wristband.
Google’s idea is to change the way we treat diseases simply by allowing us to take a pill and look at the readout on a wristband. If the tech becomes affordable enough, potentially a weekly ingestion of nanoparticles and a quick check of the wrist could mean that cancer could be detected as soon as it appears in force within the human body.
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In countries like the UK, where healthcare is thankfully free and supported by the taxpayer, a red light on Google X’s wristband could result in a quick Doctor’s appointment, tests and confirmation of the presence of the disease as early as possible, even resulting in the quick treatment and full recovery of a patient who would otherwise have sadly passed away.
“What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive and transactional to proactive and preventative”
– Andrew Conrad, Head of Google X Life Sciences
Although it’s of little help to those who have already lost a loved one to cancer (this writer included), it’s comforting to think that Google X are doing their part, and maybe even one day might save our own lives thanks to quick detection and early treatment.
Thanks Google. Please let it work.
Source: Techcrunch
Via: Techspot