The Google X research lab has unveiled a new project: developing a pill capable of detecting cancer, imminent heart attacks, and other diseases. According to the article, "the company is fashioning nanoparticles—particles about one billionth of a meter in width—that combine a magnetic material with antibodies or proteins that can attach to and detect other molecules inside the body." When a person ingests the pill, these particles interact with the particular markers for a given disease. Since they're magnetic, they can then be guided back to a particular spot where they can be scanned to determine if any interactions took place. Google X's head of life sciences, Andrew Conrad, said, "What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive and transactional to proactive and preventative. Nanoparticles... give you the ability to explore the body at a molecular and cellular level."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Geezer on Thursday October 30 2014, @11:31AM
Naturally, said pill will also be phoning home the patients' biometrics to Google Ad Services, to enhance the diagnostic experience with ailment-targeted advertising.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday October 30 2014, @11:39AM
That's funny, but the real concern is that Google will be selling diagnostic information to insurance companies, doctors, and employers. For example, the corporation that owns your doctor's practice would be very interested to know how much money you make when deciding what to bill you. Likewise, when it's time to cut staff at a big corporation -- say Google -- it would be very useful to cross-correlate employee performance with medical history when selecting staff to eliminate.
The worst of it is that the hospital or doctor won't necessarily tell me their diagnostic tools are owned by Google so I can't opt out.
You may say "Google would never do that." Google is a publicly traded company with a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value. If they can find a way around outdated regulations like HIPPA to monetize your medical information, they will. It's a moral imperative for them.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Thursday October 30 2014, @12:18PM
I learned that staff isn't eliminated, only positions. (Also, a cancer diagnosis might eliminate the necessity to eliminate affected staff, thus reducing the risk for legal consequences.)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 4, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:55PM
Maintaining consistency, Google medical technology will not be packaged as a tablet, but will rather assume the form of a suppository.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:09PM
(Most) Corporations will do whatever it takes to enlarge profits. Damned be laws, fairness or the future.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Thursday October 30 2014, @04:40PM
In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue. **Profits are the sole and entire reason for the existence of corporations**.
I'm not criticizing your comment. I just think we need to repeat this truth, mantra-like, so people will internalize it. There's no need to put "most" before it either -- obviously there exist non-profit corporations, but the fact that they're the (weird, non-conforming) non-profit-seeking ones is right in the name.
And sure, someone will argue that there are other benefits or reasons to incorporate, but if the "stupid public" can only hold one fundamental definition/concept about corporations in their minds, it needs to be this. Sooner or later, they'll realize the rest, what naturally follows from this psychopathic foundation.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:20PM
I think the difference is that in the "old days" people wanted to accomplish something. Professional pride of quality and delivery. And corporations were a way to manage the business side of things. While it's now a just about profits and any quality and delivery or any other value is a mere side effect or cost of making a profit.
(Score: 2) by pnkwarhall on Thursday October 30 2014, @07:33PM
To my understanding, the first examples of corporate structures were European monarchies funding exploratory missions to the New World. The reason for the structure was to ensure that the investor would make an ROI. The primary goal of the explorer may have been exploration, but the goal of the corporation was first, foremost, and only about profit. So, even in the "old days", corporations were completely centered around profit.
I believe that, in general, individuals or groups of people did and still do want to accomplish something worthwhile. There's no rule that says that the motivation to run a business has to be to "make a profit". It can be, instead, to provide a valuable service and "make a living". When you say:
it's now just about profits [...] and any other value is a mere side effect
...you're referring to a) unethical businesses/people and b) corporations.
We've set-up structures that reward bad behavior, by individuals and corporate entities alike, and given over most cultural/economic/political influence to those structures.
In a land of behemoths, humans are crushed without thought.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:39PM
That's funny, but the real concern is that Google will be selling diagnostic information to insurance companies, doctors, and employers.
I am pretty sure Google's lawyers are aware of HIPAA.
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday October 30 2014, @01:13PM
If it alerted me of an easily treatable tumor that would have been untreatable by the time I knew I was sick I think I would be ok with that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:49PM
Quite. I fully understand the creepiness-potential of this, but harnessing that kind of data would allow Google to do some very impressive statistical analysis and maybe even make predictions based on a combination of your test results and your demographic profile. Half the trouble with medical science is eliminating all the variables - each human being has countless undocumented biological and environmental deviations from "normal" (whatever that is), and each deviation is effectively an uncontrolled variable in any study on how illness and treatments work. This is why every pack of pills lists about a hundred possible side-effects, most of which hardly anyone ever experiences. One person out of the three hundred on the trial had headaches, which may have been caused by the drug, by some other factor unique to them, or a combination of the two. Can't be sure, so they list "headaches" as a possible side effect.
The only way to filter out these variables is massive statistical analysis across millions (billions?) of people, which as much contextual data against each person as possible. This means truly massive data, and if anyone can do that it's Google. What's more, while I appreciate that Google is just another huge company these days, I think they do still have a heart and I believe they'd find a way to make that profitable, enabling them to get paid for that warm-glowy feeling and hence justify it to their shareholders.
Imagine a future world where ailments are cheaply and accurately diagnosed as soon as they appear. A world where the current crapshoot of "well let's try this painful and expensive treatment, it has a 58% success rate" has been replaced by "based on your other medications, your personal biology and your lifestyle we think this treatment has a 91.64% chance of helping you." Most ailments would be treated easily and at very low cost long before they get the chance to turn ugly and difficult to treat. In such a world the insurance companies and drug companies would have a lot less power, because healthcare would be easier, cheaper and wouldn't so often escalate to critical emergency status (which is what forces the patient into a difficult bargaining position and tips the balance of power to the corps). Also, employers would have no reason to discriminate against ailments if those ailments could be trivially fixed. Of course, it depends just how many illnesses actually respond to early diagnosis - some illnesses will surely remain incurable, no matter how early they are flagged up.
That techno-heath utopia is still a long way off, and the transition from our current status quo to the new one doubtless wouldn't be smooth, but this kind of tech could be the beginning of it.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday October 30 2014, @02:57PM
Everything you say means this:
"We can have Google enable better science, applied to living longer - in a life that is not worth living."
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:01PM
> in a life that is not worth living
That sounds kind of morbid. You OK?
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday October 30 2014, @06:39PM
Pretty good here!
I don't live in a Google-monitored and managed bubble.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 30 2014, @08:02PM
OK. I misread the tone of your post, thought you were having suicidal thoughts or something. FWIW I give as little data as I can to Big G too.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday October 31 2014, @12:46AM
I appreciate the compassion!
I did, just this afternoon, attend the funeral of an 18-year-old son of a family friend. He'd made his own way out, very decisively, three nights ago. We can't know what goes on inside of another person, but this recourse has always been especially inconceivable to me.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 1) by lizardloop on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:08PM
I'd hardly call a world with targeted advertising "not worth living". If anything I'd prefer targeted advertising to the dumb spam I've been subjected to for the past 20 years.
If I had the money I would love to for a full body MRI every year and have an expert check it over for abnormalities. Even better a competently built bit of software to do the analysis. If Google can make checking for the presence of diseases before waiting for symptoms a societal norm I shall be very happy indeed. Why do I need to wait till I've got blood in my urine before I get checked for bowel cancer? I'd happily pay £50 a year and take a morning off work to be checked out for bowel cancer and catch it early while it can be treated.
Medicine is far too reactive and far too based on guess work.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:24PM
An MRI scan cost circa 500 US$ without any public subsidies, which means you can cut waiting times and bureaucracy. Then all that is missing is some clever diagnosis software. And being sure that intense magnetic fields won't affect your body negatively.
I'll agree that medicine is quite reactive and needs to become more of a avoiding the problems in the first place. But if a cancer depends on environmental poisoning, how do you avoid it? getting industry to refrain from releasing toxins might be a real uphill battle.
DNA splicing and organ growing will likely result in a medical paradigm shift. Broken organ? get on life support, replace become as new! ;)
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday October 30 2014, @06:42PM
Advertising is not the problem. A mediated, normalized, contextualized life, focused merely around quantifiable externals - conveniently micro-monitized?
Thanks but I don't want the Google dystopia.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:40PM
First I went to you because you promised the perfect vacation.
Next thing I know I'm surrounded by mutants and johnny cabs.
Those brain butchers!!!
(Score: 1) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday October 30 2014, @04:27PM
like I need a kick in the nuts. I have enough trouble keeping Google out of my life outside of my body as it is...