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The Daily Reckoning Friday, January 1, 2009 Could the common flu soon be a thing of the past? Six companies ready to change the world in 2010, Ushering in a "Golden age of Medical Marvels" and more... Joel Bowman, with a few words from Taipei, Taiwan... The markets are closed today in observance of the worldwide New Year's Morning hangover. For reasons entirely unrelated to champagne and fireworks, this edition of the DR will also be cut a little short. Today's unusually upbeat column comes from the editor of The Breakthrough Technology Report, Patrick Cox. Patrick is deeply interested in the world of transformative technologies - the kinds of technologies that change the way we live, interact and, for those in the know, invest. In short, transformative technologies are the sort of things you look back at twenty years on and think, "Gee, I wish I'd invested in automobiles...vaccines...the Internet..." With his uncanny knack for sensing the next "big thing," we asked Patrick to identify the investment trend he feels will best define the coming decade. His findings are below... --------------------------------------------------------------- The Medical Miracles of 2010 By Patrick Cox, Breakthrough Technology Alert Marco Island, Florida 2010 may be the most incredible year in history for medical technology stocks. A handful of truly amazing technologies-in-development are likely to make headlines this coming year...and these headlines could produce huge gains in the share prices of selected medical technology companies... You know that our bodies are incredibly complex. All throughout human history, we've fought to understand more about how our bodies work. For millennia, progress was slow. We made our breakthroughs in fits and starts. Complex medical procedures - such as the groundbreaking heart surgery of 1944, was just the beginning. After that, vaccine technology took off with the development of the Polio vaccine in 1952. Soon thereafter, imaging technology began to allow doctors and scientists to take the next step and peer deeper into our bodies. The trend continues today. With the benefit of ultra-advanced microscopes and what's called "molecularly precise" manufacturing, scientists are figuring out how to use our own cells to help repair vital organs like the heart. "Patients will receive injections containing... their own cells... extracted and multiplied," BBC News explains, "[to] generate new tissue [and] repair damaged regions." So rather than relying on some outside treatment, the future of medicine will be in figuring out how to make your body heal itself and rejuvenate itself. No surgery. No invasive procedure of any kind. It's this kind of promise that makes me believe 2010 will be the dawning of an amazing age of medical marvels. Here's another example: Vaccines that cure diseases AFTER infection. The way doctors treat viruses now is fairly straightforward. If there's a vaccine available, the doctor gives it to you ahead of time so you don't get sick. In other words, getting the "cure" ahead of time is the only way to treat a virus. This model works. Sometimes. But new flu strains emerge all the time. These strains change, become stronger. So imagine the profit potential of a process that could kill the flu - or nearly any other virus - AFTER you contracted it. Now imagine this virus cure coming in the form of a simple skin patch. You get the flu. You put on a patch the size of a band-aid. The flu goes away. Voila. It's that simple. I am monitoring a company that is trying to develop just such a technology. It is one of my "6 Companies Ready to Change the World in 2010." Another company I'm monitoring is exploring a revolutionary process for repairing spinal cords. Their work could someday mean precisely this: If someone suffers a spinal cord injury and the paralysis that comes with it, this company's technology could repair the spinal cord. Just like new. "Cells from the nose may help spinal injury victims walk again," Fox News explains. "It's a relatively simple procedure to take them from the patient, grow more of them in the laboratory and then insert them back into the same person." This revolutionary little firm finally gained media and analyst awareness in 2009 due to its ongoing tests. And this company isn't just interested in spinal repair - it has groundbreaking cancer treatments and life-extension research and tests currently underway as well. Their blueprint is simple: Save the life of the cell and you live longer...or at least better. Lastly, imagine a simple, fast procedure that gives you a rebuilt heart functionally the same as the clean-beating heart of a 29-year-old person. That's the full promise here. How big do you think this market could be? Now here's some background. In May, the CEO of the company that might offer these cures this year made an announcement about his work at an exclusive conference... What did he announce? Cells he's working on show the potential to re- grow cartilage. Just think for a second what that could mean for folks with arthritis. All that pain and suffering, simply going away. Now imagine the same technology applied to heart cells. That's exactly what this researcher and his team are working on. 2010 will be, I predict, the year it all comes together. The profits of the past 12 months that some folks have booked are nothing compared to what's in store for the years ahead. Because it's not just heart treatments and virus cures that could soon be available. I'm talking about a Golden Age of Medical Marvels. Joel's Note: In order to help Daily Reckoning readers navigate the tricky world of technology investing, Patrick has prepared for us an in-depth research report titled: The 6 Companies Ready to Change the World in 2010. In addition to the companies Patrick details, the full report also includes interviews with top-notch CEOs and key industry experts. As for timing, Patrick has his eyes on a few specific events set to bring these technologies to the mainstream media's attention, the first of which is slated for February 5. We'll let you know how all that goes, but for now, here's a quick primer to get you started. --------------------------------------------------------------- That's all from us for today. Please check in for a special "Best Reckonings of 2009" weekend issue tomorrow. Next week it's back to the usual programming. Until then... Cheers, Joel Bowman Managing Editor for The Daily Reckoning   The Daily Reckoning - Special Reports: Gold: The Truth About Gold Fiat Currency: Using the Past to See into the Future "THE GREAT AMERICAN RECOVERY RP-OFF" Brace yourself for what's about to go down as the BIGGEST FINANCIAL SWINDLE in world history.