http://www.azonano.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1466#_Nanosubmarines_in_The_Press
(2000)
Alright, given this is about 10years old, it isn’t really much food for thought.
The picture shows a possible scenario of a micro-submarine within the blood vessels cruising along the blood stream responding to defects in the human body e.g. attacking fat cells around the site of arteriosclerotic lesions. Or even eventually repairing muscular tissues/spinal chord injuries and destroying tumours.
I remember the hydrocortisone injection i had when i was still a competitive squash player.. and i remember a tinge of panic as the needle went into my ankle, slid into a small slot between the bones; then a slight pressure as the fluid medication was administered directly to the inflamed tissue.
With nanotechnology, we might never need needles again (save to crochet and make art with/without the human skin) and thats the real utilitarian blessing of nanotechnology. But it’s giving us a challenge here. With this form of medical invasion.. having little synthetic robots swimming in our vessels under our skin, how would it change the way the body is defined and understood – and what implications does that have for the boundaries of the skin – or the wholeness of the body? And what difference would these be from artificially constructed hormones circulating in our blood streams through tablets and ingested medication.. Also, as with all kinds of mediation, nanotechnology would allow new and novel methods of imaging/expressing the body at cellular level but at the cost of reducing our scope of the vast ‘immeasurable’ to the eyes of mere microscopes/AFMs/STMs etc..
Joel 