Friday, May 25, 2007

Making Announcements

One of these actually appears as a headline on the Harvard University Gazette web site. Which sounds better?

In a first, scientists develop tiny implantable biocomputers.

Researchers at Harvard and Princeton universities have taken a crucial step toward building biological computers, which, if successful, could eventually revolutionize how drugs are delivered within the human body

I'm going to guess that the first one sounds better. Its sexy, its energetic. It makes you think of androids and sensory augmentation and The Borg and The Six Million Dollar Man. Wow!

But the second, which is a rewrite of that site's first paragraph, is a more nuanced view. It says that the implantable biocomputer doesn't actually exist yet, but that steps have been taken which might eventually make that possible -- and if it does happen, then it might well affect how we deliver therapies and drugs within the body.

Even Harvard, it appears, wants it all, right now.

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