|
Looking Forward
(Monday September 21 2009)
 | From The National: "The 20th century saw a string of world-changing technological breakthroughs - mass-produced automobiles, television, space travel, computers and the internet - that would have been met with incredulity just a few decades before. But the astonishing speed at which 21st-century medicine is advancing looks set to outstrip even those giant leaps for mankind. It is possible that over the course of our lifetime, vaccines will help prevent or cure many of our most lethal cancers; we will be able to grow an unlimited supply of hearts, kidneys and other organs in the lab for transplantation (rendering irrelevant the current drastic shortage of donors); stem-cell technology will cure some forms of blindness and help paralysed, spine-damaged patients regain mobility; and nanotechnology will allow us to develop drug-dispensing devices no bigger than a molecule. It may sound like science fiction, but these technologies - and many others, too numerous to list here - are either available now, or at least will be in the next decade or two." |
|
