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COMPUTERS, telecommunications and robots may make doctors and hospitals more efficient and safer. Biology will take medicine to places that are not even dreamed of--yet. In the past two decades scientific discoveries have turned biology from being a discipline dedicated to the passive study of life into one that can alter it at will. Biologists today believe that by tinkering with people's genes, the units of heredity, they will eventually be able to eliminate most of the diseases that now plague the world. Tomorrow, such extraordinary ambitions may seem modest, as scientists start to work on improving a person's genetic lot in life.
It all started in the early 1970s, when scientists first learnt how to clone and engineer genes. In cloning, a single gene is isolated from millions of others. Before this, scientists were confronted with the genetic equivalent of noise. Now they were free to study the structure and function of gene entities in isolation. By the end of the decade, Genentech, in San Francisco, had launched the first-ever genetically-engineered drug, human insulin. What Genentech had done was to take the cloned gene coding for human insulin and transfer it to bacteria. Genentech had synthesised a new life-form, a bug capable of making a protein foreign to itself. For centuries selective breeding has produced novel crops or cattle, but always with unpredictable results. With genetic engineering, scientists can be surer of outcomes: that a particular bacterium will produce insulin, say.
Scientists now have a rag-bag of new tricks to help them probe nature. Mike McCune of SyStemix in Palo Alto, California, an experienced geneticist, points to four other bits of cleverness crucial to the progress of biotechnology, as the new field of biology became known. On the McCune list are the cloning of pure antibodies, polymerase chain reaction, differential hybridisation and multiparameter flow cytometry. Without going into the details of what this jargon means, all four aim broadly at the same goal: to provide a better understanding of what makes nature tick. This knowledge is now being put to good effect, with the discovery of powerful new medicines.
Biotechnology has made big promises before, without delivering on its early hype. But as Glaxo's Sir Richard Sykes points out:
Just the past year has...