Invisible Ink Could Reveal whether Kids Have Been Vaccinated
The technology embeds immunization records into a child’s skin
Keeping track of vaccinations remains a major challenge in the developing world, and even in many developed countries, paperwork gets lost, and parents forget whether their child is up to date. Now a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers has developed a novel way to address this problem: embedding the record directly into the skin.
Along with the vaccine, a child would be injected with a bit of dye that is invisible to the naked eye but easily seen with a special cell-phone filter, combined with an app that shines near-infrared light onto the skin. The dye would be expected to last up to five years, according to tests on pig and rat skin and human skin in a dish.
The system—which has not yet been tested in children—would provide quick and easy access to vaccination history, avoid the risk of clerical errors, and add little to the cost or risk of the procedure, according to the study, published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.
“Especially in developing countries where medical records may not be as complete or as accessible, there can be value in having medical information directly associated with a person,” says Mark Prausnitz, a bioengineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the new study. Such a system of recording medical information must be extremely discreet and acceptable to the person whose health information is being recorded and his or her family, he says. “This, I think, is a pretty interesting way to accomplish those goals.”
The research, conducted by M.I.T. bioengineers Robert Langer and Ana Jaklenec and their colleagues, uses a patch of tiny needles called microneedles to provide an effective vaccination without a teeth-clenching jab. Microneedles are embedded in a Band-Aid-like device that is placed on the skin; a skilled nurse or technician is not required. Vaccines delivered with microneedles also may not need to be refrigerated, reducing both the cost and difficulty of delivery, Langer and Jaklenec say.
Delivering the dye required the researchers to find something that was safe and would last long enough to be useful. “That’s really the biggest challenge that we overcame in the project,” Jaklenec says, adding that the team tested a number of off-the-shelf dyes that could be used in the body but could not find any that endured when exposed to sunlight. The team ended up using a technology called quantum dots, tiny semiconducting crystals that reflect light and were originally developed to label cells during research. The dye has been shown to be safe in humans.
The approach raises some privacy concerns, says Prausnitz, who helped invent microneedle technology and directs Georgia Tech’s Center for Drug Design, Development and Delivery. “There may be other concerns that patients have about being ‘tattooed,’ carrying around personal medical information on their bodies or other aspects of this unfamiliar approach to storing medical records,” he says. “Different people and different cultures will probably feel differently about having an invisible medical tattoo.”
When people were still getting vaccinated for smallpox, which has since been eradicated worldwide, they got a visible scar on their arm from the shot that made it easy to identify who had been vaccinated and who had not, Jaklenec says. “But obviously, we didn’t want to give people a scar,” she says, noting that her team was looking for an identifier that would be invisible to the naked eye. The researchers also wanted to avoid technologies that would raise even more privacy concerns, such as iris scans and databases with names and identifiable data, she says.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/invisible-ink-could-reveal-whether-kids-have-been-vaccinated/
For absolute fuck's sake
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[–] 21793246? 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
How do you know ? Denials out of no where actually makes me wonder....
[–] 21794851? ago
Because everyday shills are posting 666 posts claiming the Mark of the Beast is this or that. Between the chips, the social security number or whatever, decide and choose one. It's just like one more add for a soda. They all are shit and yet, you're all saying your flavor is the Mark of the Beast.
[–] 21793673? ago
The Mark of the Beast is a number (six-hundred threescore and six) that is supposed to show up on your head or your hands. Nowhere does it say in the Bible that a high-tech scanner is used to filter your blood for invisible ink to determine whether you should be able to buy or sell
It's easy to quickly deny something you know is wrong, like 2+2=5
[–] 21793788? 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
I wont quote a book like the "bible" you know that has been altered by DS for centuries as a reliable source.
Nor do I give a fak to your peculiar interpretation of the "Mark" either, to me its just a metaphor, or some harmful toy the DS loves.
But you persistence has become more and more suspicious...
[–] 21793275? ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VySJLrpPMLg
This is the mark.
[–] 21793559? 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Both are possible. No need to rush to deny either.