Popular Mechanics recently asked Dean Kamen, one of the most prolific inventors with a penchant for medical devices, what he thinks about the current healthcare debate. Kamen’s basic argument is that the “crisis” of American healthcare is an overblown concept. To that end he points to the reality of technological progress in medicine and the ability to cure diseases that had no treatment options only a short time ago. As such, Kamen warns against spending cuts that may delay progress and lead to even greater spending in the future.
A tidbit from the PM interview:

Our healthcare system has seen some of the greatest achievements of the human intellect since we started recording history: We’re developing incredible devices and implantables to improve the quantity and quality of people’s lives. We’re developing pharmaceuticals that alleviate the need for surgery and eliminate the volatile effects of diseases. We’re making the surgeries that are necessary ever less invasive. You can get a stent through your femoral artery all the way up into your heart and fix a blockage without surgery. I’d say, if we have a crisis, it’s the embarrassment of riches. Nobody wants to deal with the fact that we’re no longer in a world where you can simply give everybody all the healthcare that is available.

We can’t agree with Dean Kamen any more than that. There is a reason why most of Medgadget archives cover devices and technologies coming from the United States. Here we have a great healthcare system, equipped with the latest technologies, smart doctors and clean hospitals. It might be an inefficient system, not covering everyone, but it is a system that delivers unbelievable technologies to help patients day in and day out. There must be a reason why we rarely see anything interesting coming out of France, Greece, Spain, Italy, or most other European countries (Germany being the clear exception).
Read the entire interview at Popular Mechanics: Inventor Dean Kamen Says Healthcare Debate "Backward Looking"…

Scientists from Technische Universität München (TUM) and Harvard University have developed a method to use DNA sequences as a building blocks for three dimensional nanostructures. In the latest issue of Science, these investigators describe the various complicated forms that were “folded,” including a wireframe ball 50 nanometers in diameter.
From the press office at Technische Universität München:

"Our goal was to find out whether we could program DNA to assemble into shapes that exhibit custom curvature or twist, with features just a few nanometers wide," says biophysicist Hendrik Dietz, a professor at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen. "It worked," he says, "and we can now build a diversity of three-dimensional nanoscale machine parts, such as round gears or curved tubes or capsules. Assembling those parts into bigger, more complex and functional devices should be possible."
As a medium for nanoscale engineering, DNA has the dual advantages of being a smart material – not only tough and flexible but also programmable – and being very well characterized by decades of study. Basic tools that Dietz, Douglas, and Shih employ are programmable self-assembly – directing DNA strands to form custom-shaped bundles of cross-linked double helices – and targeted insertions or deletions of base pairs that can give such bundles a desired twist or curve. Right-handed or left-handed twisting can be specified. They report achieving precise, quantitative control of these shapes, with a radius of curvature as tight as 6 nanometers.
The toolbox they have developed includes a graphical software program that helps to translate specific design concepts into the DNA programming required to realize them. Three-dimensional shapes are produced by "tuning" the number, arrangement, and lengths of helices.
In their current paper, the researchers present a wide variety of nanoscale structures and describe in detail how they designed, formed, and verified them. "Many advanced macroscopic machines require curiously shaped parts in order to function," Dietz says, "and we have the tools to make them. But we currently cannot build something intricate such as an ant’s leg or, much smaller, a ten-nanometer-small chemical plant such as a protein enzyme. We expect many benefits if only we could build super-miniaturized devices on the nanoscale using materials that work robustly in the cells of our bodies – biomolecules such as DNA."

Press release: Nanoscale origami from DNA…
Abstract in Science: Folding DNA into Twisted and Curved Nanoscale Shapes