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Insurance Industry Warned of Nanotechnology Risks
SilentScream writes "Cordis reports that major reinsurance company Swiss Re has advised insurance companies that they may need
to reconsider covering products manufactured using nanotechnology until more is known about any possible side effects of the technology. The recommendation is detailed in a 57-page report titled 'Nanotechnology
- Small matter, many unknowns', which is available on the Swiss Re web site. The report acknowledges that
further research is needed but outlines the possible effects of nanotechnology on the human brain and the potential for an asbestos-like threat."
I am glad to see some sort of forward thinking on the possible risks on this new technology. Though it surprises me to see the source isnt government regulation, but instead insurance hesitation.
Capitolism Works?
paul reinheimer
nano tech didn't hurt Jake 2.0
It made him faster, stronger and able to control computers with his mind.
Evolution or ID?
"Are these invisible particles dangerous to our breathing? What happens if nanotechnologically manufactured products end up on the refuse dump and their particles are released into the environment?"
Are they even aware that Skynet is taken from a movie? Like science needed more technophobic zealots anyway...
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
That is until the first lawsuits start getting settled. Then I suppose the actuaries'll have the real benchmark they need.
I'd say the risks of nanotechnology are of small concern.
JC Denton, slap summadat Deus Ex (Machina) on us, quick! :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Let's see... product has leftover nanotube dust on it, and said dust can permeate essentially anything, including skin cells... hmmm. That doesn't sound promising!
stuff |
A good primer on Nanotech is Diamond Age by that guy who wrote the Cryptonomicon. It is a really well thought out future. The nanobots infecting the drummers may be a long way off but we don't know where this technology may go so it is very risky.
Yet again, lawyers will dictate the course of technology - the fear of a lawsuit jacks up insurance rates, which makes research and development excessively costly.
The risks of cloning dinosaurs or time travel?
But then, people take sci-fi horseshit pretty seriously these days. I was watching a Greenpeace guy debate some scientist about "the day after tomorrow" on some news show.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
When I was in college we were required to take an ethics course for engineers. We design so many things and don't take many of the risks into account.
Because of that, universities are trying to teach students about risk/reward, ethics and the rest. Turns out there needs to be someone looking out for things. If something isn't insured and it costs as much as nanotech then odds are it will run into a lot of problems getting financed. I see this as a good checks and balance thing.
Evolution or ID?
When an insurance company says something is bad or good, and is willing to back it with money (or not, as in this case), I trust them. Unlike product manufacturers, these guys actually has something to lose by being dishonest.
Does everything include nothing?
I've been working with carbon nanotubes (buckyballs) for 5 years, no filters, no clean rooms, no suits, none of that fancy stuff. Carbon nanotubes are basically a superfine black dust. I haven't any I haven't I haven't noticed haven't noticed noticed haven't noticed I haven't noticed any problems.
Insurance companies are always looking for ways not to pay for anything. Why dont they just stop operating under the facade of "insuring" us and just rob us at gunpoint instead?
...nanotechnology. I'm sure you also know. "Nano" is just a morpheme people bandy around who are trying to get funding. But this is terrible news. It looks like the insurance companies have been fooled into thinking it does really exist and so are going to use it as a convenient excuse to increase our premiums.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
They also addressed climate change from a relatively broad range of perspectives a couple of years ago. See this report.
Of course, if we all go gray goo, there won't be anyone left to pay a claim to. :-)
Sorry. I hate to reply to my own posts, but I realised I made I mistake. I think they're actualy refering to medichlorians.
You are more than the sum of what you consume. Desire is not an occupation.
....getting a nanodevice in your eye or under your fingernail?
Or nanobots replicating out of control until the earth is buried in grey goo? (yeah, i borrowed that one)..
Seriously though... There is a lot of good, and a lot of bad that can come out of nanodevices. Especially in the wartime or medical fields.
do() || do_not();
Because cafal cares very little about it.
--
dman123 forever!
Filtering out the -1s and 0s since 1999.
That is, after all, the basis of their business model.
For those of us who are even slightly environmentally or health conscious, the effects of nanotech-related waste of one type or another should be of concern. From the mercury used to extract gold to the lead used in the solder of so many electronic devices, we now have a new potential threat in the form of nanomaterials.
It's not my intention to come off as a luddite, but these materials are potentially nasty. They react in very different ways than regular chemicals, and for the first time we have materials we can't assume that the natural environment of our planet will simply sweep them away to where we can't see them and where they won't affect us. We really need to be paying attention right here and right now because these materials can persist in our environment for a long time and are not easily incinerated or chemically treated.
The insurance industry should be taking a close look at covering the liability of companies involved in the manufacture and use of nanomaterials. The companies using nanomaterials ought to be held to the highest standards and employ rigorous manufacturing, environmental protection and recycling programs. Why should insurers be covering risk if their manufacturing plant is releasing carcinogenic and mutagenic material that embeds itself in the soil and never leaves it? I believe in conjuntion with government environmental protection agencies, companies will think carefully about employing such techniques. We can't afford to let it get to the point where the government or individuals start suing because of the damage, but neither can a company afford to get its insurance premiums hiked substantially or its coverage dropped.
The bottom line: if you're concerned about nanotech manufacturing facilities, live near a dump, or otherwise are going to be near these materials, get active and involved and start reporting the facts about nanotech materials to companies' insurers and other government agencies to ensure your safety and that of your children.
Also, on a slightly unrelated note, insurance companies are a great way to gain leverage against companies and organizations that screw you over. Whether you complain incessantly about unmaintained gym equipment, an apartment building full of mold, or an employer who insists on putting its employees in potentially dangerous situations, an insurer will always be interested in anything that's not disclosed to them that would affect their coverage risk. If you can find out who insures a company with such a "flaw," you can exact justice by simply documenting the issues with the insurer. Believe me, they DO listen and they WILL get on it.
No matter what, it is only going to take a particle of wayward nanotechnology to wipe out half the population of the world.
Since when does ethics take a front seat when there is so much money to be made.
There is probably some privately funded lab somewhere doing all sorts of research. The same goes for clonning, it's only a matter of time before things get so out of control that the governemnt will have to Nuke private labs.
To me that's pretty much old risk.
Swiss Re is notorious for these sorts of warnings. Think of it as the "you don't have enough insurance" warnings. They do the same thing with global warming.
Coal dust is just a fine black dust.
Not many coal miners would argue that it is harmless.
Welcome our new gray goo overlords. And, i might add, as a longhaired geek, that I have some influence over the chattering masses and can be useful in calming the populous.
There is a very serious downside to this, stemming indirectly from our current litiginous climate. Basically, if the insurance companies refuse to cover something it is effectively illegal due to many existing requirements for insurance.
It's like having a rottweiler in a house - sure it's legal, but you can't get insurance for the house, which means you can't get a mortgage, which means you can't buy a house unless you pay for it out of pocket...so it may as well be illegal for you to have a rottweiler.
One might say that this is just free market at work, yet there are aspects of goverment regulation here which underpin the system - like allowing lawsuits against uninvited people entering your property and being bitten.
Likewise, we'll see that unless the goverment idemnifies the nanotechnology companies (small chance of that) they will be unable to enter the field even though there is no formal prohibition against nanotechnology manufacturing.
I don't like the idea of insurance as a check on anything. Of course I've always thought of insurance as a scam that everyone has to buy because of government laws rather or not they really want it.
Think car insurance. Were people required by law to own horse insurance or mule insurance when those were the methods of transporation? I don't think so. Now, every one is required by law, to own a min. of car insurance.
If you buy a house now, most people will have to get a mortgage. Almost every bank requires you to get insurance on that house.
Insurance companies are around to make a profit. I don't believe that they are a good check for anything.
How long until it is required by law that every citizen must be paying for health insurance, life insurance and lawyer insurance or be put in jail?
In fact they fail to reference, meaning they probably have not read, the three concrete references on nanotechnology. They are respectively works by Robert Freitas: Nanomedicine Vol. IIA: Biocompatibility, Nanomedicine Vol. I: Basic capabilities and Drexler's Nanosystems. It is worth keeping in mind that all of these are college level textbooks and the popular press and/or the authors of corporate press releases may not bother to read them (unfortunately).
Any published reports that do not cite these resources (or at least cite sources that cite these resources) can reasonably be assumed to have little or no understanding of nanotechnology and nanomedicine.
Freitas deals extensively with the biocompatibility problem in Nanomedicine Vol. IIA. and if you do not see a detailed analysis of this volume (which is several hundred pages, extensively referenced) in an insurance risk analysis then that analysis is either misinformed or incomplete. On top of that an insurance analysis should deal with the potential benefits of nanotechnology which include extending the human lifespan to several thousand years. There is no analysis for the insurance industry of the reduced payments for life insurance due to the benefits of the technology. I.e. there is no comparison of the potential downside vs. the potential upside.
I would suggest that SwissRe has failed to do a complete job in its analysis.
Inovations who needs it, things are perfect as they are. If anything goes wrong somebodys responsible and it sure isnt the VICTIM.
I can't even begin to describe how disheartening this kind of story is. Asbestos was bad enough, Cigarretes were even more rediculous, but this truly demonstrates the pernicious and destructive effects product liablility lawyers have on society.
What I wan't to know is when I am going to be able to sue liability lawyers for damages done due to the absence of technologies they have blocked. Sorry sir those Amyloid plaques that are causing your alzheimers could be cleaned but the drugs couldn't be made because lawsuit fears. Sorry madam your child starved to death because of fears about GM foods. Sorry your fireproofing cost three times what it should have because we couldn't use asbestos anymore.
The insurer have taken a gutless though correct position. As long as the courts are willing to turn someones tragedy into a lawyers lottery ticket, As long as they are willing to hold inventors liable for things they didn't and in principle couldn't know, it will be folly for insurers to write liability insurance for any kind of new product.
Insurance companies are in no way totally funded by what you pay for an insurance premium. Not even close, in the vast majority of cases. Most of them are part of conglomerates, and make their real money in diverse ways, large wall street trading, mortgage brokering and so on. All of them are seeing their businesses go south in this economny, at the same time that risks are being better analysed. In addition, they have suffered some pretty significant losses in the past, after first being "assured" by scientists and whatnot that such and such was "completely safe", asbestos being mentioned in the opening blurb being a very good example. Here's a clue: scientists are just as often wrong in their future predictions as they are right. Hmm, another one. I can distinctly remember any number of "scientists" and "government spokes people" assuring the US and the military that "agent orange" was perfectly harmless and safe.
Turns out they were wrong, wrong on asbestos, wrong on agent orange, but... you get the same amount of "scientists" now as back then still pulling the same thing-they invent something, and almost immediately say it's "safe" if there's an immediate or close to immediate mega profit angle that can be garnered.
With nano-they do NOT know what is going to be safe and what isn't, so from the insurance companies POV it's "waitaminnit fellas, you gave us this song and dance before,so let's just think on this again, or you guys underwrite it yourselves".
That's all that's going on now, and the insurance guys would be total fools to not be professional skeptics of "scientists" or "industrys" claims on this or that. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 2983 times, well shame on me. Even the dullest wits eventually bingo to what is a good deal or not. That's the position they are in now. for some things, there's no amount of money available to cover some of the potential risks, so it's uninsurable. Just the way things are I guess. If it costs as much to insure some piece of tech as you would hope to benefit from it, then it's a better idea to just skip it, go on to something else.
Without proper legislation, Gene Simmons could turn into an evil scientist who uses tiny robots to hatch an evil plan to destroy the world's oil supply and bankrupt the World Bank. Then we'd need an overweight Tom Selleck to save us!
There's been plenty of discussion about asbestos/mesothelioma type problems, or about the grey-goo scenario. But I wonder about the more mundane problems of what sort of chemical reactions may take place when nano particles are released into the envioronment. Are nano-tube fragments really inert, or will they make some kind of unexpected chemical reaction that will cause widespread pollution. Or even, will simply their presence alone cause environmental problems when they mix into the topsoil?
I've been once at Ruschlikon, Swiss Re's thinking department. In 2002 they organised a nice program for ISC-Symposium participants, which was largely concerned with forecasting technological/societal changes to do exactly what the report is about - warn Swiss Re clients (insurance companies) about new risks. Of course, a day visit is not enough to be immersed into their organisational culture, but from my experience there the researchers/managers/insurers in Ruschlikon didn't quite appear capable of making any non-trivial observations about the future.
:)
So if you are considering reading that 57-page report, don't expect to see anything new or terribly important there. Most likely there is nothing you wouldn't already know from regularly reading Slashdot.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
When the research regarding the risks of buckyballs and other nanoparticles came out, I sent a letter to New Scientist where it was announced criticising them for "bad science". Buckyballs were specifically accused of hurting test subjects.
The testing may be valid, but leaves the wrong impression. Buckyballs are easily made by burning benzene and collecting them from the soot. Benzene is burned when we burn wood, coal, and gasoline. We've been burning these materials by the millions of tons for hundreds of years. Consequently, humans have been exposed and "harmed" by them over the same period.
This doesn't mean that we can't be harmed by new chemical compounds that are made through nanotechnology. It does mean that the threat is not new. The fact that we think of ourselves as able to control them doesn't mean that they are a significant danger.
The reports are bad science because they measure a boa constrictor along its length and tell us that is 16 foot in size without telling us it is only 6 inches tall.
Research is needed for the use of new chemicals, but the fact that we construct the chemicals with a new process doesn't make them more dangerous.
"...that's what you said about Cloud Insurance. Now look at them, plotting."
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
missa argues that gentechnolgy is much worse ...
...
...
a threat. the changed DNA is in an environment
that has as sole purpose to multiply (like any
living thing) and the system that has
been "infected" with "other" dna has been
perfectioning its possibilty to multiply
say a nanobot, is like a single celled organism,
but tru time free energy on this plant has become
very scarce, do to many organism consuming these
ready avaialbe energy sources. think back when
the proto oceans were full of complex chemicals
that where easaly broken-down / ingested by proto
organismen, once these vast pools of chemicals
were used up, the proto organisems had to adapt,
like using chloropyl or rodopsyn(?) as a mechanism
for energy source (or eating other "simpler" organsims
so lets say, one of these nanobots gets free,
what is it going to eat? i mean some deadly
germs (single-celled organism) need a petri-dish
for us to verify them. they don't just grow to
a huge culture in the wild
of course there is a risk of using exotic elements
for the construction of nanobots, that are
poisonous as elements, say cadmium and lead, etc.
messah thinks the gray goo is gona die if no more
"food" is available
oh yah, and don't under estimatee the energy
output of the sun: UV and x-ray ARE quit damaging.
"I wanted orange, and it gave me lemon lime" - Gunther
Great game.
Buckyballs Kill Fish
The problem about removing liability is industry (economically) controls the reseach. So, predictably, studies which are going to have damning results for the people funding them dont get published.
Suppressing research is what really got the cigarette and asbestos industry bitch slapped so hard.
In regards to medical research that may be conducted for insurance companys (or governments for that matter) I found this latims story [free subscription needed to view] which talks about how many doctors are collecting stock options and paychecks form the various companys that are conducting the research. IE: the people who research nano-tech for insurance companys may be getting stock options/paychecks from insurance companys. I'm not saying that it is happening, I am saying that when ever we see research like this is is something to keep in mind.
Note: this has been posted by r.future (a person who spends way to much time on the internet!)
Kind of reminds me of the days people used to play with mercury. It all seemed harmless to the people using it, until long term affects affected them in the near future... I think ANY new technology should be looked into before being used widely. Anything microscopic like nanotechnology needs to be checked into.
That's it, then -- I'm getting rid of all my nano-fabric Dockers.
No way I'm letting anything that might have side effects get that close to my genitals.
Because of all those fridges and deodorant canisters we are all going to die - in the coming superstorm.
Now if that is not enough, while we are freezing to death we will all be eaten slowly by tiny-weeny nano-bots!
Geez, when will you ever ever learn?????
Not quite on topic, but fun! Here is a site that has compiled a list of video games seen in various Simpson episodes... Some of my favorites are:
Robert Goulet Destroyer (Noiseland)
Angus Pogordny's Caber Toss (Try-N-Save)
Kick the Can (80's arcade)
Simpson Video Games\
... I was an AH & L guy for about 1.5 years, one of only two white collar jobs I ever had. We had pretty decent A/H policies ( looked at almost all the competition, most out there are crapola), but the company lost money on every one of those sold. they were a great deal to the consumer. Accident and health policies are (basically) industry loss leaders, they want a foot in the door to sell you stuff like term life, whole life, and annuities, and even the money from those gets invested else wheres. And the first year any policy is sold, almost all of it goes for commissions and bureaucratic administrative overhead.
Now a LONG time ago insurance was almost all funded from policy premiums (so called shared risk), but that is true ancient history, it's unsustainable like that now. they would have to charge people their entire paychecks, and then some.. They still run demographics in convulted actuarial science, but it's bickering over peanuts,mostly there they look for total wipeouts they shouldn't even deal with, and they make the bulk of their black-ink loot elsewheres, just using the cash flow from premiums for investments. Some other types of policies they are stuck with, that they'd really rather just dump and forget about, for instance, hardly any insurance companies *want* to give homeowners in hurricane prone areas, but the government has mandated they do so, as a condition for selling other insurance in that area. A lot of the insurance companies are in dismal straights now, even though in public they still "look" semi OK. And the quasi governmental and large corporate insurers are toast, just a matter of time now, especially those behind some big pensions and mortgages in general. They got into using derivatives and calling that an asset in hand, among some other shenanigans. They get away with it too, and 999 out of 1000 people got NO clue what is going on there right this second. Makes the dot com bubble look like a lemonade stand stickup. MAN 0 MAN is that a can o wurms gonna rock the world when that one busts.
I guess what I was more referring to was when some corp trots out it's scientific spokes model and then they tend to fib quite regularly. But, that's usually the only scientist the end users/public get to see or hear about. I am sure you are correct in that privately it could easily be a different story.
Yes, concerned about cell phone use as well. I think it changes DNA pretty qucikly when that sort of radiation is used at close range for long periods.