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UK Establishes Fragmented Nanopolicy

Posted by Zonk on from the a-young-ladies-illlustrated-primer dept.

hlovy writes "The BBC has a piece on British Science Minister Lord Sainsbury's long-sought reaction to a yearlong Royal Society study on the environmental and societal implications of nanotechnology. I've written ad nauseam on the Royal Society report here, here and even for the Wall Street Journal here."

3 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nanotech misconceptions by Dagowolf · · Score: 2, Informative

    There are possible risks with nanotechnology, especially since we don't have a full grasp of what the newly engineered particles can do.

    Gunter Oberdorster at University of Rochester http://www2.envmed.rochester.edu/envmed/tox/facult y/oberdoerster.html found that fullerenes caused "damage" to the brains of fish. Now a researcher from Rice recently gave a lecture here at the U of South Carolina and called some of that research into question, but still you have to wonder. Also, there is the problem of metals from nanopackaging surrounding chemo delivery particles http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=450 possibly collecting in the pancreas. Also research on some particles have suggested that they might cross the blood-brain barrier in humans. While this might be good for dealing with brain tumors http://www.nano.org.uk/thisweek78.htm it also raises the very real possibility that something we don't want in the brain might get there.

    While I'm not all about regulating the nano-industry into oblivion, I would rather we treat it with much respect. I know that there is an "Asilomar" style conference on nano in the planning for either late this year or early next year partially sponsored by U of South Carolina http://www.nano.sc.edu/

    Let's not assume anything is safe, after all, look what happened when nuclear power was tumpeted as the salvation discovery.

  2. Re:Just like government... by Dagowolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, eugenics was a social technology used by several governments to "strengthen" the genetic lines of their populace. The United States, the UK, Italy, and of course Germany all ran quite indepth programs of eugenics, with government funding, from the early 1900s until the 1930s (except Germany who continued a bit longer).

    Also, it wasn't always about "killing and sterilising [sic] people," in the case of the United States and UK in particular it was research into how to prevent the deterioration of the human mental abilities.

  3. Re:Nanotech misconceptions by Quantum+Fizz · · Score: 2, Informative
    You obviously don't work in the field. Your analogy is flawed because back in the day we could easily produce gamma rays and other radioactive sources, we just didn't know what the effects were. Today we are extremely limited in what nanoscale systems we can make, so much of the research conducted now is to develop new ways to control atoms and actually make atomic and nanotech systems.

    I never said not to "proceed with a more measured and careful approach". I pointed out that stopping research is backward becasue we don't know how to even build many nanoscale systems at this point. Without ways to build them, we cannot have the nanoscale systems to test. How can you test something you cannot make? Simulations only let you get so far, and considering the mesoscopic physics involved, simulations will be extremely limiting (you're stuck between the two extremes, so your large sample-size statistics starts to hit a brick wall, yet the bodies are complex enough that you cannot adequately simulate the atom scale). YOu need nanoscale systems to test nanoscale systems, and you cannot test nanoscale systems unless you develop methods to build them, etc.

    So stopping research to test them is a catch-22.