Blast the ailments one by one! Our quest for eternal youth.

I recently caught up with a high school chum and ol' pal on Facebook chat the other night. He works as a pharmaceutical fellow in the better Northern Nevada region. After the exchange of casual longtime-no-talk formalities, my buddy inquires to me, "Do you know anything about Nanotechnology?" The question, painted so starkly that if you did not know him, you'd believe he was excited about something that was brand spankin' new. But I know my buddy, and the question could just as easily have been, "Hey do you know anything about Toaster Ovens?" delivered with the same caustic measure. So I figured he didn't take me for a complete fool...

After less than a handful of rapid back-and-forths, we both agreed that we are likely at brinks-edge of a revolution in the medical industry. My best guesstimate placed it anywhere between the next 5 to 250 years, leaning more toward 10 to 20. But if I didn't know any better, I might have been mistaken that I had detected a hint of vocational concern behind my pals topic of chat. So I did my best to assure him that his background in chemistry would prove extremely useful in the days to come. He hastily quipped back, "Pills are obsolete man." Likely his way of firmly placing the foot in the next step of our conversation, while making a statement colored in his occasional, classic, twisted, self deprecating humor that provided many hours of late night laughs and aimless diatribes back in high school.

But I sensed where things were going here. So I offered that in the future, all medications will rely on some sort of localized delivery method in patient treatment. "Exactly!" said my friend, as he went on to inform me that Heart Disease remains America's Public Enemy Number One. Keeping pace just ahead of morbid obesity and fatal lung cancer.

Cutting to the chase, I point out that if we knock out Heart Disease, there will be another perpetrator standing in line, rearing to take the number one spot. Followed again by another promptly exclaimed, "Exactly!"

But that wasn't all. I went on to suggest an explosive convergence across several fields of research that might culminate in the development of preventive treatment methods. This toolkit may come in the form of finely tuning molecular sequences in our DNA structures. Enabled as we begin to recognize what patterns and gene-combos play roles toward enhancing longevity and thwarting the real number one killer veiled behind the curtain of accomplices - that is, the susceptibility to diseases, and usually brought about by the onslaught of aging itself.

We've already mapped the genome. And recent studies begin to yield us primitive understandings in how this stuff might all work. Probably just enough for the tinkering to really begin in upcoming years.

I've worked around software development long enough to know that if there is a bug, you go directly to the source code to stomp it out.

"No! No! No!" He retaliated.
"You are going about it all wrong!"

One of the enduring characteristics of my buddy is his ability to unabashedly and bluntly let me know when he disagrees with me.

"Blast the ailments one by one!" He declares.

"Root cause solutions?..." Ha! How un-capitalistic of me.
To recover and play it cool, I pledge "Yeah, where the hell would the Money be in that!?" Too which my pal snorted a third and final, "Exactly."

Of course even if the know-how did exist today, no one would be able to afford a solution of that magnitude, operating directly at the root of the cause. No way. Well, except for maybe the absurdly rich. And where is the market scalability in that? They makeup maybe 2-5% of the human population, with a gap constantly widening in the current economic milieu. So that's no good or lucrative.

"It'll be just like blasting rocks and punk-ass monsters in the arcade classic Asteroid..."

He's probably right. We're both probably right. With the accession of nanotech in forthcoming years, a medical revolution will arrive. And it will likely ride on the back of nanobots hauling shipments of medicine via a complex network of blood vessel highways interconnected throughout the body, and navigated via a combination of remotely controlled / pre-programmed routing routines. And the profits garnered from the industries ongoing efforts in targeting specific ailments may someday pave the path toward a holistic solution. Maybe, someday.

But just in case my initial hunch was correct and my buddy was concerned about his longer-term vocational marketability and the future of the greater Pill industry as a whole, I had to point out the obvious. Someone will need to supply all those interstate Nano-truckers traversing the endless myriad of desolate highway with some good product, right?

Coming from a background in Information Technology, on the topic of practical nanotech, I envision a huge spillover of tactical and strategic applications from the High-tech industries toward Medicine. Simply because we can already draw from a deep reservoir of knowledge and experience in solving similar types of problems within complex organisms... i.e., computer systems and huge networks. It would probably consist of augmentation to our very own immune system, complete with virus scanners, sophisticated access control rules shielding and permitting various kinds of relationships between our bodies cells, bacterial cells and other foreign elements, including medications. Or picture an ad hoc alliance between a bacteria guy and our own antibodies teaming up against a wretched virus, facilitated via nano ambassadors.

And should all this be applied through a steady march of algorithms and bio-chemical mechanisms executed and carried out by an army of nano-soldiers, suited-up and ready to serve in our intrepid expedition; then there is no doubt this campaign would be sponsored and endured by the courage and willingness of our species to seek an ever-elusive Fountain of Eternal Youth. Many men have lost their own lives in this very quest.

Now, if we have learned anything from history, it's the simple fact that nobody gets out of this thing alive. And it should be of grave concern that someday, perhaps in our quest for perpetual, indefinite youth, we abruptly jostle our genomic tree so inappropriately that a humongous branch snaps and gives way - immediately, or even worse, latently.

And should it be, do we simply all fall on the head of the human species?