Nanobacteria: The Nano World
Jan 25th, 2006 | By Penny Sleuth Contributor | Category: Technology[From the desk of Gunner: For today's Sleuth, we once again turn to our friend Jonathan Kolber, a leading technology analyst and entrepreneur. ]
Today, Jonathan shares his insight on a newly discovered strain of Nanobacteria — and the debate over whether these microscopic creatures are what they seem to be.
Bizarre new forms of life are being discovered at the microscopic scale. Even though tinier than viruses, some of them have great implications for your health.
They’re called nanobacteria, but they’re really not bacteria at all. You see, at just 20-200 nanometers in diameter, they are far smaller than “real” bacteria, which typically measure 1-5 micrometers (a nanometer is 1/1000th of a micrometer) and even smaller than viruses, which are smaller than bacteria. So what are nanobacteria?
No one really knows — in fact, there’s a debate about whether they’re alive at all. Scientists opposed claim that these tiny things can’t be alive, because they’re too small to contain DNA. Scientists in favor claim that they must be alive, because they behave like living organisms.
My view is simple. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and reproduces like a duck, it’s a duck, until proven otherwise. Though I generally hold scientists in high regard, sometimes they allow their prejudices to interfere with their observations. For example, there’s the common view that cold fusion can’t be real because “fusion can’t happen at room temperatures.”
Nanobacteria: Stretching the Envelope
Just because scientists have no current way to explain something doesn’t make it any less real. Medical science still can’t explain how digitalis works, yet it’s saved countless lives of heart attack victims for many decades.
The history of science includes numerous examples of phenomena that stretch the envelope of what was supposed to be possible. Recently discovered examples include worms that live in steam vents on the ocean floor at near-boiling temperatures and bacteria that live in diluted sulfuric acid in caves in South America. These critters, by the way, are a newly discovered form of life known as archaea, having DNA quite a bit different from bacteria. Some scientists speculate that nanobacteria belong to this category.
In my view, it’s science when beliefs flow from observations and religion when observations flow from beliefs. Mind you, I have nothing against religion, and, in fact, happen to consider spirituality a necessary part of a well-rounded life.
It’s just that I get disturbed when science and religion are confused. A prime example of this is what scientists call anomalies. These are observations that happen but aren’t supposed be possible in the prevailing paradigm. At the moment, the lifelike behavior of nanobacteria fits that bill for many scientists.
While I’m not trained as a scientist, the scientific method is clearly defined. Essentially, if an observation is consistently repeatable under controlled conditions, it’s not an anomaly, regardless of how much some scientists might wish it were.
Back to nanobacteria. These little bugs (some say crystals) have been linked to serious health problems, including kidney stones, heart disease and even ovarian cancer. Recent studies show that nanobacteria can infect humans, though the mechanism isn’t clear.
Nanobacteria: The Good Nanobacteria Can Do
Fortunately, in addition to being ultra-small, nanobacteria grow very slowly…replicating only about once every three days, versus 20 minutes for a typical bacterium.
They been discovered building calcium sulfate shells around themselves in places you wouldn’t want that to happen, including the arteries of your heart and your kidneys and ovaries.
These aren’t trivial problems. According to the National Institutes of Health, over 170,000 patients were admitted to U.S. hospitals in 2001 for kidney stones and related problems. Cancer of the ovaries affects approximately 25,000 women each year, and calcified arteries kill over 10,000.
You or a loved one could suffer from one of these problems — if not today, then in future.
So what to do if nanobacteria are discovered in the system? One effective solution for these problems, apparently, is EDTA chelation. It should be administered by a medical doctor trained in the procedure and followed up with a regimen of tetracycline.
The chelation dissolves the calcium deposits, and the tetracycline reportedly kills the nanobacteria. At least that’s the thinking of some leading medical researchers, and it’s a classic case of very little risk and big upside potential. EDTA chelation is one of the safest medical procedures you could possibly experience.
In the future when nanobacteria are better understood, it should be possible to design harmless ones that “crowd out” those now building calcium deposits in your body. This would be similar to the current practice of genetically engineering mosquitoes incapable of carrying malaria.
Speculating a little bit, I expect that the understanding of nanobacteria will enhance design of tomorrow’s nanotechnology devices. Already, scientists and engineers are prototyping nano-devices based on principles of microbiology. In many cases, as scientists keep telling me, nature gives the clues that science needs to solve its dilemmas.
I’m watching a public company right now that’s focused on nanobacteria, founded by the co-discoverer of these little mysteries.
To your profitable future,
Jonathan Kolber
January 25, 2006
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