The advances of science, particularly those in metabolism, genetics, and nanotechnology, promise unprecedented medical techniques that will revolutionize the practice of medicine in the coming years. Things like targeted drug delivery, RNA interference, patient specific therapy, gene therapy, stem cell therapy, cloning, etc, will do so much in the fight against disease. As an example, work on T-cell engineering, combined with advances in our understanding of cellular communication in the immune system, will soon allow physicians to expose immune cells to particular antigens and tell them to attack and kill any cell that has it, or not to. Imagine what such techniques could do for cancer, or organ transplantation. We could train immune cells to target specific cancer cell lines, and they will wipe them out with ease. We could transplant organs from any person into any person. This is a tiny fraction of the possibilities promised by the advances of immune based therapy, and there are so many more fields. I could go on for days about the future of modern medicine. The ability to deliver RNA molecules to specific cells is already becoming a reality. Imagine the ease with which diseases like Type I diabetes mellitus, or cystic fibrosis could be treated when we can simply stick RNA into the cell that will activate the necessary genes, or serve as a template for the missing proteins. Imagine how quickly disease like Huntington's will be wiped out.
Will the alternative practioners stay in the loop as modern science advances? If they elect the not to, how long do they really think they'll have a customer base?
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