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By Magdalena Morris

Throughout human existence, healers and physicians have worked to help the body heal and repair itself. Slowly at first, but with increasing speed, new methods and instruments have been added to the physician's armamentarium -- antibiotics, microsurgical techniques, and more recently, non-invasive radiosurgery, and gene chips for rapid identification of genetic sequences. Yet, in the final analysis, physicians must rely on the body's healing capabilities. If these fail, intervention is useless -- at least for now.

In 1959, in a talk at CalTech titled, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," acclaimed physics lecturer and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman suggested that nature could be manipulated at a nanometer scale -- atom by atom.

Nanotechnology is molecular manufacturing -- building things one atom or molecule at a time with programmed nanoscopic robot arms. Utilizing the chemical properties of atoms and molecules (how they "stick" together), nanotechnology addresses the construction of novel molecular devices. The trick is to manipulate atoms individually and place them exactly where needed to produce the desired structure. This ability is almost within our grasp.

Dr. Nadrian Seeman, professor of chemistry at New York University has developed ways to construct three-dimensional objects from synthetic DNA molecules. These structures could serve as the building blocks for new and highly resilient materials made of DNA frameworks, which could be used to construct biochip computers and nanorobots. Potential applications range from computers, electronics, and weapons systems to medicine. In fact, medicine may be the field most altered by nanotechnology.

Within this century, with the convergence of human gene sequencing and advances in nantotechnological engineering and our deepening understanding of the function of cellular systems, nanotechnologists believe it will be possible to design medically-active microscopic machines to fight disease and effect physiological repairs at the cellular level.

Invading bacteria will automatically be destroyed, since they do not "fit" within the physiological blueprint encoded in the nanorobot patrolling the body. Diagnosis of disease will no longer rely upon patient history and the results of laboratory tests, but will result from an ongoing internal examination of deviations from the encoded molecular blueprint and programmed repair functions designed to correct anomalies at the molecular level. Cell damage attributed to aging will be repaired from the inside out. The potential benefits of medical applications of nanotechnology -- nanomedicine -- are read more like science fiction than science fact.

In 1997, a group of health scientists with the Department of Defense concluded that if a breakthrough to a molecular assembler occurs within 10 to 15 years, an entirely new field of nanomedicine will emerge by 2020. These scientists postulated that initial applications would be focused outside the body in diagnostic and pharmaceutical manufacturing, but the most powerful uses would be within the body. Some of the applications they discussed included cell herding machines to stimulate rapid healing and tissue reconstruction and cell repair machines to perform genetic surgery.

Many of these research goals may take 20 or more years to achieve, which is one reason the federal government is the major financial supporter of nanotechnology. President Clinton's 2001 budget request included $497 million for nanotechnology research and development, an 84% increase in the government's 2000 investment.

Unless altered by the incoming Bush Administration, the Clinton National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is a top priority. The NNI aims to strengthen scientific disciplines and generate interdisciplinary development and opportunities. Agencies participating in NNI include the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Energy (DOE), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Roughly 70% of the new funding proposed under the NNI will go to university-based research, which will help meet the growing demand for workers with nanoscale science and engineering skills.

Researchers have been able to move molecules and even construct nanomotors. The first privately held nanotechnology company, Zyvex, was started in mid-1997 with the goal of building the key tool for creating molecular nanotechnology, the assembler. According the Zyvex Founder, President, and CEO James Von Ehr II, the first assembler could be available within 10 years. However, it will be some time after that before medical nanorobots will reach the market.

So for the next 15 to 20 years, it still pays to take good care of your body. Stop smoking. Exercise moderately. Moisturize those crows' feet.

By 2050 or so, self-abuse can rule. The nanorobots will repair all the damage. Your healthcare bill may be a thing of the past, replaced by a monthly leasing payment on your nanorobots.