Repair

oday, if a tissue is torn or cut, we must simply wait for the body to repair it. The most we can do to help is to hold the torn edges together with stitches or surgical glue. As mentioned above, nanobots should be able to re-form the molecular bonds that hold cells together, and thus repair wounds almost immediately.

Another form of injury is oxygen deprivation. Due to a blood clot or broken blood vessel, a tissue may be starved of oxygen. Normally this causes cells to kill themselves within minutes. However, drugs have already been found that tell the cells not to give up so soon; in early trials, they seem to cause significant improvement in stroke victims. A population of nanobots scattered throughout the tissues could provide more timely and targeted release of such drugs, and could also store a few minutes worth of oxygen in pressurized tanks keep the tissue alive until the wound repair machines can fix the problem.