There are only 700 new cases a year in the US, according to Dr. Nai-Kong Cheung, a pediatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
As the US and Europe slow, Hong Kong's trade-dependent service industries will suffer, and this will translate into higher unemployment and slower growth.
In 2011, researchers from China and Hong Kong showed how it might be done with laser beams of a specific shape - and the US space agency Nasa has even funded a study to examine how the technique might help with manipulating samples in space.