Only One Big Drugmaker Is Working on a Nanobot Cure

When Kris Famm was 15, he became obsessed with photosynthesis. He lived with his parents and older brother, Fredrik, on a farm not far from the Baltic coast in southeastern Sweden, in an expanse of gentle hills threaded with forests of birch and spruce. It was a paradise for two energetic boys, and they spent most of their free time outside, often with their grandfather. Leading Kris and Fredrik on long hikes through the woods, he taught them about trees and wildlife and the richness of the land, which he was the last in the family to till.

The late 1980s and early ’90s were a time of rising environmental concern in Sweden. Climate change was entering the public consciousness, and the first traces of abnormal radiation from Chernobyl had been detected at a Swedish nuclear plant. To the teenage Kris, it seemed like the world would destroy itself without finding a radical new source of clean power. Photosynthesis, he thought, must hold the key: If plants could produce infinite energy from nothing but air, water, and sunlight, why couldn’t humans?