 "What's the time John" !oh, it's about...hell get me to a hospital"! A south African inventor has developed a wristwatch watch that will pricks the wearer’s skin every 6 hours and uses an electronic component to check for a "signature vibration" of the malaria parasite. If the parasite is present in your blood stream it will send out an alarm and the watch will flash an effigy of a Mosquito!
Some experts fear that such a device might facilitate the spread of infectious diseases such as HIV if swapped inappropriately or stolen. “In my mind it’s a potential public health threat as opposed to a boon to mankind,” says Peter Scholl, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Health in Baltimore, Maryland, US. However, Lubbe (the inventor) stresses that doctors can change the needles of the watch easily when necessary. I can just imagine the park wardens in 'Central Park' picking up a $6000 Rolex lying beside the garbage cans with one of those picker upper thingy me jigs cause it might be infected. The cost for this watch is around $280.00 and even before the launch over 1.5 million orders were placed! But by who? Sure, it's a great device but although none of us are immune to the virus Malaria is most commonly caught by grass roots people! I can't quite see Asian rice farmers sporting a $280.00 watch when the money for that could buy the entire village mosquito nets which would help prevent the watch from ever giving out a warning anyway! That's my 2 cents on the subject!
Last update : 19-05-2008 13:34
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