Man has conquered Everest, been to the bottom of the deepest ocean, and even walked on the Moon by understanding pressure and oxygen. But the one area of life the technology has not influenced is the practice of medicine.

Billions have been spent researching drugs to treat the brain and they have failed; drug companies are closing their neuroscience laboratories. This is because there is no substitute for oxygen. As the most astonishing discovery since DNA was unraveled has shown, oxygen, the gas in the air we all breathe, controls our most important genes.

If we are sick or...