Urgent Warnings, Breakthrough Solutions, Second Edition

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lism advances, however, clinicians
will learn to group patients into biometabolism
classes and tissue-type
groups to determine who will benefit
from a specific drug and who will
have adverse reactions. Use of biometabolism
classes and tissue-type
groups will be widespread by 2050
and result in increased drug effectiveness,
fewer negative drug reactions,
and lower drug-treatment
costs.
“Understanding how the brain operates
on an individual basis will
permit society to match the individual
to task performance, to individualize
educational programs, and to
identify and mitigate mental illness.”
14. Tissue Engineering
The creation of self-replicating biomaterials
for healing wounds and
bone fractures, including the combining
of synthetic materials and
structures with living cells, is another
area of scientific exploration.
Tissue engineering will revolutionize
body and wound repair, organ transplantation,
and surgery in general.
New polymers that satisfy safety
and effectiveness requirements are
being researched and developed for
many surgical uses, including tissue
scaffolding, bone grafts, cartilage repair,
tissue regeneration, wound repair,
and tissue joining. Soon, artificial
organs and body parts will be
available for replacement surgery.
Research programs are now under
way to develop artificial ears, hearts,
pancreases, lungs, kidneys, livers,
and legs.
15. Neurotechnology
Neuroscientists have developed a
set of scanners capable of determin-
ing how and where the brain performs
specific functions. The new
brain-scanning and brain-mapping
tools are opening up a whole new
understanding of how humans think
and act. Using them, researchers can
observe brain activity, measure its
intensity, chart the general pattern of
brain operation, and identify the
type of chemical reactions occurring
in the brain.
Brain-scanning technology will
soon be upgraded by the use of
atomic magnetometer sensors—a
new magnetic sensor technology
that uses cesium vapor as a sensing
element. These devices are 100 times
more sensitive and 1,000 times faster
than present sensor elements. They
will, with time, better discern how
people think, how the brain performs
tasks, how thought processes
differ among individuals, and what
those differences mean in relation to
task performance and personality.
The new knowledge of brain operation
and its effects
will be one of the
major, socially transforming
events of
the twenty-first century.
Understanding
how the brain operates
on an individual
basis will permit
society to match the
individual to task
performance, to individualize
educational
programs,
and to identify and
mitigate mental illness.
16. Neuropharmacology
We can now see the operation of
the brain. We can also systematically
study and measure the effects of nutrients,
micronutrients, and drug
treatments on the brain and on various
mental conditions. This has led
to the new science of neuropharmacology—the
study of how we change
the brain’s operation through the use
of drugs, food, and other nutrients,
micronutrients, and proteins. Over
time, this field will apply knowledge
of the brain’s biochemical operations
to systematically treat mental disorders
and mental conditions
pharma ceutically, as well as enhance
people’s natural mental abilities.
17. Cellulose-to-Glucose
Process
One of the major goals of the biotech
and chemical industry is the
production of glucose, the principal
food of many microorganisms, from
cellulose. If cheap, plentiful glucose
were available, microbes could be
genetically engineered to make almost
anything. An economical cellulose-to-glucose
process would revolutionize
the world’s chemical
industries and allow the conversion
of much agricultural cellulose-based
waste into useful raw materials.
18. Nanotechnology
Instrumentation has begun to permit
us to see and manipulate matter
at a nano level—10 -6 to 10 -9 meter—
the level of atoms and molecules.
This has created the new field of
nanotechnology. The ability to create
smaller structures using modern
chip-manufacturing technology will
permit us to change and modify materials
one atom or molecule at a
time and to develop super-fine powders,
quantum dots, and nanotubes.
These capabilities have now started
to shrink things into the “upper
nano” range—a range that advancements
in production technology will
push us into over the next 10 to 15
years. The scale of objects will continue
to shrink, and some useful
upper- nanoscale devices and phenomena
will be developed and deployed.
19.
Chaos Theory and
Complexity Models
Our world is much more complex,
interconnected, and dynamic than
we once thought. New mathematical
concepts are challenging the rationalized,
deterministic, scientific
models of the Industrial Age. The Industrial
Age paradigm held that
there is one best way to organize a
given thing and that, in all cases, a
given “rational” outcome is predetermined
by nature. The new scientific
paradigm will ultimately replace
this older mentality.
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