Nanotechnology in Medicine
Developments in nanotechnology will result in improved medical sensors. As protein chemist Bill DeGrado notes, "Probably the first use you may see would be in diagnostics: being able to take a tiny amount of blood from somebody, just a pinprick, and diagnose for a hundred different things. Biological systems are already able to do that, and I think we should be able to design molecules or assemblies of molecules that mimic the biological system."
In the longer term, though, the story of nanotechnology in medicine will be the story of extending surgical control to the molecular level. The easiest applications will be aids to the immune system, which selectively attack
invaders outside tissues. More difficult applications will require that medical nanomachines mimic white blood cells by entering tissues to interact with their cells. Further applications will involve the complexities of molecular-level surgery on individual cells.
As we look at how to solve various problems, you'll notice that some that look difficult today will become easy,while others that might seem easier turn out to be more difficult. The seeming difficulty of treating disorders is always changing: Once polio was frequent and incurable, today it is easily prevented. Syphilis once caused steady physical decline leading to insanity and death; now it is cured with a shot.
Athlete's foot has never been seen as a great scourge, yet it remains hard to cure. Likewise with the common cold. This pattern will continue: Deadly diseases may be easily dealt with, while minor ills remain incurable, or vice versa. As we will see, a mature nanotechnology-based medicine will be able to deal with almost any physical problem, but the order of difficulty may be surprising. Nature cares nothing for our sense of appropriateness. Horribleness and difficulty just aren't the same thing.
Source:
>1991 "Nanomedicine," Chapter 10, Unbounding the Future (K. Eric Drexler, Christine Peterson, Gayle Pergamit)
>Dec. 1994 "Nanotechnology and Medicine" (Ralph C. Merkle) >http://inventors.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=inventors&zu=http%3A%2F%
2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FNanotechnology
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