By Tinker Ready, If your neighbor said he had a computer chip implanted in his brain, you might think he needed psychiatric help. That is, unless your neighbor is Kevin Warwick, a British researcher who spent nine days with a silicon chip in his arm and has plans to wire his brain. But his brain implant, which will attempt to feed signals from his nervous system into a computer, may portend our microscopic medical future. Ongoing research into tiny devices made possible by an emerging field called nanotechnology promises to offer an entirely new approach to healing.
Nanotechnology goes beyond electronics and computers.
While the industrialists of the world envision microscopic robots fabricating paper and steel, medical researchers are talking about tiny gadgets and chips that could alter how the brain and body work. Both of these scenarios are a long way off, but nanotechnology is already offering potential solutions to some of medicine's most vexing problems. The workings of the cell were once a black box, but recent advances in molecular biology have given scientists incredible insight into how these tiny systems operate. So, instead of throwing thousands of potential new drugs at a disease to see which one works, scientists can now design drugs to interact with biochemical triggers that make cells die, grow, or fight off disease. Nanotechnology could move that process one step further.