INTRODUCTION

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We live in a troubled, but wonderful time. It is our good fortune to witness and benefit from scientific advances that would have been literally unimaginable to our grandparents. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rate of growth of scientific knowledge has been so great as to outstrip the ability of our society to assimilate it, the capacity of the educational system to teach it properly and the wisdom of government adequately to sustain and apply it. There is growing indifference to science among the young. Even medical science, which touches the lives of us all, is generally left to the practitioners. Whatever the reason for this disparity between the importance of science and the lack of general public understanding, it is important to address it.

In this book we try to take a few steps in this direction. Specifically, the pages to follow tell the tales of many molecules that can qualify as miracles of modernity. These relatively small, highly-structured clusters of atoms, the principal therapeutic agents of modern medicine, can perform in a way that would have been considered miraculous to our ancestors. Such "miracle molecules" can save countless human lives, prolong human life, alleviate pain and suffering, control cells, tissues and organs millions of times their size, and bring enormous material gains through commercial sales of billions of dollars per year. Such molecules also can serve as tools to probe the molecular nature of life processes and disease states and pave the way for the discovery of other effective medicines.