Writes Brian. Dunaway:

Lew,

Just saw your post of Jon Rappaport’s “Dangerous Nano-Particles Contaminating Many Vaccines: Groundbreaking Study.”

In my professional travels I’ve spent a lot of time pursuing nanotech solutions to aerospace problems. I even got the chance to meet with Richard Smalley in his enormous, palatial office at Rice University. (As a Nobel Prize winner, he was well-rewarded.) He discovered “Bucky Balls” (C-60 in space), which he realized was a spherical molecule after considering Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome. In an act of humility, he named the molecule after Mr. Fuller, not himself. (Incidentally, I found him to be a very approachable person.) He was also the developer of carbon nanotubes (which he named fullerines), as well as other remarkable associated achievements.

Nanotechnology is fascinating, powerful stuff. It doesn’t simply refer to scale – the physics of nanostructures is often very different from quantum or Newtonian physics.

Now for a bit of a buzz kill. I don’t know how controllable nanostructures are in a biological environment, but knowing human nature, I’m not comforted. I’m far less comforted after reading Rappaport’s article, the contents of which are very disturbing. There has long been concern that these nanostructures don’t readily degrade (as is noted in the article), and that once they are introduced into a biological environment, it is not easy to get rid of them.

Nanotubes can be particularly dangerous. I remember reading of one experiment where an equal amount of carbon black and carbon nanotube samples were prepared. The two samples were aspirated into the lungs of two different mice. The mouse that aspirated the carbon black seemed unaffected, and perhaps if it had lived long enough would have perished of lung cancer. The mouse that aspirated the nanotubes more or less died instantly, blood issuing from its mouth. The relentless nanotubes slice and dice everything with which it comes into contact – including DNA.

So yes, this article is very troubling, to say the least.