IN Life Script, Nicholas Wade claims that medicine is still in its dark age.

We think of our medicine as sophisticated, but a few decades from now much of it may be regarded with the same horror as we view the barber-surgeons of the 18th century.

But with the human genome now in hand, we can begin to lay the foundation for understanding the body. Decoding generate information is leading to a revolution -- the genome and new cell biology will create the basis for a new medicine.

Consider a new way of healing the body: instead of cutting the flesh with scalpels, poisoning it with chemical drugs, or burning it with radiation, the physician would gently treat the body with nothing but cells and proteins, seeking to mend like with like. Instead of depending only on his own knowledge, the physician would seek to tap the information in the genome, and to exploit the fact that the body's cells are designed to be a self-assembling system, when given the right signals.

Life Script explores how we will be affected, from the benefits of cancer treatments and immunisation to the grey moral areas of genetic engineering and longevity. Possession of the genome, states Wade, is a loss of innocence, in that it puts an unprecedented kind of power into our hands; sooner or later we will have to choose whether to use it, and to what end. (Simon & Schuster £18.99).