5
Nanomedicine
A group of scientists is shrunk down using Benes’s
secret formula. They must travel through his body,
remove the clot in his brain, and get out before he
dies. They are placed in a tiny submarine and injected
into his bloodstream. And so begins the “fantastic voy-
age.”The explorers travel into Benes’s heart, through
his inner ear, and into his brain. Once the clot is
removed, they have only six minutes to exit the body.
In the end, they save Benes.
Even today, the idea of tiny people traveling inside
a human body to cure an illness might seem crazy. But
more than 50 years after
FantasticVoyage
hit theaters, a
similar way of treating health problems has become a
reality.
Welcome to the world of nanomedicine. The
prefix
nano
refers to things that are very small.
Nanomedicine is the use of incredibly small devices
to treat illnesses inside the body. Just how tiny are
these devices? Believe it or not, they are much smaller
than the width of a hair! Yet despite their tiny size, they
have a lot of power. They could even be used to save
lives.
Nanomedicine is part of a larger field called nano-
technology. Nanotechnology deals with devices that
