Nano robots kill cancer…what the?
Media reports have scientists creating nano robots that destroy cancer. Reality is a long way from this and it is the type of hype that does such research no favours.
There has been a story doing the rounds of some splendidly clever science that involves nanoparticles containing short segments of RNA that can silence the activity of some cancer-causing genes in human cells.
The problem is that the media and a bunch of blogs that have simply regurgitated the story without any thought have called these nanoparticles robots. If this were true it would be fascinating, and possibly scary. It is actually more the language used that causes the distortion of truth, but it is once again an example of media hype that misleads and in the long run makes for a misinformed dialogue, if history is anything to go on anyway.
Reuters are the first media I found to print the story
The Tech Jackal is one of a few blogs that repeated the story
I not Robot
Now it may be just me, but when I think of a robot – nano or otherwise – it is a machine with a degree of autonomy that comes from being programmed by some sort of software. It can make decisions based on environmental cues.
These nanoparticles are far from that. They are passive nano lumps of material that have no programming and no ability to make a decision. They have extremely clever design, but they are far from being a robot.
Sci Fi for now
The nano-bots are still science fiction and it is still an issue if they can ever exist as there are some basic laws of physics they need to overcome first. For a start movement in a liquid for anything at the nanoscale would be like trying to swim in thick treacle. And second there is this thing called Brownian motion that is the random zipping around of atoms and molecules – zipping that causes the constant buffeting of a nanoparticle making whatever movement difficult, especially if it is trying to go in a specific direction. It would be like trying to walk against a cyclonic wind while having trees smash into you from all directions.
Passive and dumb
These cancer-killing particles get to where they are going by being transported passively in the blood stream. They don’t decide where to go. Although it isn’t described in the CalTech release, the particles in similar research attach themselves to cancer cells because the researchers have placed a protein or peptide that is specific to a receptor found only on cancer cells – or certain types of cancer cells. Once attached or the particle has entered the cell, it can release its drug.
The clever part of this research done at the California Institute of Technology is that this crew is the first to get these short segments of RNA into a human cell, which then shuts down the function of a specific gene. It has been done for years in plants. In fact Australian scientists from CSIRO were the first to do this where it has been important technology to help breed, among many things, virus-resistance into crop species.
How CalTech said it
Here is the original media release from CalTech – no mention of robots here
So, I challenge anyone to suggest that this fabulous little nanoparticle is in any way a robot. And I seriously wish people would not embellish science stories this way as it does not help the dialogue on what is often a controversial topic. The research is brilliant and fascinating and worthy of media attention all by itself.