Smart Pills

This is a bit creepy.

This article details how drug companies are having to adjust to an uncertain economy by melding technology and drugs.

Some drugmakers are beginning to sell ancillary services tied to their wares. Proteus’s technology, which enables pills to relay data about a patient back to doctors after they have been swallowed, is a prime example.

When one of Proteus’s pills is taken, stomach fluids activate the edible communications device it contains, which sends wireless signals through the body to another chip worn as a skin patch or embedded just under the skin. That, in turn, can upload data to a smart-phone or send it to a doctor via the internet. Thus it is easy to make sure a patient is taking his pills at the right time, to spot adverse reactions with other drugs and so on.

Vitality, an American firm, has come up with a cap for pill bottles that telephones hapless patients if they fail to take their medicine on time.

Curious.

I suppose that this is as good a place as any to reference this observation by C. S. Lewis. In The Abolition of Man he notes this:

“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike, the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious — such as digging up and mutilating the dead.” (page 77)