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Debugging the body

My wife (who works here) said something today which was really cool. We were talking about early cancer diagnosis, and she remarked that she wished that we could debug the body, it would be wonderful if we could add breakpoints to various points in the body and run a debugging program to find potential problems. While this might seem a little far-fetched, it should be one of the goals of the biomedical community, and an area where nanotechnology is likely to play a huge role. If we could get in vivo diagnostic devices into the body and a way to analyze their readouts, that is essentially what we would be doing. Of course, we have a long way to go before we can even come close to getting there.

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  • Actually that's a great title for the discussion we were having. To put things in context, one of my aunts just passed away from liver cancer. From diagnosis to the end was a period of about six months.

    Another book to read on this subject, from a more futuristic angle is The End of Medicine
  • You might be interested in this book:
    http://www.shelfari.com/books/881510/Should-I-B...

    Attempting to debug the body with current technology can actually cause more harm than good.
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