Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Nanosurgery

January 10, 2006 | Source: KurzweilAI

Nanomedicine pioneer Robert A. Freitas Jr. has written a landmark paper on nanosurgery in a peer-reviewed medical journal (“Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Nanosurgery,” Intl. J. Surgery 3, December 2005:1-4).

Freitas describes current state-of-the-art surgery using a micropipette to completely cut dendrites from single neurons without damaging cell viability, localized nanosurgical ablation of focal adhesions adjoining live mammalian epithelial cells, microtubule dissection inside yeast cells, and even nanosurgery of individual chromosomes.

He forecasts that surgical nanorobots will “find and eliminate isolated cancerous cells, perform ‘noninvasive’ tissue and organ transplants, conduct molecular repairs on traumatized extracellular and intracellular structures, and even exchange new whole chromosomes for old ones inside individual living human cells.”