The
burgeoning field of nanotechnology has many useful and direct applications for
the medical industry, and nanorobots are no exception to this
rule. The medical science wants to create nanobots that can repair
damaged tissue without pain and trauma.
Many
of the medical procedures we employ today are very traumatic to the human body
and do not work in harmony with our natural systems.
Chemotherapy
wreaks havoc on humans and nearly kills them in the quest to kill off their
malignant cancer cells.
Invasive surgical procedures are
also quite common today, with associated traumas that cause many patients to
die on the operating table rather than survive and heal.
Nanorobots are so small that they
actually interact on the same level as bacteria and viruses do, and so they are
capable of building with the very particles of our bodies: atoms and molecules.
The ideal nanobot has not yet been
fully realized, but when this microscopic robot makes its inevitable debut it
will be hailed as a lifesaver by the world of medicine.
Some might say that today’s medical
advances are more than enough and that mankind should leave room for natural
processes. The fact of the matter is that artificial lifestyles have given rise
to all kinds of ailments that absolutely require human interference for
lifesaving purposes.
Surgery’s attendant risks are not
only inherent in the cutting and sewing done by medical staff but include
drug-related dangers as well. Patients may be allergic to anesthetics; their
organs may become infected from a variety of surgery-related sources; during an
organ transplant their body may mysteriously reject the new organ, leading to
death; and in the case of a tumor operation, even a few microscopic missed
cells can constitute complete failure to battle the cancer.
Simply put, surgeons are people—and
people are far too large and clumsy to perform the types of fine-scale
operations necessary for fixing the human body.
Drugs are little better when it
comes to finesse. Although they do have the ability to interact specifically
with the body’s molecules and cells, they operate by way of the circulatory
system. Your bloodstream is an indiscriminate cycle that delivers its contents
to many parts of the body.
Any drug administered will
automatically affect areas of the body that are perfectly healthy, and
significant doses will most likely cause unpleasant side effects. This means
that the drug which is supposed to cure you may actually leave many parts of
your body in worse shape than they were before. In this sense they have much
the same blunt effect as a surgeon’s scalpel, no matter how refined the drug.
Nanorobots, on the other hand, will
typically measure only about six atoms wide. It is anticipated that they could
be equipped with all sorts of tools and cameras in order to furnish more
extensive information about the human body. Not only that, but researchers
expect that someday they will have refined the nanobot design to the point
where nanobots can be remotely controlled in order to perform millions of
useful tasks.
Among these is the ability to float
neutrally through your bloodstream, identifying problem areas of your body and
fixing them. Nanorobots could be used to clear built-up cholesterol from your
arteries, thereby saving you from a heart attack. If the heart itself is
damaged, they work their way up to the affected area and perform micro-surgery
that you would probably not feel or notice, but which would almost certainly
save your life.
When it comes to major unsolved
diseases like cancer, nanorobots are perfect for eradicating malignant cells.
Scientists are already hard at work on nanobots that can identify and destroy
cancer at its growth site so that no trauma is inflicted anywhere else in the
body.
The capabilities of nanobots include their
function as replacement helper-T cells in a weakened immune system, thereby
greatly benefiting victims of leukemia and AIDS as well as many other such
terrible diseases.
More importantly, nanorobots’
ability to interact with materials in their most basic form may enable them to
effectively rebuild or “regrow” damaged tissue. In the same way that a
nanorobot would be able to remove microscopic particles of cholesterol or
cancer, they would also be able to rebuild individual molecules to create a new
tissue layer.
This could be particularly useful
for accident victims and others whose tissue has been extensively damaged due
to forceful trauma. In cases where a bone has been broken, researchers have
already created a “nanobone” which has all the properties of natural bone but
is also much stronger and more flexible. This invention naturally leads to the
possibility of a nanobot going in and repairing shattered or missing bones a
little at a time. It also presages innovations such as nanobots that can
rebuild or replace bone marrow, making large strides towards curing leukemia.
Nanorobots could perform a variety
of similarly miraculous functions, from eating away dead flesh at a wound site
(a task which is currently performed by maggots in many cases) to actually
re-growing tissue so that it heals cleanly and quickly without leaving a nasty
scar. Some patients even have difficulties with festering wounds, which could
be easily cleared up by an efficient medical nanorobot.
People with special needs and
diseases would be among those to benefit immensely from such remedies;
sufferers of hemophilia cannot normally clot well enough to heal and in some
cases may even bleed to death when left at the mercy of today’s conventional
medicine—but a specially-designed team of nanorobots could perhaps produce
synthetic clotting material for their wound sites in order to stop the
bleeding.
They could also perform delicate
surgical functions such as closing a split vein or a gash at the same time. No
one is really sure whether this would be more or less painful than traditional
surgical methods, but for sufferers of anesthesia allergies and those who don’t
handle surgery well because of issues like hemophilia, it could make a huge
difference.
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