1942 Penicillin1944 First test tube calf 1955 Polio vaccine1967 First heart transplant 1990 Genetic engineering2000? Nanotechnology Genetic Engineering 1990 If you take your Ferrari to a mechanic who has only ever worked on mopeds you cannot expect him to get it running perfectly. Two hundred years ago doctors were as likely to kill their patients as to cure them. While some were doubtless incompetent for many it was simply that no one knew enough about how the body works. They knew about anatomy but not about cell structures and DNA. 'Mini-Me' the cloned version of Dr. Evil from Austin Powers In 1990, the Human Genome Project was started in America. Its goals were to identify all the estimated 80,000 genes in human DNA, determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical bases that make up human DNA, store this information in databases, develop tools for data analysis, and address any ethical, legal, and social issues that might arise from the project. Originally planned to last 15 years, technological advances mean it should be completed by 2003. Then we should finally be in possession of the blueprint for the human body. Once we have that it is not so hard to write a manual for fixing it. Let's hope it isn't written by people who write instruction manuals for computers. As the highly detailed genome maps have become available researchers have been able to pinpoint the specific genes responsible for dozens of genetic conditions, including myotonic dystrophy, fragile X syndrome, neurofibromatosis, inherited colon cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and familial breast cancer. The next step is to find a way to repair the damaged cells. In an oblique way molecular medicine will be closer to some of the holistic practices used by acupuncturists and other alternative health practitioners. There will be less treating of symptoms and more looking to the most fundamental causes of disease. Diagnoses should become swifter and more specific diagnostic and tests should make earlier treatment possible for countless maladies. Medical researchers also will be able to develop new classes of drugs and immunotherapy techniques, environmental conditions that may trigger disease can be avoided. In the longer term defective genes could be repaired, augmented or even replaced. The idea gene therapy is already the subject of frenzied debate. Would parents abort a foetus that showed genetic predisposition to leukaemia or motor neurone disease? In the latter case the eminent physicist Stephen Hawking would never have been born. Yet if the problem could be fixed in the embryo who would not? DNA mapping has also enabled scientists to successfully clone a living mammal. The test tube calf of 1944 is now Dolly the cloned sheep. Spare human organs could be grown conforming to the individual's cell structure. Human beings are confronted with the possibility of being able to recreate not just a random part but all of themselves. Whether they become Dr Evil's Mini Me or a completely different individual may finally put an end to the nature v nurture argument.