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The Issues of Nano-Safety
Ineffable 27 writes "Today's New York Times has an interesting article looking at some of the emerging research into the health and safety risks of nanotech and nanomaterials." Free reg. blah blah. It's a decent article, but it's the same type of questions that groups like The Foresight Institute have been thinking about for a long long time now.
A good book on the topic is "Nanotechnology: A Gentle Introduction to the Next Big Idea" (ISBN: 0131014005). In it some of the problems of Nanotech are discussed (in addition to the benefits of course).
IMHO though, this is just another snag in the means of progress. We develop Genetic engineering and people are suffering from allergies to Gene spliced tortillas (that was Del Taco IIRC), or for a worse idea, we develop advanced shipbuilding and watch the Titanic sink (over and over again...).
However will Nanotech help society as whole more than it will hurt? IMHO yes. Though it truly remains to be seen whether or not a bunch of Nano-bots will destroy us all from our insides (I think that was from the book), or a bunch of clumped Nano-tubes will get in our lungs (as the article said).
...in bed
Frequent linking to pages which require registration is further eroding the publically accessible nature of the web as we knew it. Sites which pollute public-web search engines with results which are not directly and freely accessible should be shunned, not supported by linking to them.
You realize that by posting the New York Times article, this has become a story about Foresight, right?
:)
Seven of Nine can't be the only thing sexy about Nanotech. It sounds wonderful, if you think about the possibilities of controlling the world at a molecular level. But what about the costing of Nanotech? This means that instead of charging for a lump sum of material, the manufacturers can charge by the molecule!
Talk about a get rich scheme!
So guys, how can we prevent this from getting out of hand?
Nanotech, appears to be all it's chalked up to be... a great new path for a new industrial revolution. Think of the ways we can help the environment, our bodies, our society. We could build pure substances, and refine better goods.
We could grow better fruits and vegetables.
We could clone better animals.
And what would it do to us? I think it's worth risking to find out.
Some would say that viruses are God's nanotech. Small, self-replicating, non-living, and very very potent. The damage that a virus can do to an ecosystem depends on its programming, but even the most mild of viruses can cause serious reactions in hosts.
I'm not sure that we have come to the point of understanding where we can control nanobots. If the biggest software company in the world can't put out a bug free software package, how can we expect that a handful of scientists to put together what is in effect a man-made virus. It would be a sad day if one of these (excuse the pun) bugs were released and some error was caught too late.
I hope nanotech doesn't eventuate for at least another century. The regulations to ensure it doesn't get out of control aren't in place and I don't see anyone beginning to care much about this for a long time. Read information here. When people are injured by normal technology, they are just injured or killed and the rest of the world moves on. When people will be injured by nanotech, the changes will be small perhaps undetectable even, but could involve controlled changes to things as basic to us as humans as our DNA, the food we eat, and our brain systems Government rewiring of our brains some day? Can't be too far in the future.
So, let me see if I get it: We haven't proven our nanotech products are safe, but nobody can afford to prove that they aren't. Since there is no proof that they aren't, we'll assume they're safe and dump them wherever it's cheapest. By the time anyone can prove that they aren't safe, we'll have made our money and then some.
And I'll note that 24 hours later, the other 85% seemed perfectly healthy, the assumption being that the nanotubes clumping stopped them from getting into deep regions of the lungs and allowed them to be expelled by coughing.
So, with specifics of 15% mortality in mice from nanotube exposure, does that warrant concern?
First, depends on what you mean by failure.
... odd.
For the sake of this discussion of failure, you simply mean a given machine "doesn't work." And stops. For other instances of failure, other discussions should apply.
But, given that definition of failure, the beauty of nanotech is that we can create thousands of machines for any given task, and even if 10% fail right off the bat, we've still got a ton of machines to do our work for us. Even if they do fail -- it's just a few dozen/hundred molecules of junk floating around (which, admitedly poses an issue to our lungs, but that's a mere detail.)
The probability of failure increases only if the bots requre each and every bot around them to work. If the bots simply work alone (or in small groups) the probability of failure is a constant, not a limit.
If I mis-understood what you said, please enlighten me to your true arguments. I'm under the influence of a nasty head cold and dayquil right now, so my thinking might be
Indeed - but such failure need not be catastrophic. By the same logic, with the billions upon billions of bits stored on a hard drive, the probability of failure is 1 - but I can still successfully store data on it. With the number of atomic and subatomic particles that make me up, the probability of radioactive decay is almost certainly extremely high - but I'm still here, and I don't have cancer.
Likewise, the failed nanobots may simply not work at all - just floating lifelessly until they're destroyed, by natural means or otherwise. Failing that, perhaps every usage of nanobots will be accompanied by a "dose" of hunter/killer ones, designed specifically to seak out and destroy malfunctioning nanobots.
I agree that care should be taken, but I also agree with the OP that the research should definitely be performed.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
But the $4 million it expects to award next year for risk studies is barely measurable against the $847 million in federal money that President Bush has proposed for nanotechnology research and development for the 2004 fiscal year.
Couple this with the fact that companies will be more than willing to invest their own dollars in nanotechnology (but not studying risks), it is clear that we are not doing enough to study the environmental impacts of such stuff. This is brand new territory, with new rules and new concequences. It is stupid to think that the old rules to protect people and the environment will be adequate. Environmental messes are *horribly* expensive to clean up by comparison.
To call this FUD is really irresponsible. You don't jump in head first to a pool of water unless you know how deep the pool is, no?
While Feinman doesn't touch on the negatives of nano-technology, much of Drexler's ground breaking book is related to developing nano-machines WITHOUT risk to the human race.
The long-term theory is to create self-replicating, self-powering nanobots
Anything that is (accurately) self-replicating in this fashion will be indistinguishable from life. And if there is then even the slightest possibility of error in the replication, you will then have survival of the fittest and evolution.
After that, watch out...
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
When people have the ability to build anything they want from the atom up, the only thing constraining us will be those constraints that our society dictates. (Everything else is merely requires sufficently talented engineers.) Unfortunatly, the dangerous aspects of nanotech also are only constrained by our society.When people have the ability to build anything they want from the atom up, the only thing constraining us will be those constraints that our society dictates. (Everything else is merely requires sufficently talented engineers.) Unfortunatly, the dangerous aspects of nanotech also are only constrained by our society.
Nanobots in the form of bacteria, have been on the Earth for billions of years. The extensive history of activity at this scale deflates both the claims of grey goo pessimists and the claims of boundless possibility constrained only by society. Regardless of the talent of engineers, physics and chemestry pose some very hard constraints on what is possible.
This is the field I work in. Policy research in nano- and bio-tech. With biotech, the technology arrived before we had policy in place to deal with it. This was a Very Bad Thing as it led to rushed decisions, inadequate planning, and general nastiness. (Gene patents anyone?)
With nanotech, the policy people are trying to stay ahead of the curve. This will mean that once the technology is ready, we will already have the details taken care of. There will be some changes, but the methods of shaping the arguments and the policies will be established, making things much easier, safer, and more productive for everyone.
What Future?
The parent is not a troll. Scare tactics may have a stimulating effect on any industries budget from the increased level of stockholder and public concern. This is not bad press. The oil companies say, "We have to make double hull tankers now after the E-Valdez; we will pass on the costs to you." No one argues with this, because they can't in a market economy. Our only method of protest is to organize boycotts which never materialize (at least in the US).
An Education is the Font of All Liberty