Sounds reasonable - these things are small enough to potentially mess things up at a cellular or genetic level.

Indeed, Daniel, but then again:
Dr. Colvin said that the surface characteristics of the lab's buckyballs, which are not a form that is commercially available, needed further study. She said that they had not been coated, a process that is commonly used to limit the toxicity of such materials in applications like drug delivery.

Also:
Dr. Warheit said that how nanoparticles are coated and how quickly they clump together may be more important factors in toxicity than their size.

And finally:
C Sixty Inc., a start-up company in Houston working on drugs and drug delivery systems based on buckyballs, said that unreported data on its coated buckyballs in zebra fish embryos and adult rodents showed toxicity levels comparable to or lower than many existing medicines. The rodent tests indicated that C Sixty's buckyballs collect in the kidneys and liver and are excreted like other wastes after completing their function of delivering medicines, said Russell M. Lebovitz, the company's vice president for research and business development.

Combining nanotech with biotech was the next logical step anyway, and nano-coating with bios that cushion the nanites from potentially damaging structures, and adding the ability to chemically "lie" to imune systems so they won't be broken down into potentially lethal elements is already being done.

The study continues, and one day, who knows, we might all benefit greatly from a personal, internal nanite pharmacy. It will take time, though, because the studies are being conducted by private r&d companies, and so the results remain hidden. This forces other companies to duplicate work, with the potential to miss certain, possibly critical steps, or whole tests. One day these patents and secrecies will be lifted, one product at a time of course, and the information will then be properly combined, resulting in new researches and far greater discoveries.

Cheers,
Dan