Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Paging Doc Percy again
I'd been wondering when this would happen.
The patent application, which has the name "Nanoparticle Phoresis", describes a wearable device that "can automatically modify or destroy one or more targets in the blood that have an adverse health effect". These targets could include enzymes, hormones, proteins, cells or other molecules that, when present in the blood, may affect a medical condition or the health of the person wearing the device. The wearable device is able to modify or destroy the cells by transmitting energy into the blood vessels. The transmitted energy could be a radio frequency pulse, a time-varying magnetic field, an acoustic pulse, an infrared or visible light signal.Must be something else going on, something outside the list of could-bes. Each of the listed inputs is already available in medical devices, though not necessarily in wearables. Static and magnetic pulses are very old, used commonly by neurologists before 1900, disappearing through the Scientific Dark Age of the 20th century, and reappearing as TENS and TCDS techniques recently. Acoustic? Lithotripty. The destination of the particles must be the key, and the illustration showing the device on an arm is obviously a cover story. Given the infinitely evil nature of Google, I think we're seeing the instantiation of Walker Percy's nightmare lapsometer. The destination of the 'activated' particles is going to be in the brain. Most of Percy's 1971 dystopia Love in the Ruins has already been instantiated, right down to Barack and Michele Obama driving a Toyota Prius. Smartphones bear a loose resemblance to the Lapsometer as modified by Art Immelmann, but this device gets there exactly. ¶ 1:28 AM
