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Surgeons have carried out the world’s first operation using remotely
controlled robots. Working from New York, doctors removed the gall bladder of a
woman 7000 kilometres away in Strasbourg, France. “It’s a symbolic milestone,”
says team leader Jacques Marescaux of the University of Strasbourg. “It makes it
possible to imagine that a surgeon could perform an operation on a patient
anywhere in the world.” A transatlantic fibre-optic link provided by France
Telecom allowed the surgeons to control the robots with a time delay of only 150
milliseconds. But the price tag might deter other hospitals from using the same
technique:…