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Biotech and the Unintended Consequences of Moore’s Law


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Fighting the “Stupid Virus” Pandemic

The chasm between the actual state of the science and the public's perception of science puts more than money at risk. Lives are endangered by the inability of public institutions to deal with the new pace of scientific progress.

A prime example can be found in the anti-virus arena. We know another influenza pandemic will emerge in the next few years. Massive resources are therefore being spent to prepare for this inevitability. Scientists are trying now to predict which flu strains are likely to hit. Companies are preparing to manufacture enormous quantities of vaccines as quickly as possible.

Vaccinating for rapidly mutating viruses is, however, a fundamentally irrelevant technology. Unfortunately, few seem to know that there is a far cheaper and more effective solution to influenza.

This technology has come out of advances in nanotechnology and has been enabled by supercomputers. I'm not speaking theoretically, by the way. The solution for rapidly mutating viruses exists now. The company that developed it, however, has garnered only a fraction of the attention it deserves.

NanoViricides Inc. creates nanotech constructs made of submicroscopic polymers and biological ligands. They are called, not coincidentally, nanoviricides. The polymer portion of these constructs are approximately spherical virus traps. If you can think of a virus as a key that cracks the cellular safe, imagine ligands as the locks. A biologist would probably prefer “biological signaling molecules.”

Regardless, ligands that match specific virus families are identified using supercomputer simulations. When attached to the polymers and introduced into the blood stream, these nanoviricides are more attractive to viruses than actual cells. Viruses enter into the nanoviricides and are dismantled harmlessly.

If this technology sounds to you like something out of Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage, you're not alone. When I first began writing about NanoViricides, the top Google search results were organized attacks on the company. A cottage industry existed that sold so-called reports that offered “the truth” about the company. Often, I was personally accused by those attacking NanoViricides of helping perpetrate a scam.

Fortunately, recent collaborations with world-renowned virus researchers has largely ended such attacks. Already, the company has demonstrated nanoviricides that lure and kill herpes, dengue and influenza viruses. In the last weeks, animal tests proved an effectiveness at killing influenza viruses that is orders of magnitude greater than Tamiflu.

All of the most infamous and scary strains of influenza were destroyed by NanoViricides' FluCide. Any future mutation of these viruses will also be destroyed. This technology, if it were approved and distributed widely, would allow us to stop worrying about influenza. At the first indication of the flu, a nanoviricide injection, skin patch or nasal spray would end flu symptoms within a few hours, no matter how lethal the virus is in nature.

Because nanoviricides operate in a biological/mechanical fashion, we don't need to worry that they will not work in humans. They work anywhere they are encountered by their target viruses. They have virtually no toxicity. They are cheap and have enormously long shelf lives. I would not hesitate to accept an injection right now. When the next pandemic inevitably arrives, I hope to do just that.

Nevertheless, I often read articles in the popular press about some new discovery that “will one day make nanotech medicine a reality.” On the contrary. It is a reality now, though we have not yet as a society understood and implemented this nanotechnology.

This is the unintended consequence of Moore's law. Science is advancing so fast that hundreds of thousands will probably die unnecessarily before we make the transition from influenza vaccines to nanoviricides. There is a very real war being fought right now between ignorance and science. Science will win but it would be nice if it won sooner than later.
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http://www.investorsinsight.com/blogs/john_mauldins_outside_the_box/archive/2011/06/13/biotech-and-the-unintended-consequences-of-moore-s-law.aspx