To your good health

The Year of Science enters its final month by celebrating health science. (Is health science different than medicine? Beats me.)

Health-wise, science must be doing something right. To know that, we need only look at trends in lifespan and at the once untreatable conditions that medicine can now address. And consider the many quality-of-life improvements, from prostheses to painkillers.

Health science will only get better -- if public policy doesn't kill off R&D in the name of funding universal care.

Below the fold, the shape of things to come:

• Gene therapy.  
• Personalized medicine.  
• Thought-controlled prostheses (and for my fictional treatment, see Fools' Experiments).  
• Medical nanobots scouring our arteries and delivering medicine exactly to the point in the body that needs it (and for my fictional treatment, see Small Miracles). 
• And much, much more.
  

As the YoS draws to a close, it seems like the appropriate time to review the whole project. On balance --  even though I've panned a few months' themes -- I think YoS has been a great exercise in public awareness and education.

Opinions?