Word: within
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...diseases of the human brain. "By the year 2020 I hope we will have an active way of treating damaged brains. If we can further understand brain-cell regeneration and harness the process intelligently, then re-creating the brain, or at least parts of the brain, may lie within our grasp. Obviously there are lots of hurdles to overcome. But if we can capture and bottle the brain's now recognized plasticity, we can cure all sorts of things, maybe even damaged psyches...
...that's just the beginning. Within a few decades, nanotechnologists predict, they will be creating machines that can do just about anything, as long as it's small. Germ-size robots will not just measure internal vital signs; they will also organize the data with molecular microcomputers and broadcast the results to a mainframe (implanted under your skin, perhaps), where the data can be analyzed for signs of disease. Nanomachines could then be sent to scour the arteries clean of dangerous plaque buildup, or aid the immune system in mopping up stray cancer cells, or even, a la Fantastic Voyage...
...given tools for detecting the earliest stages of many cancers--in some cases when they are only a few cells strong--and suppressing them before they have a chance to progress to malignancy. Beyond that, nobody can make predictions with any accuracy, but there is reason to hope that within the next 25 years new drugs will be able to ameliorate most if not all cancers and maybe even cure some of them. "We are in the midst of a complete and profound change in our development of cancer treatments," says Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute...
...Within five years, early detection will be available for many other types of cancer as well. A stool sample will be all that is needed to search for colon-cancer cells on their way to becoming tumors, and drugs like the new COX-2 inhibitors, which are improved versions of pain killers, can prevent those precancerous cells from progressing. By the end of the next decade, a simple blood test could alert doctors to a wide variety of cancer precursors...
...hodgepodge of cells containing different genetic mutations, each of which allows it to wreak a different brand of havoc. Some mutations spur rapid growth; others prod nearby blood vessels into sprouting new capillaries; still others send cancer cells out into the bloodstream, where they can seed new tumors. Within 10 years, predicts Robert Weinberg, a cancer biologist at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., "we will analyze the mutant genes and then tailor-make a treatment [for] that particular tumor...