You Won't Feel A Thing: No More Needles
from the no-need-to-build-character dept
I remember the first time I received a serious shot for something many years ago, the nurse came in and stood off to my side fiddling with the needle for a bit, and then nonchalantly asked me: “Are you a man or a mouse?” I was confused for half a second and started to say “What?” when her arm flung out and jabbed my other side with the needle, totally taking me by surprise and, of course, causing me to let out a quick yelp… to which the nurse responded, “Ah, a mouse.” Not exactly the best display of my manliness, I guess. Of course, experiences like that may be a thing of the past sometime soon. A scientist has, after 20 years of work, created a device that would get rid of the need for needles in certain cases. It supposedly works by opening up microscopic pores on your skin using ultrasound, and letting the medicine pass through. They claim the ultrasound disrupts the membrane on your skin — which, honestly, sounds a bit scarier than a quick jab with a needle — and takes about a day to heal. The article notes a few other non-needle techniques for injecting stuff into you, but this is apparently the first to use ultrasound.
Comments on “You Won't Feel A Thing: No More Needles”
Back in the 80s
The U.S. army immunized new recruits with the blaster-injectors, and several sci-fi movies (e.g. Aliens) from that era featured it. Did it fall out of favor?
Re: Back in the 80s
Blaster-injectors is out of favor with me…. Its like being stabbed. No fun.
Bleeding edge or PR tricks?
Non-Needle technology has been around for a long, long time and has already been implemented in various scheme (usually based around immunisation in the third world). The patents for the original non-invasive injection technique were posted in 1999. Why am I telling you this? Well, yesterday you posted a story complaining about PR’s posting on your site – fair enough .. I know how frustrating it can be, especially when you get badly formatted or irrelavent copy. However, the non-needle ‘story’ is about as ‘breaking news’ as ‘the wheel’ and also placed by PR (god forbid!). Journalism and PR (and advertising for that matter) are inextricably linked – they need each other. Without PR and press centers, journos would have trouble filling their pages, the pages wouldn’t exist without in the first place without advertising. Stupid PR deserve to be berated – but you won’t even notice good PR – as you’ve just proved.
Re: Bleeding edge or PR tricks?
Yeah, I’ve never complained about the entire PR practice, but very clearly about stupid PR practices. I’ve even made it clear that there are plenty of PR people who do get it. My complaint is simply PR people who assume that dumping press releases on people is the only way to do PR.
Someone seems a bit defensive today…
I would bet that the vast majority of stories we link to on Techdirt were first announced by PR people. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that our policy is that we want to see news articles, and not press releases. That’s what we write about. I thought that was pretty clear, but I guess not.
no needles
Very cool — just like the “hypo” that is used in the Star Trek series.
No Subject Given
The needleless injection stuff is not nearly as neat and clean as it seems on the surface. There are a lot of questions about long term skin damage for people that might do this daily – diabetics, etc, which is who this technology was originally targeted at in the first place. (My wife tested this stuff 20 years ago)
I’m sure its improved since then – but 20 years of work seems like a lot of effort for a very marginal gain. Exactly how is this better than an injection, other than for people who have irrational fears of needles?
Re: No Subject Given
Yeah, that’s why I said that it sounded a lot worse than a quick jab of the needle. I agree. It sounds cool in one sense, but when you look at the details… perhaps not so cool.
No Subject Given
I’m sorry, but this strikes me as being extremely rude. It is not the nurse’s job to gauge your masculinity, it is her job to administer a shot. I would have been extremely pissed.
MLO
Re: No Subject Given
Heh. I didn’t think it was that bad. She wasn’t “gauging my masculinity,” but basically taking my attention away from the coming shot — which worked. I actually thought it was pretty funny, but I could see how others might not be amused.