Friday, August 26, 2005

The future of medicine

From the Personal Genome and Bioinformatics blog, here is a link to some predictions on the future of medicine by Leroy Hood.
I would resume his ideas to 1)you will have your own genome sequenced cheaply and 2)we will have nanotech tools in medicine.
These two things will make medicine more preventive and it will allow humans to live longer. You can say that the ideas where presented in an overly exaggerated way but both ideas have been going around for a long time and I personally see them as very probable. It would be useful to know your own genetic predispositions and I'm sure that engineered proteins and protein complexes will play a role in future treatments.

Another important point is that science should be visible to society. People like Leroy Hood and Craig Venter can sometimes come up with "funny" ways of promoting their investments/research but they also bring science closer to society.