One morning you struggle out of bed so dizzy you can hardly walk. Your muscles ache, your head hurts. It’s time to see the doctor.

Your doctor takes one look at you and says, “Swallow this.” She hands you a small pink pill. The pill, she tells you, contains a tiny computer that will monitor the cells in your body and send back data that she’ll use to diagnose your condition.

If this sounds like science fiction, well, it is. But it may not be for long. Thanks to a new kind of medicine based on nanotechnology (the science of the super-small), computers tiny enough to fit in a pill are just one of the marvels that are likely to be common in the next few years and decades.

Currently, to figure out what’s happening in your body, doctors need massive machines, like this magnetic resonant imaging (MRI) machine. Imagine a computer small enough to travel through your bloodstream and into your cells, checking for problems.

Welcome to a Nanoworld

Today, when you break a bone, you can look forward to weeks in an awkward, often itchy cast. But in the future, new nanomaterials, such as nanotubes, which look like tubes of chicken wire, only smaller than a human hair, may provide a strong scaffold for new bone growth and cut recovery time drastically. Nanomaterials may one day also be used to improve skin, build stronger muscles, and even create artificial organs, such as kidneys.

Broken bones rebuilt with nanotechnology will heal faster than they do today.
Thanks to nanotechnology, operating rooms of the future will be very different from the ones of today. For one thing, there’ll be a lot less blood. Instead of cutting through flesh to get at problems, surgeons will inject robots into the body and use a guidance system somewhat like an automobile’s GPS to direct the nanobots to the site. There, the robots will slip inside the damaged cells and make repairs. The cutting, if any, will take place at the molecular level, meaning shorter recovery times for patients and less risk of infections.

Surgery as we know it may become a thing of the past as tiny robotic surgeons do repair work inside your cells instead.
Nanobots will also revolutionize drug treatment. At present, for example, people with cancer are often treated with harsh chemicals that kill healthy cells as well as cancerous ones. This chemotherapy can make patients sick. But in the future, nanobots (tiny robots) with cancer sensors will hunt down and deliver drugs only to cancer cells. This precise targeting of cancer cells will mean fewer side effects for patients and better cure rates.

Nanomedicine to the Rescue?
We’ve known for a long time that diseases happen in the cells of our bodies or in the molecules that make up the cells. Nanotechnology will, for the first time, allow doctors to get inside the damaged cells to repair or remove them. And, because nanomachines and materials are so small, there is less risk of rejection by the body. They can even be engineered to look like the body’s own molecules. Amazingly, compared with other medical innovations, nanotechnology is cheap. Materials such as nanotubes and machines such as nanobots can be assembled from ordinary molecules that are available everywhere.

Forget about the side effects of drugs—you won’t get any. Nanotechnology will send tiny drug-carrying robots directly to damaged cells to deliver just the right amount of drugs to repair or eradicate those cells.
Some people warn that nanotechnology has potential for harm as well as for good. If nanomaterials can make muscles stronger, will soldiers and athletes equipped with them have an unfair advantage? If nanoprobes can locate individual damaged cells, will they find so many that everyone will be considered sick? And what happens with all the information that nanoprobes gather about people? Is there a way to keep the data secure, or will people’s privacy be violated?

Despite these concerns, scientists believe that nanomedicine is worth pursuing because it has the potential to make people healthier. While not all of the technologies you’ve read about here will materialize, they are not just science fiction. Nanotechnology is already being used in other parts of society. Some wrinkle- and stain-free clothes use nanotechnology, as do certain kinds of sunscreen and golf balls. Building on what we already know about nanotechnology, scientists are hoping for a bright future for nanomedicine, where diseases will be diagnosed early and cured.

Reflecting

1. What is the purpose of this report? How is the text organized effectively for its purpose?

2. Does this report treat both sides of the topic fairly? Use evidence from the text to support your answer.