Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Cell Death and Differentiation
9.4 (April 2002): 367–93; Mary-Ellen Shay, "Transplantation 
Without a Donor," 
Dream: The Magazine of Possibilities
(Children's Hospital, Boston), Fall 2001. 
66.
In 2000 the Immune Tolerance Network (http://www.immunetolerance.org), a project of the 
National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, announced a multicenter 
clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of islet transplantation. 
According to a clinical-trial research summary (James Shapiro, "Campath-Ifi and One-Year 
Temporary Sirolimus Maintenance Monotherapy in Clinical Islet Transplantation," 
http://www.immunetolerance.org/public/clinical/islet/trials/shapiro2.html), "This therapy is not 
suitable for all patients with Type I diabetes, even if there were no limitation in islet supply, 
because of the potential long-term risks of cancer, life-threatening infections and drug side-effects 
related to the antirejection therapy. If tolerance [indefinite graft function without a need for long-
term drugs to prevent rejection] could be achieved at minimal up-front risk, then islet transplant 
could be used safely earlier in the course of diabetes, and eventually in children at the time of 
diagnosis." 
67.
"Lab Grown Steaks Nearing Menu," http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993208, 
includes discussion of technical issues. 
68.
The halving time for feature sizes is five years in each dimension. See discussion in chapter 2. 
69.
An analysis by Robert A. Freitas Jr. indicates that replacing 10 percent of a person's red blood cells 
with robotic respirocytes would enable holding one's breath for about four hours, which is about 
240 times longer than one minute (about the length of time feasible with all biological red blood 
cells). Since this increase derives from replacing only 10 percent of the red blood cells, the 
respirocytes are thousands of times more effective. 
70.
Nanotechnology is "thorough, inexpensive control of the structure of matter based on molecule-by-
molecule control of products and byproducts; the products and processes of molecular 
manufacturing, including molecular machinery" (Eric Drexler and Chris Peterson, 
Unbounding the 
Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution
[New York: William Morrow, 1991]). According to the 
authors: 
Technology has been moving toward greater control of the structure of matter for 
millennia....[P]ast advanced technologies—microwave tubes, lasers, superconductors, 
satellites, robots, and the like—have come trickling out of factories, at first with high price tags 
and narrow applications. Molecular manufacturing, though, will be more like computers: a 
flexible technology with a huge range of applications. And molecular manufacturing won't 
come trickling out of conventional factories as computers did; it will replace factories and 
replace or upgrade their products. This is something new and basic, not just another twentieth-
century gadget. It will arise out of twentieth-century trends in science, but it will break the 
trend-lines in technology, economics, and environmental affairs. [chap. 1] 
Drexler and Peterson outline the possible scope of the effects of the revolution: efficient solar 
cells "as cheap as newspaper and as tough as asphalt," molecular mechanisms that can kill cold 
viruses in six hours before biodegrading, immune machines that destroy malignant cells in the body 
at the push of a button, pocket supercomputers, the end of the use of fossil fuels, space travel, and 
restoration of lost species. Also see E. Drexler, 
Engines of Creation
(New York: Anchor Books, 
1986). The Foresight Institute has a useful list of nanotechnology FAQs 
(http://www.foresight.org/NanoRev/FIFAQ1.html) and other information. Other Web resources 
include the National Nanotechnology Initiative (http://www.nano.gov), http://nanotechweb.org, Dr. 
Ralph Merkle's nanotechnology page (http://www.zyvex.com/nano). and