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Nanomedicine
In the mid-term, the next 5 or 10 years or so, knowledge
gained from genomics and proteomics will make possible:
(a) new treatments tailored to specific individuals, (b) new
drugs targeting pathogens whose genomes have now been
decoded, (c) stem cell treatments to repair damaged tissue,
replace missing function, or slow aging, and (d) biological
robots made from bacteria and other motile cells that have had
their genomes re-engineered and re-programmed. We could
also see artificial organic devices that incorporate biological
motors or self-assembled DNA-based structures for a variety
of useful medical purposes. We may even begin to see targeted
anti-aging treatments which address each of the seven specific
forms of cellular damage that produce pathologies leading to
natural death, as described by Aubrey de Grey and colleagues
[2], although there remain many institutional obstacles to
direct progress via this conventional approach. [3]
In the farther term, perhaps somewhere in the 10 or 20-year
time frame, the first fruits of molecular nanorobotics should
begin to appear in the medical field. My own theoretical work
in nanomedicine has concentrated on medical nanorobot-
ics using diamondoid materials and nanoparts. This area,
though clinically the most distant and still mostly theoretical,
holds the greatest promise for health and life extension. With
medical nanorobotics, we will gain the technological ability
to perform specific internal repairs on individual cells in real
time, thus largely eliminating all major causes of natural bio-
logical death.
The early theoretical work done by Drexler and Merkle,
including most prominently a collection of bearings, gears, and
other possible nanorobot parts, is well known. Possibly their
most complex design was a nanoscale neon pump consisting
of over 6,000 atoms, which was later simulated by compu-
tational chemists at California Institute of Technology. [5]
The device could serve either as a pump for neon gas atoms