A World Changer On the Chopping Block

Designed for “biological teleportation,” 3-D DNA printers would let us download our meds - bypass the need for shipping dangerous biological materials, neutralize pandemic threats, render the drug manufacturing and distribution industries redundant, alter our entire economic system - and change the world. Also called "digital biological converters," 3-D DNA printers are already being tested by J. Craig Venter and his team.

Speaking at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York City this week (October 16), Venter said that his team of scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, are already testing a version of his digital biological converter—designed for what Venter calls “biological teleportation”—according to a report in Wired Science.

“Imagine being able to download a vaccine or your medicine on your computer at home,” Venter said a week earlier (October 8) at The Atlantic Meets the Pacific forum in La Jolla, California, as reported in The Atlantic. "That's the not-to-distant future, and it wipes out the possibility of an epidemic."

Venter has a proven track record - he won awards for cracking the human genetic code back in 2000, then he and colleagues created the first self-replicating cell with a synthetic genome in 2010 - and Big Pharma is already sweating. Glaxo­SmithKline just promised to share long-sought, raw trial data. Actually, the promise looks empty - more like a delaying tactic. The way things currently work, our tax dollars and donations fund research, but the research is privately owned and used for private profit. Big Pharma and Big Business hold the rights and they like things just the way they are.

We're looking at a major revision of our economic system: a few years ago, the drug industry passed the oil industry as the world's largest industry. Venter's technology would destroy the pharmaceutical industry and thus, roughly 50% of the planet's current economic system. ...NOBODY lets changes like that "just happen" - certainly not the world's largest most politically and economically powerful industry.

So...

Will 3-D DNA Printers Change the World?

or

Disappear Like Other Great Inventions?

Ask yourself:

- What happens to Big Pharma and the pharmaceutical industry if individuals or their doctors can just "print out" the required meds?

- What happens to the people and money tied up in drug manufacturing and distributing?

- What happens to the industry staff? The technicians, packers, sorters, warehouse workers and all the rest?

- What happens to the mining industry that supplies raw resources?

This is HUGE in every way. But mainstream media coverage is focusing on the potential glitches even though the same problems plague Big Pharma and the bio-tech industries:

...regulators would likely be reluctant to give the green light to DNA printers. The ability the download and print genetic material, such as vaccines, could easily be abused, leading to the creation of dangerous bioweapons, such as retroviruses. Regulators will also have to make sure that the printing is extremely accurate, because any small changes could lead to proteins working in unforeseen, potentially dangerous, ways.

Seems to me the risks here are about the same as now-common GE, GM and nano-tech stuff, but the benefits might be more empowering to individuals. Still, what if a Big Pharma player hacked a competitor's code and sent out a killer virus instead of a vaccine? ...Oh yeah, they already did that.

The Luddite in me is wrestling with my change-the-world-now tendencies. What do you think?

Reply to post by soficrow

Very interesting, definitely will be researching this one.

What are the bets these people have an "accident" though? Can't be doing something that rules out big Pharmaceutical companies :down:


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

reply to post by soficrow


Great topic. I have a few thoughts....

Normal 3-D printers use polymer reels (plastic) to print with, and will become common place very soon, if not already. There's a mod here that already has one. What is the source material for a 3-D DNA printer? I'm having a hard time getting my head around that. It would seem that applications would not only include "printing" meds, but the ability to "print" anything biological. To me, it would appear closer to a Star Trek style "Replicator", than a simple medicine dispenser. The ability to "print" food, any meal you wanted, just by downloading the "pattern", and initiating the printer. Steak for dinner tonight? Sure, just wait a 1/2 hour while it's "created" by the machine.

Of course big pharm will try to block such an innovation, but the innovation itself is substantial enough to meld into all aspects of our society.

Any suitable finite system can theoretically be modeled, and in doing so, digitized and available for download.

Is this the direction we should take? Being dependent on a machine, and a huge network of them? What if the power goes out, and we have long since abandoned the old ways? The philosophical musings are as important as the technology itself.

Sounds good.

Do you think one day they will be able to print people with these printers?

Originally posted by ThePeopleParty
Sounds good.

Do you think one day they will be able to print people with these printers?

Read somewhere they have already printed a human heart with one of these. Do not know if it was actually functional or not but it is only a matter of time IMO.

reply to post by domasio

What are the bets these people have an "accident" though? Can't be doing something that rules out big Pharmaceutical companies

I suspect Venter knows how to protect himself and he has the cash to pull it off. Big Pharma is trying to kill it politically (grounds: dangerous, helps terrorists). Meanwhile, they're negotiating market share and trying to buy in. Be interesting to see how the dust settles.

reply to post by Druid42

Normal 3-D printers use polymer reels (plastic) to print with, and will become common place very soon, if not already. There's a mod here that already has one.

Thanks Druid42. [btw - What mod has a 3-D printer?]

What is the source material for a 3-D DNA printer? I'm having a hard time getting my head around that.

Don't know but suspect carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and a pinch of phosphorous should do the trick.

It would seem that applications would not only include "printing" meds, but the ability to "print" anything biological. To me, it would appear closer to a Star Trek style "Replicator", than a simple medicine dispenser.

Yes. As I recall, others have been working on replicating organs for a while - maybe Venter focused on something more readily achievable? But agree - that's where all this is going, plus bio-teleportation and moving people (or their dopplegangers). ...

Is this the direction we should take? Being dependent on a machine, and a huge network of them? What if the power goes out, and we have long since abandoned the old ways? The philosophical musings are as important as the technology itself.

Good questions. ...Maybe every printer should include code for an infinite power source.

It's going to happen.

Technology is leading the way to a new world order.

I envision a future in which centralization is at a global level of governance, yet lean and highly efficient. It covers the basics: transportation, trade, communication....

Then you have a million or so micro-communities that each have their own flavor of laws which the community agrees to. Don't like them, leave!

Globalization as we know it must break down, and it will, soon.

Hopefully we will be wise enough to download awesome blueprints from the internet, and literally print out whatever we need to build our own communities..

reply to post by moniesisfun


Interesting vision.

Hope you're right.

Willl only beneficial biologicals be replicated?

reply to post by charles1952

Willl only beneficial biologicals be replicated?

Seriously… With this technology, as with every other one, we should worry more about the accidental dangerous creations than the purposeful acts of destruction. Fact is, our technologies and industries already create life-threatening particles and molecules, disperse them throughout the world - and already have irreversibly altered the biological foundations of life on this planet. Accidentally. These changes already are killing people (not just animals), and forcing us to adapt and evolve. The effects are accelerating. Venter's 3-D DNA printer may be the best chance we have to stay ahead of the game long enough to give our species a chance at survival.

Problem is, it really doesn't take much to create or change the building blocks of life: amino acids, DNA, proteins. …Just take a bit of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and maybe a pinch of phosphorous - add some heat, pressure, radiation, electricity, magnetism or spin - and PRESTO! You've got the four amino acids that make up DNA [adenine (A), cytosine ( C), guanine (G) and thymine (T)]. (Okay, not quite "presto" but really uncomfortably close.) The following article and video from NASA explains the process as it occurs in space.

NASA Researchers: DNA Building Blocks Can Be Made in Space. VIDEO and text.

…"For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space." Callahan is lead author of a paper on the discovery appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Unfortunately, changing existent DNA, proteins and other molecules is far less complicated than creating the amino acids needed to build them. In fact, common industrial processes - even those used in drug manufacturing - replicate conditions referred to in NASA's description, routinely change DNA and molecular structures, and sometimes create infectious disease-causing molecules like prion proteins, for example. The chronic disease pandemic aka early-onset age-related disease pandemic aka NCD Pandemic is just one consequence.

Venter's 3-D DNA printer simply harnesses the processes that occur naturally in space and "unnaturally" in industrial operations. Like genetic engineering, genetic modifications and nanotechnology, his invention probably results from reverse engineering natural and 'accidental' processes.

To answer your question, yes, this "tool" can be used for good or evil like any other; the potential for abuse does exist. However, with or without Venter's 3-D DNA printer, the same processes will continue to occur: naturally, albeit more slowly, in space and other extreme environments; and at an accelerated pace in unnatural laboratory and industrial settings.

The only way to prevent man-made biologicals from continuing to contaminate our planet is to stop everything we call civilized progress: drug manufacturing, food processing, genetic engineering, genetic modification, nanotechnology, mining, smelting, industrial agriculture… Then, we would have to clean up the mess we already made - not just the pollution we can see with the naked eye, but the molecular contaminations too. Frankly, I don't think it's possible any more - the changes are too basic, too deep, too broad, too global, too fundamental. We really cannot survive in this new world we made. So alternatively, we can move forward in the direction we're already going - and hope Venter's little invention can keep us alive long enough to adapt, give us the time we need to evolve and so, ensure our survival as a species.


Respectfully, sofi

reply to post by soficrow


yay!!! more prions, virii, etc. as a result of faulty printers!!!
or the faulty brains of those misusing the 3d-printers.

and soon to be repressed: get your 3d printers and know-how NOW!!
before they are banned, or "hamstrung" so you cant print anything you want
like say...

recreational "stuff"

the luddites will be out in force trying to get this banned/restricted based on media-sensationalized cases of abuse
like the recent printed gun case which petered out recently
[printers had their rented printer taken back by the renter because "they didn't approve of its use in that fashion"

some stuff on how biologicals can be printed:

Using laser beam to 3D print biological tissue on a micrometer scale

Aug.28, 2012

Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology have developed a new method to grow biological tissue or to create micro sensors by using a laser beam.

Researchers have had a breakthrough before: to print 3D objects with incredibly fine details using "two-photon lithography", such as a racing car with about 285 micrometers length.

With laser beams, molecules can be fixed at exactly the right position in a three dimensional material. When biological tissue is grown, this method can allow the positioning of chemical signals, telling living cells where to attach. The new technique also holds promise for sensor technology: A tiny three dimensional "lab on a chip" could be created, in which accurately positioned molecules react with substances from the environment.

This new technique is called "3D-photografting". It works like regular 3D printing only on a much smaller scale. The scientists start with a so-called hydrogel – a material made of macromolecules, arranged in a loose meshwork. Between those molecules there are large pores so that other molecules or even cells can migrate.

Using a beam of laser light, scientists are able to introduce selected molecules into the hydrogel meshwork. At the positions where the focused laser beam is most intense, a photochemically labile bond is broken. That way, highly reactive intermediates are created which locally attach to the hydrogel very quickly. The precision depends on the laser's lens system, at the Vienna University of Technology a resolution of 4 µm could be obtained.

www.3ders.org...


hmmm, reminded me of this

BM scientists discovered how to move and position individual atoms on a metal surface using a scanning tunneling microscope. The technique was demonstrated in April 1990 at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., where scientists created the world's first structure: the letters "I-B-M" -- assembled one atom at a time. (VV1003)

www-03.ibm.com...

PDF: Organ printing: computer-aided jet-based 3D tissue engineering
organprint.missouri.edu...

Tissue engineering technology promises to solve the organ transplantation crisis. However, assembly of vascularized 3D soft organs remains a big challenge. Organ printing, which we define as computer-aided, jet-based 3D tissue-engineering of living human organs, offers a possible solution. Organ printing involves three sequential steps: pre-processing or development of ‘blueprints’ for organs; processing or actual organ printing; and postprocessing or organ conditioning and accelerated organ maturation. A cell printer that can print gels, single cells and cell aggregates has been developed. Layer-by-layer sequentially placed and solidified thin layers of a thermo-reversible gel could serve as ‘printing paper’. Combination of an engineering approach with the developmental biology concept of embryonic tissue fluidity enables the creation of a new rapid prototyping 3D organ printing technology, which will dramatically accelerate and optimize tissue and organ assembly.
***
Organ printing, or computer-aided layer-by-layer assembly of biological tissues and organs, is currently feasible, fast-evolving and predicted to be a major technology in tissue engineering. Organ printing uses the principle of cellular self-assembly into tissues [30] similar to the way embryonic-like tissues sort and fuse into functional forms dictated by the rules laid out in developmental biology. Besides their obvious application for organ transplantation, 3D perfused, vascularized, printed human tissues (or structural-functional units of human organs) could become popular screening assays for drug discovery and testing and further biomedical research. It is safe to predict that in the 21st century, cell and organ printers will be as broadly used as biomedical research tools as was the electron microscope in the 20th century.

and who says 2012 isn't bringing changes?

oh well, yet another genie out of the bottle i'll need to tame

reply to post by soficrow

pretty much all the necessary tech is here already
now all that's missing is anti-gravity and ZPE
and individuals will finally be super-empowered to the point of making The State obsolete.

Can me skeptical but I do not think they have sufficiently killed off enough people yet to make something like this a go. HUmans are only as strong as their weakest link and our links are many and extremely fragile.

Interesting, but I would not trust it, like you said they have made mistakes with an outdated system which should have never happened.

On the positive side I see this as an advancement in teleportation (period). Today a vaccine tomorrow a monkey...

reply to post by antar


We're still a decade or so off before the full capabilities of this tech comes to fruition and the publics ability to purchase.

The continued state of collapse will kill off more weak, in the process.

I would hope that the technology doesn't just fall off the map like all the other important inventions. It is getting ridiculous, that all the futuristic inventions that are patented, are kept from helping the world. Someone obviously has very sinister reasons, not just for this, but for everything that could drastically change our world and society for the better.

reply to post by Timmerman421


Not possible. The advancements with 3d printing are going viral. Too much interest and support from the public.

reply to post by moniesisfun

We're still a decade or so off before the full capabilities of this tech comes to fruition and the publics ability to purchase.

Full capabilities aside, Venter said down-loading medications at home was in the "not-so-distant" future. ...I'm thinking drugstores and doctors' offices might get online much earlier. Which would bring us back to the "not-so-distant" past:

Meningitis outbreak reminds us to be careful about medicines, food we consume

I'm old enough to remember watching the pharmacist at my grandfather's medical clinic mashing pills with a mortar and pestle.

After he ground up the solid medication into a fine powder, he added a liquid solution and poured it into a glass bottle, then turned to his electric typewriter to type the label for the glass bottle. That was in the 1950s, and the pharmacist was compounding the medication, making it specifically for one patient in the needed form and dosage.

If doctors and pharmacies can "print" medications on demand, drugs will not be mass manufactured, stored, shipped, warehoused and shipped again - all events that greatly increase the danger of molecular misfolding, at least. Medications that are tailored and created for the individual will be safer, for what they are.

However, as DerepentLEstranger pointed out, printed medications would lack Mana/Prana - like all synthetic compounds, including the meds we currently get.

The same deficiency -and disconnect- applies to the foods we eat and, highlights how mass poisonings and infections happen - like the recent fungus-contaminated injected steroids made at the pharmaceutical company "New England Compounding Center (NECC)" in Framingham, Mass.:

…Whether the substances we take into our body are pills, peanut butter or medications injected into us, we are increasingly disconnected from the process of how those chemicals and foods go from the initial point of production to the point of impact on the cells and organs within our bodies.

That disconnect was made ever more real in the past few weeks with the unfolding story of deaths, strokes, affected joints and potentially other life-threatening complications from fungus-contaminated injected steroids made at New England Compounding Center (NECC), a Framingham, Mass., pharmaceutical company.

The continued state of collapse will kill off more weak, in the process.

The sick and dying are not so much "weak" as they are more exposed. These new chronic diseases tend to occur with increased exposures - it's a quantitative cumulative thing - and such illness is adaptive, part of the evolutionary process. Those who appear "weak" are most likely the specimens who carry the best adaptive abilities - those who appear "strong" are unexposed sitting ducks, and they'll succumb at their first contact.

Originally posted by soficrow
reply to post by moniesisfun

 

The sick and dying are not so much "weak" as they are more exposed.

Objectively, if they don't adequately adapt and die off, they were "weak".

These new chronic diseases tend to occur with increased exposures - it's a quantitative cumulative thing - and such illness is adaptive, part of the evolutionary process. Those who appear "weak" are most likely the specimens who carry the best adaptive abilities - those who appear "strong" are unexposed sitting ducks, and they'll succumb at their first contact.

I'd have to disagree with your definitions of "weak" and "strong". I agree that too much expose in a given amount of time tends to cause what may appear as "weakness", but in reality the "weak" are the ones who simply don't adapt. That may or may not be a result of too much exposure in a given period of time. Another factor is pure genetic susceptibility to the exact pathogen.

Your definition of "strong" doesn't seem fitting, either. If they are strong, they will survive and thrive, in the long run. Those appearing strong, yet dying out once exposed to the environment to the extent that the average human being is, would really be just that....appearing strong, while truly being vulnerable and inevitably "weak".

reply to post by moniesisfun


You are thinking exclusively about individual adaptation and survival - I am looking at survival of the species. I also am considering the fact that adaptive mechanisms go far beyond the genetic and tend to spread horizontally as they do in bacterial communities - in this light, individual adaptations are available to the community and critical to survival of the species, whether or not the individual survives.



[Sorry - am under pressure to get to dinner - not sure I presented these ideas well or correctly. bbl]