Monday, July 9, 2007

Filmy And Smelly Urine

Nanomedicine. 14/25. Disease and poverty in the Global South

"bag of tricks of nanotechnology, with inventing new molecules and manipulating existing course could marvel at its potential to improve health care ... nanotechnology may enable better early warning systems in the diagnosis of cancer and heart disease, cures for progressive diseases like cystic fibrosis, techniques for making implants like artificial hips more effective, even artificial kidneys. " "Barnaby J. Feder, "Doctors Use Nanotechnology to Improve Health Care", New York Times, November 1, 2004

Although nano-enabled medicine may provide benefits, it moves very fast in the absence of public debate to address economic and social impacts of long range.







Executive Summary This report examines the applications medical drugs, devices and nanotechnology-enabled diagnostic tools. What impact will the Nanomedicine in the pharmaceutical industry? Respond "nano-enabled medicine to the health needs of marginalized communities, especially in the global South? What role play? Medical applications of nano-scale technologies have the potential provide powerful new tools to detect, diagnose and treat disease at the molecular level. Nanotechnology enthusiasts argue that Nanomedicine will revolutionize health care.
developments include, for example:
• Nano-sensors that circulate within the body to monitor glucose levels, cholesterol or hormones. • Nano-gold shells are white in cancer cells, and that once identified the tumor cells can be destroyed with a laser is not invasive. • Nano-particles "smart" looking for a specific location within the human body and then accurately deliver a scheduled dose of medication.
• Luminescent Quantum dots that track a particular protein within a living cell.
• Nano-particles of silver to kill germs resistant to antibiotics. • Frames dimensional nano-structured to grow new tissue and organs.
Medical applications of nanotechnology may sound like science fiction, but they are a handful of drug-and nano-enabled devices are already here, and there are many more to come soon through technology of the minuscule. By mid 2006, 130 drugs and delivery systems, more than 125 devices or diagnostic tests, all based on nanotechnology have entered into a development phase preclinical, clinical or commercial.
The market for nano-enabled medicine (including supply of medicines, therapy and diagnostics) will jump from just over a billion dollars in 2005 to nearly ten billion dollars by 2010. Governments, not corporations, are those who take the lead in research and development in nanomedicine.
In the near future, the technologies that are intended to be used in the body-enabled by nanotechnology, erased any distinction between "therapy" and "improvement" and may alter, quite literally, the definition of what it means to be human. The industry and analysts predict that nanotechnology will increase profit margins, expand the range of intellectual property and discourage competition. New medical technologies are irrelevant to the poor if not made available or are unaffordable. Scientific innovation is useless if marginalized people lack access to technologies or existing treatment.
The researchers, funded by public funds and companies innovative nano-biotechnology, have become major players. Big Pharma remains on the margins, but the analysis predicts that will soon enter the game. Although nano-enabled medicine may provide benefits, it moves very fast in the absence of public debate to address economic and social impacts of long range. Some nanoscale products that you intend to use in the human body can be therapeutic, but there are still many unanswered questions regarding the impact of nanotechnology on health and the environment. Products incorporating nano-engineered materials could accidentally enter the body through the environment or food chain.


developments in nanomedicine could result in even healthy people when new nanoscale materials released into the environment can make people sick. No one is sure how to distinguish between benign nano and dangerous products and the emerging field of nanotoxicology is tinged with uncertainty.


technologies converging at the nanoscale (including biotechnology, neurotechnology and information technology) will reach far beyond the tiny devices to deliver drugs or diagnostic reagents at the cellular level, typical for sick people . The convergence technology make it possible, theoretically, alter the structure, function and capabilities of the
bodies and human brains. In the near future, the technologies that are intended to be used in the body-enabled by nanotechnology, erased any distinction between "therapy" and "improvement" and could alter the definition of what it means to be human.
Some argue that nanotechnology will help extend the range of human life far beyond a century ("eliminating premature death") and allow us to transfer information directly a nuestros cerebros. En última instancia, la amplia aceptación de las ecnologías de mejoramiento del desempeño humano —suponiendo que funcionen según su diseño— crearán una brecha basada en las “habilidades”, entre quienes pueden pagarlas y quienes no pueden (o aquéllos que decidan resistirse a ellas).
Se proclama que las tecnologías nanoescalares son las herramientas tecnológicas que nos ayudarán a lograr los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio: los objetivos de Naciones Unidas para promover el desarrollo humano e impulsar la sustentatibilidad social y económica en el Sur global.1 Sin embargo, las innovaciones de la medicina nanológica Northern emerge and are designed primarily for OECD markets.

New nanoscale technology interventions that we now offer our bodies
claim will be stronger, more skilled, more durable. The core interventions that lead to improvements in housing and health, access to clean water and education, for example, may ultimately lead to major improvements in human health-edge medical technologies. But it is not unique. Emphasize medical solutions diverts attention and resources were channeled to non-medical aspects such as health and welfare Community.
drugs and nanotechnology-enabled devices will play a role in ensuring and lavigencia extend monopoly patents covering medicinal compounds and older drugs are not as effective. The industry and analysts predict that nanotechnology will increase profit margins, expand the range of intellectual property and discourage competencia.2 is quite possible that the companies engaged in business "as usual" medical innovations of nanotechnology further concentrate the power of the pharmaceutical industry and are not relevant enough to meet the health needs and poverty of marginalized communities.

The development of nano-enabled medicine (and its potential to meet global health needs) should be considered in a political context and social context. The global health crisis arises not from the absence of a medical technology or a lack of innovation. Despite decades of stunning advances in the ability to save or extend lives through technology, a third of the world's population can not stably access to medicines esenciales.3 There are parts of Africa and Asia this figure rises to more half of the population. According to published reports in 1988 and 2004 by the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people without access to essential medicines remained fixed during the period of 16 years between the report and report. New medical technologies are irrelevant to the poor if not made available or are unaffordable. Scientific innovation is useless if marginalized people lack access to technologies or existing treatments.
In the current political and social context, a significant investment in research and development of Nanomedicine may not be the right prescription to address human health needs, especially in the global South. History shows that new technologies do not solve the complex problems rooted in social inequities and poverty. Since the beginning of the century, life expectancy fell in 38 countries around the world. Even in North America and Europe, where mortality rates decreased in a stable manner throughout the twentieth century, studies show that these declines were largely independent of medical interventions and should be attributed more correctly, to improve in nutrition and hygiene. The nano-enabled drugs and zeal in promoting the refinement of performance technologies threaten to remove the essential health needs of scarce research funds and development of medicine.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Side Dish To Go With Deer Meat

Nanomedicine. 15/25. Health needs and scientific innovation.



Defining health.
Is health synonymous with welfare? If they are not equivalent, how do they differ?
There are at least two approaches to health-related thought: this can be understood as the normative functioning of the whole body and, implicitly, the absence of any condition or illness that results in a performance sub-policy in reference to defined as "health care." Those who understand the health of this so do not reject the idea that the terms "social", such as employment subject stress or living in a war zone to take its toll, affecting the health, but the focus and point of intervention is always placed in the body (say, to address the hypertension caused by a high stress job or experienced clinical depression for the victims of the war.) According to the medical model, all sub-normative functioning belongs to a "patient" that is prescribed medical treatment to recover (or attempt to obtain) the regulatory function.
A second more comprehensive approach to understanding health can be described as a model "social", which recognizes that welfare is mental and social health are necessary for physical well-besides the absence of disease or physical. According to the social model is not required that a person is a patient with a sub-body functioning normally suffer from diminished health. A woman who is a victim of sexual discrimination at work can have a body free of physical illness, and yet not considered healthy according to the social model. Since early 1948, the World Health Organization considers the social and mental welfare is necessary components of the health.5
The implications of adopting a model over the other are enormous and are more obvious at points of intervention. For example, using the social model, the possible interventions to help a victim of social injustice (say sex discrimination) to achieve health may include civil litigation, protest, legislative reform, among many others-all action can bring about social and mental well-being if he can change, this would be the optimum, the social structures that led to injustice existed. Of course, from the medical model can cope with the absence of social welfare, "is treating the effects on the body (hypertension, depression and anxiety are among the possibilities) or trying to" cure " the patient's condition related to poor social health. In the medical model, one of the "cures" possible for a paraplegic who is a victim of discrimination and social injustice could be a medical intervention "bionic legs instead of buildings accessible, for example.
The nanoscale technologies we now offer interventions that aim that our bodies will be stronger, more skilled, more durable. Transhumanists, who profess the notion that even the healthiest body can be improved through technology, envision a new way of thinking about health. For them, the human body performs sub-policy-unless that body is "enhanced" with technological refinements. Social welfare may also be important for transhumanist, but performance is achieved by intervening in the body.

One of the obvious difficulties of transhumanist approach is that optimal health status change constantly depending on what the "refining industry" made available in the market. We know of the dizzying pace imposed by the refinements of the software of computers and cyberspace can be isolated if we do not buy the latest escalation. How many of us are ready for Homo sapiens 2.0?

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

I Want To Shave With Herpes

Nanomedicine. 16/25. Essential medicines.


What is Nanomedicine?
The European Science Foundation [European Science Foundation] defines nanomedicine as "the science and technology to diagnose, treat and prevent diseases and traumatic injuries to relieve pain and to preserve and improve human health using the tools molecular, molecular knowledge of the human body ".1
Broadly speaking, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research defines nanomedicine as the measurement or specialized biomedical intervention -A molecular-scale required to deal with the disease or restore
funciones.1

Introduction
The term nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, where size is measured in millionths of a millimeter. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. In the nanometer scale (one to one hundred nanometers [nm]), losmateriales may exhibit very different properties that the same materials of the same composition but of larger scale. Properties talescomo strength, conductivity, color and toxicity may change at the nanoscale, and properties may change within that scale well. By exploiting the nano-scale changes of these characteristics, researchers are trying to create novel materials that have greater functionality.

Nanotechnology is described by some as the "transformative technology of XXI century" .6 Experts predict that nanotechnology will revolutionize the manufacturing industry in all sectors of the industry and eventually "will impact the production of virtually all manufactured objects by humans' .7 The medicine is just one sector that will deeply influenced by materials and nanoscale devices. This report examines the medical applications of drugs, devices and nanotechnology-enabled diagnostic tools and evaluate the role that Nanomedicine will play in resolving or not health-related needs in underserved communities, especially in the global South.
who play the market and
Worldwide, nanotech research and development in all sectors in 2005 was 9 600 million aproximadamente.8 While companies, politicians and the media often cite as the most promising area of nanotechnology research, in fact Nanomedicine has received less funding than other sectors, such as nanoelectronics and nano-materials. According to Lux Research Inc., about 17 percent of all funding for nanotechnology in 2005 to about 1 600 billion, was devoted to "sector of life sciences." (Although "life sciences" is very broad, Lux Research reports that most of the investment in this category relates to nano-enabled medical applications.) 9
nanoscale therapeutics (such as nano-silver to cover wounds) accounted for 28 million dollars in 2005 and reach 310 million in 2010. The market for nanotechnology-enabled diagnostics will grow from 56 million in 2005 to more than one billion in 2010.
global nanotechnology funding by sector, 2005 = 9600 million dollars in total
Life sciences (including pharmaceutical nano) 1 $ 590 million (17%) Electronics 4 460 million (46% )
Materials 2 740 million (29%)
Other $ 780 million (8%)
Nanotechnology is an emerging industry, but the drugs and medical devices that enable nano-are already on the market, and more that comes through the pipes of the tiny technology : according NanoBiotech News, the path of nanomedicine and nanoscale devices suddenly grew 68% between 2005 and 2006. By mid 2006, 130 drugs and delivery systems, more than 125 devices or diagnostic tests, are in a state of clinical development, clinical or commercial, 75% of these products are developed in the United States.10 Among the leading field of nanomedicine are also Canada, Australia and Israel (see Table 1). Industry analysts believe that the approval of Abraxane (Nanomedicine a drug to treat breast cancer) by the U.S. FDA in January 2005, is a "watershed" in nanomedicine comercial.11
According to Lynn Yoffee of NanoBiotech News, "a third (30%) of all products developed as part of collaboration or license agreements with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies for promotions associated individuals, but companies in nano-biotechnology innovation and academic institutions remain the main promoters of the development of nanotechnology products ".12 It is governments, not corporations, who are leading the way in research and development of Nanomedicine. Of the 1 600 million dollars for research and development
nanotechnology related to health sciences in 2005, a paltry 8% came from the industria.13
Global Funding for Nanotechnology Region, 2005 = 9600 million dollars in total
Asia 3 370 million (35%)
North America 3 960 million (41%) Europe 2 060 million (22%)

Although most of the Fortune Five hundred companies cited for investing in research and development of nanotechnology in the field of life sciences major pharmaceutical companies have taken an attitude of watchful waiting, an approach that recalls the early days biotechnology. Large pharmaceutical companies are working with nano-biotechnology innovation, but dadoque nanotechnology is still an unproven technology and uncertain approval process by the FDA, major drug companies have not yet made large inversiones.14

A speculator capital Risk told NanoBiotech News, "One of the lessons learned from 2005 is that we must be cautious about appearing" nano "when dealing with the FDA. If you have a shell nano gold, it must behave as a colloid gold. If a lipid, must behave as an emulsion. From the regulatory perspective, one should propose a technology that refers to the known. If not, you will have to undertake many more additional evidence ".15 Perhaps with this strategy in mind, many companies have sought not seem prone to the" nano ": Nanopharma Corporation became Nanocure Mersana Therapeutics and changed its name to Avidimer Therapeutics.

Between 2002 and 2007, the U.S. government spent, in general terms, 773 million dollars in research and development of nanotechnology related salud.16 In late 2005, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, awarded $ 26.3 million in grants for the first year of operation in order to establish eight centers of excellence in cancer nanotechnology
(CCNE, for its acronym in English) as part of a draft 144.3 million dollars to five years (for the period 2004-2009), known as the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer.17 promoted by The Alliance NCI seeks to "harness the power of nanotechnology to radically change the way we diagnose, treat and prevent cancer" .18
Between 2003 and 2008, the sixth research framework program of EU (European Union's Sixth Research Framework Program) to EUR 233.5 million allocated to projects related to nanomedicina.19 The Canadian government invested about 32 billion Canadian dollars in nanomedicine between 2000 and 2006 by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR or, as they are known in English), which in 2003 launched an initiative in regenerative medicine and nanomedicine (Regenerative Medicine and Nanomedicine Initiative) .20 Between 2006 and 2007, CIHR expect to spend about 15 billion Canadian dollars in research and development of Nanomedicine.