by Nick Kaloterakis: Nick Kaloterakis

View Photo Gallery

We´ve seen the future of medicine-and it´s tough on the eyes. The secret to radically improved health care lies at the cellular level, ground zero for disease, where everything is roughly 1,000 times as small as the period at the end of this sentence. Dial out a decade or so, and doctors will wield molecular tools to switch genes on and off, taming
diabetes and obesity, among many ills. Researchers will
harness tiny proteins to ward off any strain of influenza.
Bye-bye bird flu. Precision-guided cancer killers will lay waste to tumors without so much as grazing the surrounding healthy tissue. No more chemotherapy side effects.

From a nano-sewing kit that mends severed nerves to a genetic switch that turns off fat genes, the future of molecular medicine looks bright. And that's no small thing.

Related:

Waiting For an Arm and a Leg: The Next Generation of Artificial Limbs

In 2021 You'll Grow a New Heart