History of the development of medical physics. Mind reading device. Siberian scientists have developed a valve prosthesis for children's hearts

Doctor of Biological Sciences Y. PETRENKO.

A few years ago, the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine was opened at Moscow State University, which trains doctors with broad knowledge in the natural disciplines: mathematics, physics, chemistry, and molecular biology. But the question of how fundamental knowledge is necessary for a doctor continues to cause heated debate.

Science and life // Illustrations

Among the symbols of medicine depicted on the pediments of the library building of the Russian State Medical University are hope and healing.

A wall painting in the foyer of the Russian State Medical University, which depicts the great doctors of the past, sitting in thought at one long table.

W. Gilbert (1544-1603), court physician to the Queen of England, naturalist who discovered terrestrial magnetism.

T. Jung (1773-1829), famous English physician and physicist, one of the creators of the wave theory of light.

J.-B. L. Foucault (1819-1868), French physician who was fond of physical research. With the help of a 67-meter pendulum, he proved the rotation of the Earth around its axis and made many discoveries in the field of optics and magnetism.

JR Mayer (1814-1878), German physician who established the basic principles of the law of conservation of energy.

G. Helmholtz (1821-1894), German doctor, studied physiological optics and acoustics, formulated the theory of free energy.

Is it necessary to teach physics to future doctors? Recently, this question has been of concern to many, and not only those who train professionals in the field of medicine. As usual, two extreme opinions exist and clash. Those who are in favor paint a gloomy picture, which was the result of a neglect of basic disciplines in education. Those who are "against" believe that a humanitarian approach should dominate in medicine and that a doctor should first of all be a psychologist.

Modern theoretical and practical medicine has achieved great success, and physical knowledge has greatly helped her in this. But in scientific articles and journalism, voices about the crisis of medicine in general and medical education in particular do not cease to sound. There are definitely facts testifying to the crisis - this is the appearance of "divine" healers, and the revival of exotic healing methods. Spells such as "abracadabra" and amulets like the frog's leg are back in use, as in prehistoric times. Neovitalism is gaining popularity, one of the founders of which, Hans Driesch, believed that the essence of life phenomena is entelechy (a kind of soul), acting outside of time and space, and that living things cannot be reduced to a set of physical and chemical phenomena. Recognition of entelechy as a vital force denies the importance of physical and chemical disciplines for medicine.

Many examples can be cited of how pseudoscientific ideas replace and displace genuine scientific knowledge. Why is this happening? According to Francis Crick, a Nobel laureate and discoverer of the DNA structure, when a society becomes very rich, young people show a reluctance to work: they prefer to live an easy life and do trifles like astrology. This is true not only for rich countries.

As for the crisis in medicine, it can be overcome only by raising the level of fundamentality. It is usually believed that fundamentality is a higher level of generalization of scientific ideas, in this case, ideas about human nature. But even on this path one can reach paradoxes, for example, to consider a person as a quantum object, completely abstracting from the physicochemical processes occurring in the body.

No one denies that the patient's belief in healing plays an important, sometimes even decisive role (recall the placebo effect). So what kind of doctor does the patient need? Confidently pronouncing: "You will be healthy" or pondering for a long time which medicine to choose in order to get the maximum effect and at the same time do no harm?

According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, the famous English scientist, thinker and physician Thomas Jung (1773-1829) often froze in indecision at the bedside of the patient, hesitated in establishing a diagnosis, often fell silent for a long time, plunging into himself. He honestly and painfully searched for the truth in the most complex and confusing subject, about which he wrote: "There is no science that surpasses medicine in complexity. It goes beyond the limits of the human mind."

From the point of view of psychology, the doctor-thinker does not correspond much to the image of the ideal doctor. He lacks courage, arrogance, peremptoryness, often characteristic of the ignorant. Probably, this is the nature of a person: having fallen ill, rely on the quick and energetic actions of the doctor, and not on reflection. But, as Goethe said, "there is nothing more terrible than active ignorance." Jung, as a doctor, did not acquire great popularity among patients, but among his colleagues his authority was high.

Know yourself and you will know the whole world. The first is medicine, the second is physics. Initially, the relationship between medicine and physics was close; it was not without reason that joint congresses of natural scientists and doctors took place until the beginning of the 20th century. And by the way, physics was largely created by doctors, and they were often prompted to research by questions that medicine posed.

Physicians-thinkers of antiquity were the first to think about the question of what heat is. They knew that a person's health is related to the warmth of his body. The great Galen (II century AD) introduced the concepts of "temperature" and "degree", which became fundamental for physics and other disciplines. So the doctors of antiquity laid the foundations of the science of heat and invented the first thermometers.

William Gilbert (1544-1603), physician to the Queen of England, studied the properties of magnets. He called the Earth a big magnet, proved it experimentally and came up with a model to describe the earth's magnetism.

Thomas Jung, who has already been mentioned, was a practicing physician, but he also made great discoveries in many areas of physics. He is rightfully considered, along with Fresnel, the creator of wave optics. By the way, it was Jung who discovered one of the visual defects - color blindness (the inability to distinguish between red and green colors). Ironically, this discovery immortalized in medicine the name of not the physician Jung, but the physicist Dalton, who was the first to discover this defect.

Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878), who made a huge contribution to the discovery of the law of conservation of energy, served as a doctor on the Dutch ship Java. He treated sailors with bloodletting, which was considered at that time a remedy for all diseases. On this occasion, they even joked that the doctors released more human blood than it was spilled on the battlefields in the entire history of mankind. Meyer noted that when a ship is in the tropics, venous blood is almost as light as arterial blood during bloodletting (usually venous blood is darker). He suggested that the human body, like a steam engine, in the tropics, at high air temperatures, consumes less "fuel", and therefore emits less "smoke", so venous blood brightens. In addition, after thinking about the words of one navigator that during storms the water in the sea heats up, Meyer came to the conclusion that there must be a certain relationship between work and heat everywhere. He expressed the provisions that formed the basis of the law of conservation of energy.

The outstanding German scientist Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894), also a doctor, independently of Mayer formulated the law of conservation of energy and expressed it in a modern mathematical form, which is still used by everyone who studies and uses physics. In addition, Helmholtz made great discoveries in the field of electromagnetic phenomena, thermodynamics, optics, acoustics, as well as in the physiology of vision, hearing, nervous and muscular systems, invented a number of important devices. Having received a medical education and being a professional physician, he tried to apply physics and mathematics to physiological research. At the age of 50, a professional doctor became a professor of physics, and in 1888 - director of the Physics and Mathematics Institute in Berlin.

The French physician Jean-Louis Poiseuille (1799-1869) experimentally studied the power of the heart as a pump that pumps blood, and investigated the laws of blood movement in the veins and capillaries. Summarizing the results obtained, he derived a formula that turned out to be extremely important for physics. For services to physics, the unit of dynamic viscosity, the poise, is named after him.

The picture showing the contribution of medicine to the development of physics looks quite convincing, but a few more strokes can be added to it. Any motorist has heard of a cardan shaft that transmits rotational motion at different angles, but few people know that it was invented by the Italian doctor Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576). The famous Foucault pendulum, which preserves the plane of oscillation, bears the name of the French scientist Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault (1819-1868), a doctor by education. The famous Russian doctor Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829-1905), whose name the Moscow State Medical Academy bears, studied physical chemistry and established an important physical and chemical law that describes the change in the solubility of gases in an aqueous medium depending on the presence of electrolytes in it. This law is still being studied by students, and not only in medical universities.

Unlike doctors of the past, many medical students today simply do not understand why they are taught the sciences. I remember one story from my practice. Intense silence, sophomores of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of Moscow State University write a test. The topic is photobiology and its application in medicine. Note that photobiological approaches based on the physical and chemical principles of the action of light on matter are now recognized as the most promising for the treatment of oncological diseases. Ignorance of this section, its basics is a serious damage in medical education. The questions are not too complicated, everything is within the framework of the material of lectures and seminars. But the result is disappointing: almost half of the students received deuces. And for everyone who did not cope with the task, one thing is characteristic - they did not teach physics at school or taught it through their sleeves. For some, this subject inspires real horror. In a stack of test papers, I came across a sheet of poetry. The student, unable to answer the questions, complained in poetic form that she had to cram not Latin (the eternal torment of medical students), but physics, and at the end she exclaimed: "What to do? After all, we are doctors, we cannot understand the formulas!" The young poetess, who in her poems called the control "doomsday", could not stand the test of physics and eventually transferred to the Faculty of Humanities.

When students, future doctors, operate on a rat, it would never occur to anyone to ask why this is necessary, although human and rat organisms differ quite a lot. Why future doctors need physics is not so obvious. But can a doctor who does not understand the basic laws of physics competently work with the most complex diagnostic equipment that modern clinics are "stuffed" with? By the way, many students, having overcome the first failures, begin to engage in biophysics with enthusiasm. At the end of the academic year, when such topics as "Molecular systems and their chaotic states", "New analytical principles of pH-metry", "Physical nature of chemical transformations of substances", "Antioxidant regulation of lipid peroxidation processes" were studied, sophomores wrote: "We discovered the fundamental laws that determine the basis of the living and, possibly, the universe. We discovered them not on the basis of speculative theoretical constructions, but in a real objective experiment. It was difficult for us, but interesting." Perhaps among these guys there are future Fedorovs, Ilizarovs, Shumakovs.

“The best way to study something is to discover it yourself,” said the German physicist and writer Georg Lichtenberg. “What you were forced to discover yourself leaves a path in your mind that you can use again when the need arises.” This most effective teaching principle is as old as the world. It underlies the "Socratic method" and is called the principle of active learning. It is on this principle that the teaching of biophysics at the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine is built.

Fundamentality for medicine is the key to its current viability and future development. It is possible to truly achieve the goal by considering the body as a system of systems and following the path of a more in-depth understanding of its physico-chemical understanding. What about medical education? The answer is clear: to increase the level of knowledge of students in the field of physics and chemistry. In 1992, the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine was established at Moscow State University. The goal was not only to return medicine to the university, but also, without reducing the quality of medical training, to sharply strengthen the natural-scientific knowledge base of future doctors. Such a task requires intensive work of both teachers and students. Students are expected to consciously choose fundamental medicine over conventional medicine.

Even earlier, a serious attempt in this direction was the creation of a medical-biological faculty at the Russian State Medical University. For 30 years of the faculty's work, a large number of medical specialists have been trained: biophysicists, biochemists and cybernetics. But the problem of this faculty is that until now its graduates could only engage in medical scientific research, not having the right to treat patients. Now this problem is being solved - at the Russian State Medical University, together with the Institute for Advanced Training of Doctors, an educational and scientific complex has been created, which allows senior students to undergo additional medical training.

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by many discoveries in the field of medicine, which were written about in science fiction novels 10-20 years ago, and patients themselves could only dream of. And although many of these discoveries are waiting for a long road of introduction into clinical practice, they no longer belong to the category of conceptual developments, but are actually working devices, albeit not yet widely used in medical practice.

1. Artificial heart AbioCor

In July 2001, a group of surgeons from Louisville, Kentucky managed to implant a new generation artificial heart into a patient. The device, dubbed the AbioCor, was implanted in a man who was suffering from heart failure. The artificial heart was developed by Abiomed, Inc. Although similar devices have been used before, the AbioCor is the most advanced of its kind.

In previous versions, the patient had to be attached to a huge console through tubes and wires that were implanted through the skin. This meant that the person remained chained to the bed. AbioCor, on the other hand, exists completely autonomously inside the human body, and it does not need additional tubes or wires that go outside.

2. Bioartificial liver

The idea of ​​creating a bioartificial liver came up with Dr. Kenneth Matsumura, who decided to take a fresh approach to the issue. The scientist has created a device that uses liver cells collected from animals. The device is considered bioartificial because it consists of biological and artificial material. In 2001, the bioartificial liver was named TIME magazine's Invention of the Year.

3. Tablet with a camera

With the help of such a pill, you can diagnose cancer at the earliest stages. The device was created with the aim of obtaining high-quality color images in limited spaces. The camera pill can detect signs of esophageal cancer and is approximately the width of an adult fingernail and twice as long.

4. Bionic contact lenses

Bionic contact lenses were developed by researchers at the University of Washington. They managed to combine elastic contact lenses with printed electronic circuitry. This invention helps the user to see the world by overlaying computerized pictures on top of their own vision. According to the inventors, bionic contact lenses can be useful for chauffeurs and pilots, showing them routes, weather information or vehicles. In addition, these contact lenses can monitor a person's physical indicators such as cholesterol levels, the presence of bacteria and viruses. The collected data can be sent to a computer via wireless transmission.

5. Bionic arm iLIMB

Created by David Gow in 2007, the iLIMB bionic hand was the world's first artificial limb to feature five individually mechanized fingers. Users of the device will be able to pick up objects of various shapes - for example, the handles of cups. iLIMB consists of 3 separate parts: 4 fingers, thumb and palm. Each of the parts contains its own control system.

6. Robot assistants during operations

Surgeons have been using robotic arms for some time, but now there is a robot that can perform the operation on its own. A group of scientists from Duke University has already tested the robot. They used it on a dead turkey (because turkey meat has a similar texture to human). The success of robots is estimated at 93%. Of course, it is too early to talk about autonomous surgical robots, but this invention is a major step in this direction.

7 Mind Reader

"Mind reading" is a term used by psychologists to refer to the subconscious detection and analysis of non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions or head movements. Such signals help people understand each other's emotional state. This invention is the brainchild of three scientists from the MIT Media Lab. The mind-reading machine scans the user's brain signals and notifies those with whom it communicates. The device can be used to work with autistic people.

8. Elekta Axesse

Elekta Axesse is a state of the art anti-cancer device. It was created to treat tumors throughout the body - in the spine, lungs, prostate, liver and many others. Elekta Axesse combines several functionalities. The device can produce stereotactic radiosurgery, stereotactic radiotherapy, radiosurgery. During treatment, doctors have the opportunity to observe a 3D image of the area to be treated.

9. Exoskeleton eLEGS

The eLEGS exoskeleton is one of the most impressive inventions of the 21st century. It is easy to use and patients can wear it not only in the hospital but also at home. The device allows you to stand, walk and even climb stairs. The exoskeleton is suitable for people with a height of 157 cm to 193 cm and a weight of up to 100 kg.

ten . eye scribe

This device is designed to help people who are bedridden communicate. The Eyepiece is a joint creation of researchers from the Ebeling Group, the Not Impossible Foundation, and the Graffiti Research Lab. The technology is based on cheap eye-tracking goggles powered by open source software. These glasses allow people suffering from neuromuscular syndrome to communicate by drawing or writing on the screen by capturing eye movement and converting it into lines on the display.

Ekaterina Martynenko

In the middle of the nineteenth century there were many amazing discoveries. As surprising as it may sound, a huge part of these discoveries was made in a dream. Therefore, here even skeptics are at a loss, and find it difficult to say anything to refute the existence of visionary or prophetic dreams. Many scientists have studied this phenomenon. The German physicist, doctor, physiologist and psychologist Hermann Helmolz in his research came to the conclusion that in search of truth a person accumulates knowledge, then he analyzes and comprehends the information received, and after that comes the most important stage - insight, which so often happens in a dream. It was in this way that insight came to many pioneering scientists. Now we give you the opportunity to get acquainted with some of the discoveries made in a dream.

French philosopher, mathematician, mechanic, physicist and physiologist Rene Descartes All his life he maintained that there is nothing mysterious in the world that could not be understood. However, there was still one inexplicable phenomenon in his life. This phenomenon was prophetic dreams that he had at the age of twenty-three, and which helped him make a number of discoveries in various fields of science. On the night of November 10-11, 1619, Descartes saw three prophetic dreams. The first dream was about how a strong whirlwind rips him out of the walls of the church and college, carrying him away in the direction of a refuge where he is no longer afraid of either the wind or other forces of nature. In the second dream, he is watching a powerful storm, and understands that as soon as he manages to consider the cause of the origin of this hurricane, he immediately subsides and cannot do him any harm. And in the third dream, Descartes reads a Latin poem that begins with the words “Which way should I follow the path of life?”. Waking up, Descartes realized that he had discovered the key to the true foundation of all sciences.

Danish theoretical physicist, one of the founders of modern physics Niels Bohr since his school years he showed interest in physics and mathematics, and at the University of Copenhagen he defended his first works. But the most important discovery he managed to make in a dream. He thought for a long time in search of a theory of the structure of the atom, and one day a dream dawned on him. In this dream, Bor was on a red-hot clot of fiery gas - the Sun, around which planets revolved, connected with it by threads. Then the gas solidified, and the "Sun" and "planets" sharply decreased. Waking up, Bohr realized that this was the model of the atom that he had been trying to discover for so long. The sun was the core around which the electrons (planets) revolved! This discovery later became the basis of all Bohr's scientific work. The theory laid the foundation for atomic physics, which brought Niels Bohr worldwide recognition and the Nobel Prize. But soon, during the Second World War, Bohr somewhat regretted his discovery, which could be used as a weapon against humanity.

Until 1936, doctors believed that nerve impulses in the body were transmitted by an electrical wave. A breakthrough in medicine was the discovery Otto Loewy- Austrian-German and American pharmacologist, who in 1936 won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. At a young age, Otto first suggested that nerve impulses are transmitted through chemical mediators. But since no one listened to the young student, the theory remained on the sidelines. But in 1921, seventeen years after the initial theory was put forward, on the eve of Easter Sunday, Loewy woke up at night, in his own words, “scribbled a few notes on a piece of thin paper. In the morning I couldn't decipher my scribbles. The next night, exactly at three o'clock, the same thought again dawned on me. This was the design of an experiment designed to determine whether the hypothesis of chemical momentum transfer, which I put forward 17 years ago, is correct. I immediately got out of bed, went to the laboratory and set up a simple experiment on the heart of a frog in accordance with the scheme that arose at night. Thus, thanks to a night dream, Otto Loewy continued to research his theory and proved to the whole world that impulses are transmitted not by an electrical wave, but by means of chemical mediators.

German organic chemist Friedrich August Kekule declared publicly that he made his discovery in chemistry thanks to a prophetic dream. For many years he tried to find the molecular structure of benzene, which was part of natural oil, but this discovery did not succumb to him. He thought about solving the problem day and night. Sometimes he even dreamed that he had already discovered the structure of benzene. But these visions were only the result of the work of his overloaded consciousness. But one night, in the night of 1865, Kekule was sitting at home near the fireplace and quietly dozed off. Later, he himself spoke about his dream: “I was sitting and writing a textbook, but the work did not move, my thoughts hovered somewhere far away. I turned my chair towards the fire and dozed off. The atoms jumped before my eyes again. This time the small groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye could now make out long lines writhing like snakes. But look! One of the snakes grabbed its own tail and, in this form, as if teasingly, spun in front of my eyes. It was as if a flash of lightning woke me up: and this time I spent the rest of the night working out the consequences of the hypothesis. As a result, he found out that benzene is nothing more than a ring of six carbon atoms. At that time, this discovery was a revolution in chemistry.

Today, everyone has probably heard that the famous Periodic Table of Chemical Elements Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was seen by him in a dream. But not everyone knows how it actually happened. This dream became known from the words of a friend of the great scientist A. A. Inostrantsev. He said that Dmitry Ivanovich worked for a very long time on systematizing all the chemical elements known at that time in one table. He clearly saw the structure of the table, but had no idea how to put so many elements there. In search of a solution to the problem, he could not even sleep. On the third day, he fell asleep from exhaustion right at the workplace. Immediately he saw in a dream a table in which all the elements were arranged correctly. He woke up and quickly wrote down what he saw on a piece of paper that was at hand. As it turned out later, the table was made almost perfectly correctly, taking into account the data on chemical elements that existed at that time. Dmitry Ivanovich made only some adjustments.

German anatomist and physiologist, professor at Derpt (Tartu) (1811) and Koenigsberg (1814) universities - Carl Friedrich Burdach attached great importance to his dreams. Through dreams he made a discovery about the circulation of the blood. He wrote that in a dream scientific guesses often occurred to him, which seemed to him very important, and from this he woke up. Such dreams mostly happened during the summer months. Basically, these dreams related to the subjects that he was studying at that time. But sometimes he dreamed of things that at that time he did not even think about. Here is the story of Burdakh himself: “... in 1811, when I still firmly adhered to the usual views on blood circulation and I was not influenced by the views of any other person on this issue, and I myself, generally speaking, was busy with completely different things , I dreamed that the blood flows by its own power and for the first time sets the heart in motion, so that to consider the latter as the cause of the movement of blood is the same as explaining the flow of a stream by the action of a mill, which it is he who sets in motion. Through this dream, the idea of ​​blood circulation was born. Later, in 1837, Friedrich Burdach published his work entitled "Anthropology, or Consideration of Human Nature from Various Sides", which contained information about blood, its composition and purpose, about the organs of blood circulation, transformation and respiration.

After the death of a close friend who died of diabetes in 1920, a Canadian scientist Frederick Grant Banting decided to devote his life to creating a cure for this terrible disease. He began by studying the literature on this issue. Moses Barron's article "On the blockade of the pancreatic duct by gallstones" made a very big impression on the young scientist, as a result of which he had a famous dream. In this dream, he understood how to act correctly. Waking up in the middle of the night, Banting wrote down the procedure for conducting the experiment on a dog: “Ligate the pancreatic ducts in dogs. Wait six to eight weeks. Delete and extract." Very soon he brought the experiment to life. The results of the experiment were amazing. Frederick Banting discovered the hormone insulin, which is still used as the main drug in the treatment of diabetes. In 1923, 32-year-old Frederick Banting (together with John McLeod) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, becoming the youngest winner. And in honor of Banting, World Diabetes Day is celebrated on his birthday, November 14th.

HISTORY OF MEDICINE:
MILESTONES AND GREAT DISCOVERIES

According to Discovery Channel
("Discovery Channel")

Medical discoveries have changed the world. They changed the course of history, saving countless lives, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge to the frontiers on which we stand today, ready for new great discoveries.

human anatomy

In ancient Greece, the treatment of disease was based more on philosophy than on a true understanding of human anatomy. Surgical intervention was rare, and the dissection of corpses was not yet practiced. As a result, doctors had practically no information about the internal structure of a person. It was not until the Renaissance that anatomy emerged as a science.

Belgian physician Andreas Vesalius shocked many when he decided to study anatomy by dissecting cadavers. Material for research had to be mined under the cover of night. Scientists like Vesalius had to resort to not entirely legal methods. When Vesalius became a professor at Padua, he struck up a friendship with an executioner. Vesalius decided to pass on the experience gained over years of skillful dissection by writing a book on human anatomy. So the book "On the structure of the human body" appeared. Published in 1538, the book is considered one of the greatest works in the field of medicine, as well as one of the greatest discoveries, as it gives the first correct description of the structure of the human body. This was the first serious challenge to the authority of ancient Greek doctors. The book sold out in huge numbers. It was bought by educated people, even far from medicine. The entire text is very meticulously illustrated. So information about human anatomy has become much more accessible. Thanks to Vesalius, the study of human anatomy through dissection became an integral part of the training of physicians. And that brings us to the next great discovery.

Circulation

The human heart is a muscle the size of a fist. It beats more than a hundred thousand times a day, over seventy years - that's more than two billion heartbeats. The heart pumps 23 liters of blood per minute. Blood flows through the body, passing through a complex system of arteries and veins. If all the blood vessels in the human body are stretched in one line, then you get 96 thousand kilometers, which is more than twice the circumference of the Earth. Until the beginning of the 17th century, the process of blood circulation was incorrectly represented. The prevailing theory was that blood flowed to the heart through pores in the soft tissues of the body. Among the adherents of this theory was the English physician William Harvey. The work of the heart fascinated him, but the more he observed the heartbeat in animals, the more he realized that the generally accepted theory of blood circulation is simply wrong. He unequivocally writes: "... I thought, can't the blood move, as if in a circle?" And the very first phrase in the next paragraph: “Later I found out that this is the way it is ...”. Through autopsies, Harvey discovered that the heart has unidirectional valves that allow blood to flow in only one direction. Some valves let in blood, others let it out. And it was a great discovery. Harvey realized that the heart pumps blood into the arteries, then it passes through the veins and, closing the circle, returns to the heart, then to begin the cycle again. Today it seems like a common truth, but for the 17th century, the discovery of William Harvey was revolutionary. It was a devastating blow to established medical concepts. At the end of his treatise, Harvey writes: "In thinking of the incalculable consequences this will have for medicine, I see a field of almost limitless possibilities."
Harvey's discovery seriously advanced anatomy and surgery, and simply saved many lives. All over the world, surgical clamps are used in operating rooms to block the flow of blood and keep the patient's circulatory system intact. And each of them is a reminder of the great discovery of William Harvey.

Blood groups

Another great blood-related discovery was made in Vienna in 1900. Enthusiasm for blood transfusions filled Europe. First there were claims that the healing effect was amazing, and then, after a few months, reports of the dead. Why is sometimes the transfusion successful and sometimes not? Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner was determined to find the answer. He mixed blood samples from different donors and studied the results.
In some cases, the blood mixed successfully, but in others it coagulated and became viscous. Upon closer inspection, Landsteiner discovered that blood clots when specific proteins in the recipient's blood, called antibodies, react with other proteins in the donor's red blood cells, known as antigens. For Landsteiner, this was a turning point. He realized that not all human blood is the same. It turned out that blood can be clearly divided into 4 groups, which he gave the designations: A, B, AB and zero. It turned out that a blood transfusion is successful only if a person is transfused with blood of the same group. Landsteiner's discovery was immediately reflected in medical practice. A few years later, blood transfusions were already being practiced all over the world, saving many lives. Thanks to the exact determination of the blood group, by the 50s, organ transplants became possible. Today, in the United States alone, a blood transfusion is performed every 3 seconds. Without it, about 4.5 million Americans would die every year.

Anesthesia

Although the first great discoveries in the field of anatomy allowed doctors to save many lives, they could not alleviate the pain. Without anesthesia, the surgeries were a nightmare. Patients were held or tied to a table, surgeons tried to work as quickly as possible. In 1811, a woman wrote: “When the terrible steel plunged into me, cutting through the veins, arteries, flesh, nerves, I no longer needed to be asked not to interfere. I screamed and screamed until it was all over. The pain was so unbearable." Surgery was the last resort, many preferred to die than go under the surgeon's knife. For centuries, improvised remedies have been used to relieve pain during operations, some of them, such as opium or mandrake extract, were drugs. By the 40s of the 19th century, several people were looking for a more effective anesthetic at once: two Boston dentists, William Morton and Horost Wells, acquaintances, and a doctor named Crawford Long from Georgia.
They experimented with two substances that were believed to relieve pain - with nitrous oxide, which is also laughing gas, and also with a liquid mixture of alcohol and sulfuric acid. The question of who exactly discovered anesthesia remains controversial, all three claimed it. One of the first public demonstrations of anesthesia took place on October 16, 1846. W. Morton experimented with ether for months, trying to find a dosage that would allow the patient to undergo surgery without pain. To the general public, which consisted of Boston surgeons and medical students, he presented the device of his invention.
A patient who was to have a tumor removed from his neck was given ether. Morton waited while the surgeon made the first incision. Amazingly, the patient did not cry. After the operation, the patient reported that all this time he did not feel anything. The news of the discovery spread throughout the world. You can operate without pain, now there is anesthesia. But, despite the discovery, many refused to use anesthesia. According to some creeds, pain should be endured, not relieved, especially labor pains. But Queen Victoria had her say here. In 1853 she gave birth to Prince Leopold. At her request, she was given chloroform. It turned out to ease the pain of childbirth. After that, the women began to say: “I will also take chloroform, because if the queen does not disdain them, then I am not ashamed.”

X-rays

It is impossible to imagine life without the next great discovery. Imagine that we do not know where to operate on the patient, or what kind of bone is broken, where the bullet is lodged, and what the pathology might be. The ability to look inside a person without cutting them open was a turning point in the history of medicine. At the end of the 19th century, people used electricity without really understanding what it was. In 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen experimented with a cathode ray tube, a glass cylinder with highly rarefied air inside. Roentgen was interested in the glow created by the rays emanating from the tube. For one of the experiments, Roentgen surrounded the tube with black cardboard and darkened the room. Then he turned on the phone. And then, one thing struck him - the photographic plate in his laboratory glowed. Roentgen realized that something very unusual was happening. And that the beam emanating from the tube is not a cathode ray at all; he also found that it did not respond to a magnet. And it couldn't be deflected by a magnet like cathode rays. This was a completely unknown phenomenon, and Roentgen called it "X-rays." Quite by accident, Roentgen discovered radiation unknown to science, which we call X-ray. For several weeks he acted very mysterious, and then called his wife into the office and said: "Berta, let me show you what I do here, because no one will believe it." He put her hand under the beam and took a picture.
The wife is said to have said, "I saw my death." Indeed, in those days it was impossible to see the skeleton of a person if he had not died. The very idea of ​​capturing the internal structure of a living person simply did not fit in my head. It was as if a secret door had opened, and the whole universe opened up behind it. X-ray discovered a new, powerful technology that revolutionized the field of diagnostics. The discovery of X-rays is the only discovery in the history of science that was made unintentionally, completely by chance. As soon as it was done, the world immediately adopted it without any debate. In a week or two, our world has changed. Many of the most advanced and powerful technologies rely on the discovery of X-rays, from computed tomography to the X-ray telescope, which captures X-rays from the depths of space. And all this is due to a discovery made by accident.

The germ theory of disease

Some discoveries, for example, X-rays, are made by accident, others are worked on for a long time and hard by various scientists. So it was in 1846. Vein. The epitome of beauty and culture, but the ghost of death hovers in the Vienna City Hospital. Many of the mothers who were here were dying. The cause is puerperal fever, an infection of the uterus. When Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis started working in this hospital, he was alarmed by the scale of the disaster and puzzled by the strange inconsistency: there were two departments.
In one, births were attended by doctors, and in the other, births to mothers were attended by midwives. Semmelweis found that in the department where the doctors took delivery, 7% of women in childbirth died from the so-called puerperal fever. And in the department where midwives worked, only 2% died of puerperal fever. This surprised him, because doctors have much better training. Semmelweis decided to find out what was the reason. He noticed that one of the main differences in the work of doctors and midwives was that doctors performed autopsies on dead women in childbirth. Then they went to deliver babies or see mothers without even washing their hands. Semmelweis wondered if doctors were carrying some invisible particles on their hands, which were then transferred to patients and caused death. To find out, he conducted an experiment. He decided to make sure that all medical students were required to wash their hands in bleach solution. And the number of deaths immediately fell to 1%, lower than that of midwives. Through this experiment, Semmelweis realized that infectious diseases, in this case, puerperal fever, have only one cause, and if it is excluded, the disease will not arise. But in 1846, no one saw a connection between bacteria and infection. Semmelweis' ideas were not taken seriously.

Another 10 years passed before another scientist paid attention to microorganisms. His name was Louis Pasteur. Three of Pasteur's five children died of typhoid fever, which partly explains why he searched so hard for the cause of infectious diseases. Pasteur was on the right track with his work for the wine and brewing industries. Pasteur tried to find out why only a small part of the wine produced in his country spoiled. He discovered that in sour wine there are special microorganisms, microbes, and it is they who make the wine sour. But by simply heating, as Pasteur showed, the microbes can be killed and the wine saved. Thus pasteurization was born. So when it came to finding the cause of infectious diseases, Pasteur knew where to look. It is microbes, he said, that cause certain diseases, and he proved this by conducting a series of experiments from which a great discovery was born - the theory of microbial development of organisms. Its essence lies in the fact that certain microorganisms cause a certain disease in anyone.

Vaccination

The next great discovery was made in the 18th century, when about 40 million people died of smallpox worldwide. Doctors could not find either the cause of the disease or the remedy for it. But in one English village, rumors that some of the locals were not susceptible to smallpox caught the attention of a local doctor named Edward Jenner.

Dairy workers were rumored not to get smallpox because they had already had cowpox, a related but milder disease that affected livestock. In cowpox patients, the temperature rose and sores appeared on the hands. Jenner studied this phenomenon and wondered if the pus from these sores somehow protected the body from smallpox? On May 14, 1796, during an outbreak of smallpox, he decided to test his theory. Jenner took liquid from a sore on the hand of a milkmaid with cowpox. Then, he visited another family; there he injected a healthy eight-year-old boy with the vaccinia virus. In the days that followed, the boy had a slight fever and several smallpox blisters appeared. Then he got better. Jenner returned six weeks later. This time, he inoculated the boy with smallpox and began to wait for the experiment to turn out - victory or failure. A few days later, Jenner received an answer - the boy was completely healthy and immune to smallpox.
The invention of smallpox vaccination revolutionized medicine. This was the first attempt to intervene in the course of the disease, preventing it in advance. For the first time, man-made products were actively used to prevent illness before its onset.
Fifty years after Jenner's discovery, Louis Pasteur developed the idea of ​​vaccination, developing a vaccine for rabies in humans and anthrax in sheep. And in the 20th century, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin independently developed the polio vaccine.

vitamins

The next discovery was the work of scientists who for many years independently struggled with the same problem.
Throughout history, scurvy has been a severe disease that has caused skin lesions and bleeding in sailors. Finally, in 1747, the Scottish ship's surgeon James Lind found a cure for it. He discovered that scurvy could be prevented by including citrus fruits in the diet of sailors.

Another common illness among sailors was beriberi, a disease that affected the nerves, heart, and digestive tract. In the late 19th century, the Dutch physician Christian Eijkman determined that the disease was caused by eating white polished rice instead of brown, unpolished rice.

Although both of these discoveries pointed to the connection of diseases with nutrition and its deficiencies, what this connection was, only the English biochemist Frederick Hopkins could figure out. He suggested that the body needs substances that are only in certain foods. To prove his hypothesis, Hopkins conducted a series of experiments. He gave mice artificial nutrition, consisting exclusively of pure proteins, fats, carbohydrates and salts. The mice became weak and stopped growing. But after a small amount of milk, the mice got better again. Hopkins discovered what he called the "essential nutritional factor" that was later called vitamins.
It turned out that beriberi is associated with a lack of thiamine, vitamin B1, which is not found in polished rice, but is abundant in natural. And citrus fruits prevent scurvy because they contain ascorbic acid, vitamin C.
Hopkins' discovery was a defining step in understanding the importance of proper nutrition. Many bodily functions depend on vitamins, from fighting infections to regulating metabolism. Without them it is difficult to imagine life, as well as without the next great discovery.

Penicillin

After the First World War, which claimed over 10 million lives, the search for safe methods of repelling bacterial aggression intensified. After all, many died not on the battlefield, but from infected wounds. The Scottish doctor Alexander Fleming also participated in the research. While studying staphylococcus bacteria, Fleming noticed that something unusual was growing in the center of the laboratory bowl - mold. He saw that the bacteria had died around the mold. This led him to assume that she secretes a substance that is harmful to bacteria. He named this substance penicillin. For the next few years, Fleming tried to isolate penicillin and use it in the treatment of infections, but failed, and eventually gave up. However, the results of his labors were invaluable.

In 1935, Oxford University staffers Howard Flory and Ernst Chain came across a report of Fleming's curious but unfinished experiments and decided to try their luck. These scientists managed to isolate penicillin in its pure form. And in 1940 they tested it. Eight mice were injected with a lethal dose of streptococcus bacteria. Then, four of them were injected with penicillin. Within a few hours, the results were in. All four mice that did not receive penicillin died, but three of the four that received it survived.

So, thanks to Fleming, Flory and Chain, the world received the first antibiotic. This medicine has been a real miracle. It cured from so many ailments that caused a lot of pain and suffering: acute pharyngitis, rheumatism, scarlet fever, syphilis and gonorrhea ... Today we have completely forgotten that you can die from these diseases.

Sulfide preparations

The next great discovery arrived in time during the Second World War. It cured American soldiers fighting in the Pacific from dysentery. And then led to a revolution in chemotherapeutic treatment of bacterial infections.
It all happened thanks to a pathologist named Gerhard Domagk. In 1932, he studied the possibilities of using some new chemical dyes in medicine. Working with a newly synthesized dye called prontosil, Domagk injected it into several lab mice infected with streptococcus bacteria. As Domagk expected, the dye coated the bacteria, but the bacteria survived. The dye didn't seem to be toxic enough. Then something amazing happened: although the dye did not kill the bacteria, it stopped their growth, the infection stopped, and the mice recovered. When Domagk first tested prontosil in humans is unknown. However, the new drug gained fame after it saved the life of a boy seriously ill with staphylococcus aureus. The patient was Franklin Roosevelt Jr., son of the President of the United States. Domagk's discovery became an instant sensation. Because Prontosil contained a sulfamide molecular structure, it was called a sulfamide drug. It became the first in this group of synthetic chemicals capable of treating and preventing bacterial infections. Domagk opened a new revolutionary direction in the treatment of diseases, the use of chemotherapy drugs. It will save tens of thousands of human lives.

Insulin

The next great discovery helped save the lives of millions of people with diabetes around the world. Diabetes is a disease that interferes with the body's ability to absorb sugar, which can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart disease, and even death. For centuries, physicians have studied diabetes, unsuccessfully looking for a cure for it. Finally, at the end of the 19th century, there was a breakthrough. It has been found that diabetics have a common feature - a group of cells in the pancreas are invariably affected - these cells secrete a hormone that controls blood sugar. The hormone was named insulin. And in 1920 - a new breakthrough. Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting and student Charles Best studied pancreatic insulin secretion in dogs. On a hunch, Banting injected an extract from the insulin-producing cells of a healthy dog ​​into a diabetic dog. The results were stunning. After a few hours, the blood sugar level of the sick animal dropped significantly. Now the attention of Banting and his assistants turned to the search for an animal whose insulin would be similar to human. They found a close match in insulin taken from fetal cows, purified it for the safety of the experiment, and conducted the first clinical trial in January 1922. Banting administered insulin to a 14-year-old boy who was dying of diabetes. And he quickly went on the mend. How important is Banting's discovery? Ask the 15 million Americans who take daily insulin on which their lives depend.

The genetic nature of cancer

Cancer is the second most lethal disease in America. Intensive research on its origin and development led to remarkable scientific achievements, but perhaps the most important of them was the following discovery. Nobel laureates cancer researchers Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus joined forces in cancer research in the 1970s. At that time, several theories about the cause of this disease dominated. A malignant cell is very complex. She is able not only to share, but also to invade. This is a cell with highly developed capabilities. One theory was the Rous sarcoma virus, which causes cancer in chickens. When a virus attacks a chicken cell, it injects its genetic material into the host's DNA. According to the hypothesis, the DNA of the virus subsequently becomes the agent that causes the disease. According to another theory, when a virus introduces its genetic material into a host cell, the cancer-causing genes are not activated, but wait until they are triggered by external influences, such as harmful chemicals, radiation, or a common viral infection. These cancer-causing genes, the so-called oncogenes, became the object of research by Varmus and Bishop. The main question is: Does the human genome contain genes that are or can become oncogenes like those contained in the virus that causes tumors? Do chickens, other birds, mammals, humans have such a gene? Bishop and Varmus took a labeled radioactive molecule and used it as a probe to see if the Rous sarcoma virus oncogene resembled any normal gene in chicken chromosomes. The answer is yes. It was a real revelation. Varmus and Bishop found that the cancer-causing gene is already in the DNA of healthy chicken cells, and more importantly, they found it in human DNA as well, proving that a cancer germ can appear in any of us at the cellular level and wait for activation.

How can our own gene, with which we have lived all our lives, cause cancer? During cell division, errors occur and they are more common if the cell is oppressed by cosmic radiation, tobacco smoke. It is also important to remember that when a cell divides, it needs to copy 3 billion complementary DNA pairs. Anyone who has ever tried to print knows how difficult it is. We have mechanisms to notice and correct errors, and yet, with large volumes, fingers miss.
What is the importance of discovery? People used to think of cancer in terms of the differences between a virus genome and a cell genome, but now we know that a very small change in certain genes in our cells can turn a healthy cell that normally grows, divides, etc., into a malignant one. And this was the first clear illustration of the true state of affairs.

The search for this gene is a defining moment in modern diagnostics and prediction of the further behavior of a cancerous tumor. The discovery gave clear goals to specific types of therapy that simply did not exist before.
The population of Chicago is about 3 million people.

HIV

The same number die every year from AIDS, one of the worst epidemics in modern history. The first signs of this disease appeared in the early 80s of the last century. In America, the number of patients dying from rare infections and cancer began to rise. A blood test from the victims revealed extremely low levels of white blood cells, white blood cells vital to the human immune system. In 1982, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the disease the name AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Two researchers, Luc Montagnier from the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Robert Gallo from the National Institute of Oncology in Washington, took up the case. Both of them managed to make the most important discovery, which revealed the causative agent of AIDS - HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus. How is the human immunodeficiency virus different from other viruses, such as the flu? Firstly, this virus does not give out the presence of the disease for years, on average, 7 years. The second problem is very unique: for example, AIDS finally manifested itself, people realize that they are sick and go to the clinic, and they have a myriad of other infections, what exactly caused the disease. How to define it? In most cases, a virus exists for the sole purpose of entering an acceptor cell and reproducing. Usually, it attaches itself to a cell and releases its genetic information into it. This allows the virus to subjugate the functions of the cell, redirecting them to the production of new virus species. Then these individuals attack other cells. But HIV is not an ordinary virus. It belongs to the category of viruses that scientists call retroviruses. What is unusual about them? Like those classes of viruses that include polio or influenza, retroviruses are special categories. They are unique in that their genetic information in the form of ribonucleic acid is converted into deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and it is precisely what happens to DNA that is our problem: DNA is integrated into our genes, virus DNA becomes part of us, and then the cells, designed to protect us, begin to reproduce the DNA of the virus. There are cells that contain the virus, sometimes they reproduce it, sometimes they don't. They are silent. They hide... But only in order to reproduce the virus again later. Those. once an infection becomes apparent, it is likely to take root for life. This is the main problem. A cure for AIDS has not yet been found. But the opening that HIV is a retrovirus and that it is the causative agent of AIDS has led to significant advances in the fight against this disease. What has changed in medicine since the discovery of retroviruses, especially HIV? For example, with AIDS, we have seen that drug therapy is possible. Previously, it was believed that since the virus usurps our cells for reproduction, it is almost impossible to act on it without severe poisoning of the patient himself. Nobody has invested in anti-virus programs. AIDS has opened the door to antiviral research at pharmaceutical companies and universities around the world. In addition, AIDS has had a positive social effect. Ironically, this terrible disease brings people together.

And so day after day, century after century, in tiny steps or grandiose breakthroughs, great and small discoveries in medicine were made. They give hope that humanity will defeat cancer and AIDS, autoimmune and genetic diseases, achieve excellence in prevention, diagnosis and treatment, alleviate the suffering of sick people and prevent the progression of diseases.

Scientific breakthroughs have created many useful medicines that will certainly soon be freely available. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the ten most amazing medical breakthroughs of 2015, which are sure to make a serious contribution to the development of medical services in the very near future.

Discovery of teixobactin

In 2014, the World Health Organization warned everyone that humanity was entering the so-called post-antibiotic era. And she turned out to be right. Since 1987, science and medicine have not produced really new types of antibiotics. However, diseases do not stand still. Every year, new infections appear that are more resistant to existing drugs. It has become a real world problem. However, in 2015, scientists made a discovery that they believe will bring dramatic changes.

Scientists have discovered a new class of antibiotics from 25 antimicrobials, including a very important one called teixobactin. This antibiotic destroys microbes by blocking their ability to produce new cells. In other words, microbes under the influence of this drug cannot develop and develop resistance to the drug over time. Teixobactin has now proven to be highly effective against resistant Staphylococcus aureus and several bacteria that cause tuberculosis.

Laboratory tests of teixobactin were carried out on mice. The vast majority of experiments have shown the effectiveness of the drug. Human trials are due to begin in 2017.

One of the most interesting and promising areas in medicine is tissue regeneration. In 2015, a new item was added to the list of artificially recreated organs. Doctors from the University of Wisconsin have learned to grow human vocal cords from virtually nothing.

A group of scientists led by Dr. Nathan Welhan bioengineered a tissue that can mimic the work of the mucous membrane of the vocal cords, namely the tissue that is represented by two lobes of the cords, which vibrate to create human speech. Donor cells, from which new ligaments were subsequently grown, were taken from five volunteer patients. In the laboratory, in two weeks, scientists grew the necessary tissue, after which they added it to an artificial model of the larynx.

The sound created by the resulting vocal cords is described by scientists as metallic and compared to the sound of a robotic kazoo (a toy wind musical instrument). However, scientists are confident that the vocal cords they have created in real conditions (that is, when implanted into a living organism) will sound almost like real ones.

In one of the latest experiments on lab mice grafted with human immunity, the researchers decided to test whether the body of rodents would reject the new tissue. Fortunately, this did not happen. Dr. Welham is confident that the tissue will not be rejected by the human body either.

Cancer drug could help Parkinson's patients

Tisinga (or nilotinib) is a tested and approved drug commonly used to treat people with signs of leukemia. However, a new study from Georgetown University Medical Center shows that Tasinga's drug may be a very powerful tool for controlling motor symptoms in people with Parkinson's disease, improving their motor function and controlling the non-motor symptoms of the disease.

Fernando Pagan, one of the doctors who conducted this study, believes that nilotinib therapy may be the first effective method of its kind to reduce the degradation of cognitive and motor function in patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease.

The scientists gave increased doses of nilotinib to 12 volunteer patients for six months. All 12 patients who completed this trial of the drug to the end, there was an improvement in motor functions. 10 of them showed significant improvement.

The main objective of this study was to test the safety and harmlessness of nilotinib in humans. The dose of the drug used was much less than the dose usually given to patients with leukemia. Despite the fact that the drug showed its effectiveness, the study was still conducted on a small group of people without involving control groups. Therefore, before Tasinga is used as a therapy for Parkinson's disease, several more trials and scientific studies will have to be done.

The world's first 3D printed chest

The man suffered from a rare type of sarcoma, and the doctors had no other choice. To avoid spreading the tumor further throughout the body, experts removed almost the entire sternum from a person and replaced the bones with a titanium implant.

As a rule, implants for large parts of the skeleton are made from a wide variety of materials, which can wear out over time. In addition, the replacement of such a complex articulation of bones as the sternum bones, which are usually unique in each individual case, required doctors to carefully scan a person's sternum in order to design an implant of the right size.

It was decided to use a titanium alloy as the material for the new sternum. After performing high-precision 3D CT scans, the scientists used a $1.3 million Arcam printer to create a new titanium chest. The operation to install a new sternum for the patient was successful, and the person has already completed a full course of rehabilitation.

From skin cells to brain cells

Scientists from California's Salk Institute in La Jolla devoted the past year to research on the human brain. They have developed a method for transforming skin cells into brain cells and have already found several useful applications for the new technology.

It should be noted that scientists have found a way to turn skin cells into old brain cells, which simplifies their further use, for example, in research on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases and their relationship with the effects of aging. Historically, animal brain cells have been used for such research, but scientists in this case were limited in their capabilities.

More recently, scientists have been able to turn stem cells into brain cells that can be used for research. However, this is a rather laborious process, and the result is cells that are not able to imitate the brain of an elderly person.

Once researchers developed a way to artificially create brain cells, they turned their attention to creating neurons that would have the ability to produce serotonin. And although the resulting cells have only a tiny fraction of the capabilities of the human brain, they are actively helping scientists in research and finding cures for diseases and disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and depression.

Contraceptive pills for men

Japanese scientists at the Microbial Disease Research Institute in Osaka have published a new scientific paper, according to which, in the not too distant future, we will be able to produce real-life contraceptive pills for men. In their work, scientists describe studies of the drugs "Tacrolimus" and "Cyxlosporin A".

Typically, these drugs are used after organ transplants to suppress the body's immune system so that it does not reject the new tissue. The blockade occurs due to inhibition of the production of the calcineurin enzyme, which contains the PPP3R2 and PPP3CC proteins normally found in male semen.

In their study on laboratory mice, the scientists found that as soon as the PPP3CC protein is not produced in the organisms of rodents, their reproductive functions are sharply reduced. This prompted the researchers to conclude that an insufficient amount of this protein can lead to sterility. After more careful study, experts concluded that this protein gives the sperm cells the flexibility and the necessary strength and energy to penetrate the membrane of the egg.

Testing on healthy mice only confirmed their discovery. Only five days of using the drugs "Tacrolimus" and "Cyxlosporin A" led to complete infertility of mice. However, their reproductive function fully recovered just a week after they stopped giving these drugs. It is important to note that calcineurin is not a hormone, so the use of drugs in no way reduces sexual desire and excitability of the body.

Despite the promising results, it will take several years to create real male birth control pills. About 80 percent of mouse studies are not applicable to human cases. However, scientists still hope for success, as the effectiveness of the drugs has been proven. In addition, similar drugs have already passed human clinical trials and are widely used.

DNA seal

3D printing technologies have created a unique new industry - printing and selling DNA. True, the term “printing” here is more likely to be used specifically for commercial purposes, and does not necessarily describe what is actually happening in this area.

The chief executive of Cambrian Genomics explains that the process is best described by the phrase "error checking" rather than "printing." Millions of pieces of DNA are placed on tiny metal substrates and scanned by a computer, which selects the strands that will eventually make up the entire DNA strand. After that, the necessary links are carefully cut out with a laser and placed in a new chain, pre-ordered by the client.

Companies like Cambrian believe that in the future humans will be able to create new organisms just for fun with special computer hardware and software. Of course, such assumptions will immediately cause the righteous anger of people who doubt the ethical correctness and practical usefulness of these studies and opportunities, but sooner or later, no matter how we want it or not, we will come to this.

Now, DNA printing is showing little promise in the medical field. Drug manufacturers and research companies are among the first customers of companies like Cambrian.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have gone one step further and have begun to create various figurines from DNA strands. DNA origami, as they call it, may at first glance seem like ordinary pampering, but this technology also has practical potential for use. For example, it can be used in the delivery of drugs to the body.

Nanobots in a living organism

At the beginning of 2015, the field of robotics won a big victory when a group of researchers from the University of California at San Diego announced that they had carried out the task that they were given, while being inside a living organism.

In this case, laboratory mice acted as a living organism. After placing the nanobots inside the animals, the micromachines went to the stomachs of the rodents and delivered the cargo placed on them, which was microscopic particles of gold. By the end of the procedure, the scientists did not notice any damage to the internal organs of mice and thus confirmed the usefulness, safety and effectiveness of nanobots.

Further tests showed that more particles of gold delivered by nanobots remain in the stomachs than those that were simply introduced there with a meal. This prompted scientists to think that nanobots in the future will be able to deliver the necessary drugs into the body much more efficiently than with more traditional methods of introducing them.

The motor chain of the tiny robots is made of zinc. When it comes into contact with the body's acid-base environment, a chemical reaction occurs that produces hydrogen bubbles that propel the nanobots inside. After some time, the nanobots simply dissolve in the acidic environment of the stomach.

Although the technology has been in development for nearly a decade, it wasn't until 2015 that scientists were able to actually test it in a living environment, rather than in conventional petri dishes, as had been done so many times before. In the future, nanobots can be used to detect and even treat various diseases of the internal organs by influencing individual cells with the right drugs.

Injectable brain nanoimplant

A team of Harvard scientists has developed an implant that promises to treat a number of neurodegenerative disorders that lead to paralysis. The implant is an electronic device consisting of a universal frame (mesh), to which various nanodevices can later be connected after it has been inserted into the patient's brain. Thanks to the implant, it will be possible to monitor the neural activity of the brain, stimulate the work of certain tissues, and also accelerate the regeneration of neurons.

The electronic grid consists of conductive polymer filaments, transistors, or nanoelectrodes that connect intersections. Almost the entire area of ​​the mesh is made up of holes, which allows living cells to form new connections around it.

By early 2016, a team of scientists from Harvard is still testing the safety of using such an implant. For example, two mice were implanted in the brain with a device consisting of 16 electrical components. Devices have been successfully used to monitor and stimulate specific neurons.

Artificial production of tetrahydrocannabinol

For many years, marijuana has been used medicinally as a pain reliever and, in particular, to improve the condition of patients with cancer and AIDS. In medicine, a synthetic substitute for marijuana, or rather its main psychoactive component, tetrahydrocannabinol (or THC), is also actively used.

However, biochemists at the Technical University of Dortmund have announced the creation of a new species of yeast that produces THC. What's more, unpublished data indicate that the same scientists created another type of yeast that produces cannabidiol, another psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

Marijuana contains several molecular compounds that are of interest to researchers. Therefore, the discovery of an effective artificial way to create these components in large quantities could be of great benefit to medicine. However, the method of conventional cultivation of plants and the subsequent extraction of the necessary molecular compounds is now the most effective method. Within 30 percent of the dry weight of modern marijuana can contain the right THC component.

Despite this, Dortmund scientists are confident that they will be able to find a more efficient and faster way to extract THC in the future. To date, the created yeast is re-growth on molecules of the same fungus instead of the preferred alternative in the form of simple saccharides. All this leads to the fact that with each new batch of yeast, the amount of free THC component also decreases.

In the future, the scientists promise to streamline the process, maximize THC production, and scale up to industrial use, ultimately meeting the needs of medical research and European regulators looking for new ways to produce THC without growing marijuana itself.