In 10 years promises to remove bugs--that is computer bugs--from diseased cells
Now this is progress! As they say in this Telegraph piece
Microsoft has vowed to “solve the problem of cancer” within a decade by using ground-breaking computer science to crack the code of diseased cells so they can be reprogrammed back to a healthy state.
Cancer as a computing glitch? Of course it is! DNA is an incomprehensibly sophisticated 4-bit (unpacked to a 20-bit protein) code. Attacking the coding problems that arise makes a whole lot more sense than using chemical warfare, i.e. pharmaceuticals, against the body.
I’ve had stars in my eyes since reading Eric Dreckler’s foundational book, Engines of Creation, but some years later thought that using genetics was the way to build nano-machines (nanotech is mostly just materials science nowadays, and not really at the nano level). Microsoft is going along the path of true DNA-based nano-medicine:
The researchers are even working on a computer made from DNA which could live inside cells and look for faults in bodily networks, like cancer.
P.S. @lanimal provides a good look at a nanomachine here Bacteria not only spear their enemies, they arm their allies too!. I began a series on the limits to Darwinism, which looks at the complaints of Behe and Joseph that DNA is much too sophisticated to have come about by random action. The Death of Darwinism Part I