Genetically-engineered bananas may spare children of the 21st century the dreaded vaccination needle.
Scientists have high hopes that plants can be genetically changed to grow cheap vaccines, leading to the use of fruit for painless and plentiful protection against disease.
Not for the next century's children the routine visit to the doctor, the jab of the needle, the pain and the bawling.
Vaccinations will be conveyed through eating bananas, apples or yams that have been genetically engineered to give protection against a wide range of familiar childhood diseases.
'My vision is to have a baby-food jar containing a transgenic banana that will protect against several infections,' said Charles Arntzen of Cornell University's Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.
And the goal of producing vaccines from plants promises cheap, plentiful protection from traditional developing world killers like bacterial diarrhoea and cholera.
The trouble with visions is they burn bright in the minds of the prophets but remain obstinately out of reach to the public.