Ask anyone who knows about R. Rox Anderson's experiments with lasers and chances are you're going to hear the words "Star" and "Trek" in close proximity. Then again, lower-tech analogies, such as shipyards or auto-body shops, could also spring to mind. But this is not science fiction, and it's most definitely not conventional metalworking. Anderson works in the world of biology, and his aim is to weld wounds shut.

Wound welding is a high-tech dream that could become a clinical reality soon-if it finds the right niche. Anderson, a Harvard University dermatologist who heads a laser research lab at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), thinks lasers could supplant the relatively primitive sutures and staples now in widespread use. "We should not be putting people back together or doing surgery and moving organs around, tacking them in there with little bits of string and chunks of metal," he says. "It's archaic."