Future Talk

      Throughout history doctors have sought to help the human body repair itself. Over the years, many new procedures have been added to the physician’s toolkit – x-rays, anesthesia, antibiotics, surgery, and more recently, stem cells and genetic engineering. For the most part though, doctors still rely on the body’s own trusted healing abilities.

      Nearly all sickness, injury, and stress can be traced to cellular malfunction, but physicians have not yet perfected technologies to replace or renew damaged cells. Today, tools do not exist that enable scientists to enter individual cells and make repairs at this molecular level.

      To obtain such tools, experts say, researchers need to further develop molecular nanotechnology and create assemblers; self-replicating devices that allow scientists to grab individual atoms and form them into materials similar to the way that life fashions its miracles – plants, animals, and us.

      With assemblers, researchers can then create the ultimate medical tool – nanobots. These tiny micro-robots will have built-in power supplies, sensors, and onboard computers to direct activities.

      Medical nanobots will be very small. To travel through the bloodstream they must be tiny enough to squeeze through the narrowest capillaries in the body. But these marvels hold the greatest promise for curing disease and improving health; and according to nano-expert Robert Freitas in a recent Futurist Magazine article, the first fruits of these creations could begin appearing in clinical treatments by mid-to-late 2020s.

Read more: Medical nanobots could end disease, aging in 2 decades