An article by Chris Phoenix of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology can be found at Nanotechnology Now. Molecular manufacturing (MM) will bring a new industrial revolution, in effect, and one of the areas to benefit greatly will be medicine: "Although the human body and brain are awesomely complex, MM will lead to rapid improvement in the treatment of many diseases, and before long will be able to treat almost every disease, including most or all causes of aging. The first aspect of medicine to benefit may be minimally invasive tests. ... Even with a conservative approach, inexpensive continuous screening for a thousand different biochemicals could give doctors early indications of disease. (Although early MM may not be able to build a wide range of chemicals, it will be able to build detectors for many of them.) Such monitoring also could reduce the consequences of diseases inadvertently caused by medical treatment by catching the problem earlier. ... Today, in advanced arthroscopic surgery, simple surgical tools are inserted through holes the size of a finger; a nano-built surgical robot with far more functionality could be built into a device the width of an acupuncture needle."

Link: http://www.nanotech-now.com/columns/?article=106