Nano-Tech Gone Wild

Nano-Tech Gone Wild: Bill Gates Funds Development of Cloth That Delivers Contraceptive and HIV Drugs

December 8, 2012 |



Dave Mihalovic, Prevent Disease
Waking Times

Bill Gates is at it again, throwing money at any researcher with a
claim to fame and everything to gain by using scientific advances to
prevent as many babies as possible from being born. Soft kill drugs in
the pretext of protection is the common theme for the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation. Cheap, effective contraceptive and HIV pharmaceuticals
are now the objectives soon to target the third world.

A University of Washington team has developed a platform they say
simultaneously offers contraception and prevents HIV. Electrically spun
cloth with nanometer-sized fibers can dissolve to release drugs,
providing a platform for cheap medical use. The research was published
this week in the Public Library of Science’s open-access journal PLoS One. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last month awarded the UW researchers almost $1 million to pursue the technology.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has committed 10 billion
dollars over the next ten years to make it the most aggressive decade
ever to roll out new vaccines to poor nations around the world. The
commitmentwill also effectively create widespread fertility problems across vaccinated populations.

Bill Gates told a recent TED conference,
an organization which is sponsored by one of the largest toxic waste
polluters on the planet, that vaccines need to be used to reduce world
population figures in order to solve global warming and lower CO2
emissions.


“We have the drugs to do that. It’s really about delivering them in a
way that makes them more potent, and allows a woman to want to use it,”
said author Kim Woodrow, a UW assistant professor of bioengineering.

Electrospinning uses
an electric field to catapult a charged fluid jet through air to create
very fine, nanometer-scale fibers. The fibers can be manipulated to
control the material’s solubility, strength and even geometry. Fibers
may be even better at delivering medicine than existing technologies
such as gels, tablets or pills.

Nano-microchips invisible to the naked eye are a reality that are already being hosted in wide-range of applications.

No high temperatures are involved, so the method is suitable for
heat-sensitive molecules. The fabric can also incorporate large
molecules, such as proteins and antibodies, that are hard to deliver
through other methods.

The final material is a stretchy fabric. “This method allows
controlled release of multiple compounds,” said coauthor Cameron Ball.
“We were able to tune the fibers to have different release properties.”

One
of the fabrics they made dissolves within minutes, potentially offering
users immediate, discrete protection against unwanted pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases.

Another dissolves gradually over a few days, providing an option for
sustained delivery, more like the birth-control pill, Â to provide
contraception and guard against HIV.

The fabric could incorporate many fibers to include more than one
anti-HIV drug. Mixed fibers could be designed to release drugs at
different times to increase their potency, like the prime-boost method
used in vaccines.

The electrospun cloth could be inserted directly in the body or be used as a coating on vaginal rings or other products.

This is the first study to use nanofibers for vaginal drug delivery.
Critics claim that no long-term studies have been established to assess
safety which could pose serious health implications to third world
countries where the cloths are targeted for use.

Further research is needed into the risks associated with the growing
field of nanotechnology manufacture. A vast and rapidly expanding array
of engineered nano-products are flooding the consumer market unregulated as evidence of toxicities accumulate.

The team is focusing on places like Africa, but the technology could
be used in the U.S. or other countries to offer birth control.

The team will use the new Gates Foundation grant to evaluate the
versatility and feasibility of their system. The group will hire more
research staff and buy an electrospinning machine to make butcher-paper
sized sheets. The expanded team will then spend a year testing
combinations that deliver two antiretroviral drugs and a hormonal
contraceptive, and then six months scaling up production of the most
promising materials.

No long-term studies have been planned before officially releasing
the new drug technology to the public. The public will be the long-term
study.


Source:-
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/12/08/nano-tech-gone-wild-gates-funds-hiv-contraceptive-clot/