Is this good news or just sad ???
Cold War Technological Know-How Applied to New Dental Material
Monday, Oct. 18, 2010
By Martin Matishak Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration last week announced the launch of a new commercial product venture that takes nuclear weapons technology and repurposes it for dental implants (see GSN, Feb. 2).
(Oct. 18) - A dentist and her assistant prepare to clean a patient's teeth last year in Berlin, Germany. The United States last week announced production of a new dental implant material developed with help from nuclear weapons experts in numerous countries (Sean Gallup/Getty Images).
The initiative is winning some praise on Capitol Hill as an innovative approach to threat reduction that could be expanded in the years to come. On Friday officials from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and nearby EDA Labs began production of a new dental implant called nanotitanium, a metal said to be stronger than conventional metal alloys that integrates more quickly with human bone, according to an agency press release. The product should also result in faster post-surgery healing. The new material, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, was created through a three-year partnership between Los Alamos, several Russian scientific institutes and New Mexico-based Manhattan Scientifics, the release states.
The nuclear agency, a semiautonomous branch of the Energy Department, managed the effort through its Global Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program, which was created in 1994 to reduce the risk that scientists involved in WMD programs in the former Soviet Union would sell their technical expertise to terrorist organizations or countries that pose a proliferation risk. The program was expanded in 2005 to include Libya and Iraq.
The prevention program is overseen by the nuclear agency's Global Security Engagement and Cooperation Office, which engages in cooperative efforts around the globe to help implement and enforce nonproliferation obligations, as well as detect and deter proliferators seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
The effort "prevents the spread of nuclear materials, technology and expertise by promoting cutting-edge science and technology built using the expertise of former weapons experts," NNSA Principal Assistant Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Kenneth Baker said in the agency release. "The program generates peaceful and commercially viable projects while achieving a critical nonproliferation goal."
To date, the prevention program has engaged more than 17,000 experts, at least 60 percent of whom had experience working with weapons of mass destruction. Participants have come from more than 180 facilities in the former Soviet Union, Libya and Iraq, according to the press release. Since its inception, the initiative has collaborated with roughly 160 U.S. companies, multinational corporations and small businesses to promote similar commercial research and development projects, the NNSA statement adds. Technologies developed under the program include breast cancer identification software and land mine detection products.
Budget documents show the effort received nearly $20 million in fiscal 2010. The program would receive roughly $18 million in the coming budget cycle. The documents do not explain the slight reduction, saying only that in Russia "new work will focus on technologies that support global security and nonproliferation, and cost-share activities will be emphasized where possible."
In Iraq, engagement "will remain steady based on assessed risk," it adds. A nuclear agency spokesman did not respond by press time to questions about the prevention program, including potential future work. Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who attended Friday's production kick-off, touted the effort's latest achievement, as well as its overall goal. "It goes without saying that the product of this unique collaboration between American and Russian scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory is an important innovation for medicine," he said in a statement to Global Security Newswire.
"Three decades ago, this kind of partnership would have been unimaginable, but today these scientists have utilized technology originally developed for nuclear weapons for peaceful means," he said. "These are exactly the kind of partnerships we should be doing more of in New Mexico and across the country."
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I do not disagree "in principle" to the national laboratories advancing science and technology across a broad spectrum I would prefer they focus on nuclear matters and exotic defense technologies first.
