Got a Virus? Download the latest Vaccine--For Yourself

[shivkala]

So, if there is a new computer virus going around, what do you do? Aside from taking the usual precautions, you update your anti-virus program by downloading a program designed to protect against the virus.


Geneticist Craig Venter envisions the near future where you can follow the same procedure to protect yourself from a virus.

Okay, so imagine this: It's about twenty years from now and a serious pandemic hits. You're rightly terrified of leaving your house for fear of contracting the virus — but you know full well that you can't stay home forever. That's when you hit the internet and boot up your 3-D bio-printer. After downloading the recently coded vaccine from the Center for Disease Control website, you print it out and give yourself an injection. Crisis averted.

And the kicker? Venter calls this 3-D bio-printer a "teleporter."

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Downloading personal medicines over the Internet. Oh yes, that's safe, all right.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

I got urodelan flu from a coffee sent to me over the Internet to my replicator. I wonder what a medicine sent in that way could do...

 

[Itisnotlogical]

SEEMS LEGIT

If we're talking about individual units in every household:

The actual 3D printers on the market today cost quite a lot, and those just extrude plastic from a nozzle. Most objects produced from these devices are obviously inferior in overall quality to spin-cast or injection-moulded plastic goods. I certainly wouldn't trust a similar device to essentially replicate biological viruses that I downloaded from the internet.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Hackers can do a lot of damage to computer systems. God only knows what they could do to a HUMAN BODY if things like this became commonplace.

Sorry, I think I'll leave medical decisions to what is generally thought of in the strictest technical sense as A DOCTOR.

 

[B.J.]

At least in the US, I'd think the FDA would have a thing or two to say on the matter.

 

[gturner]

Yeah, this has all the hallmarks of the universal phone sanitizer that wiped out an entire planet in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Most of us have never experienced a pandemic, but if one should ever hit, I'm sure there are safer ways of distributing a cure than the fricking INTERNET, which is so insecure that it's laughable to trust human lives to it in this manner.

 

[shivkala]

There's also the fact that now, you have to go to a doctor who can determine if the vaccine is right for you. If it's like the smallpox vaccine, which can kill some people, a doctor can properly advise you whether or not the risk is worth it for you. Would there be a "virtual" doctor who could advise you whether or not you should download the vaccine?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Drugs via the internet, wow - that's gonna be a license to print money!

Of course it's not going to be medical type drugs prescribed by a doctor type doctor. Anyone that concerned for their health will certainly get the drugs the old fashioned way. iDrugs will be for people who already lack the common sense not to experiment with their bodies...