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> Even the smartest, most generalizable ideas right now, like cancer vaccines, depend on your immune system to make the final push, and the immune system is jus

by kijin 12y ago

> Even the smartest, most generalizable ideas right now, like cancer vaccines, depend on your immune system to make the final push, and the immune system is just as fallible as any other organ system. I'm still waiting for the nanobots that we were promised two decades ago. Imagine a billion nanobots swarming inside your body, networked [1] and analyzing every cell they come across. Over time, they build a gigantic database of your cells. Then they'll be able to use some heuristics to determine whether any given cell is a menace to your health. If it is, they either tag it for apoptosis or terminate it with a micro laser, depending on how reliable they think each method would be. Movie material today, reality tomorrow. When this happens, I'll finally welcome the combination of "cure" and "cancer" in the same sentence. [1] https://xkcd.com/865/ https://xkcd.com/865/

pak 12y ago
> Imagine a billion nanobots swarming inside your body, networked [1] and analyzing every cell they come across. Over time, they build a gigantic database of your cells. Then they'll be able to use some heuristics to determine whether any given cell is a menace to your health. You've basically described the immune system! The immune system is imperfect, but it's a lot more complicated than any man-made system so far. Trillions of cells, thousands of genes controlling each one, hypermutations creating billions of different antibodies, slipping into and out of each corner of the body. Basically, organized chaos; by some measures, more complicated than the brain. I would welcome potential designs for an auxiliary system, but what we have already is hard to understand, much less supplant. Certainly the concept of retraining the immune system is appealing, and looking beyond the OP's microbead/reinfusion rigamarole, we've already been doing that for decades via vaccines.

by kijin 12y ago

pak 12y ago

> Imagine a billion nanobots swarming inside your body, networked [1] and analyzing every cell they come across. Over time, they build a gigantic database of your cells. Then they'll be able to use some heuristics to determine whether any given cell is a menace to your health. You've basically described the immune system! The immune system is imperfect, but it's a lot more complicated than any man-made system so far. Trillions of cells, thousands of genes controlling each one, hypermutations creating billions of different antibodies, slipping into and out of each corner of the body. Basically, organized chaos; by some measures, more complicated than the brain. I would welcome potential designs for an auxiliary system, but what we have already is hard to understand, much less supplant. Certainly the concept of retraining the immune system is appealing, and looking beyond the OP's microbead/reinfusion rigamarole, we've already been doing that for decades via vaccines.