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Should Nanotech Be Regulated?
Memorize writes "Josh Wolfe writes an article in Forbes arguing that it is too early to regulate nanotech. Wolfe is worried that the 'green gang' (his term for environmentalists) are going to regulate nanotech out of existence before the technology even works in the lab. It seems like much of the discussion of nanotech is hype, including the potential benefits, such as immortality and the potential dangers such as grey goo. However, nanotech does hold some promise of environmental benefits such as cheap solar power. Are the risks real, and if so, is it worth the risk?" From the article: "There are rumblings that regulations are needed. They say they want to guarantee the safety of the technology and instill confidence in the general public."
I wanted to be a nanotech inspector, but I failed the eye exam.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well, given that CNTs seem to be a perfect size to get lodged in the lungs, I wouldn't want the industry to be exposing itself to an asbestos-style situation.
What a crazy random happenstance!
From TFA:
"There needs to be a wide societal debate informing and underpinning government decisions, and this can't be confined to technical issues alone. It would be a mistake to attempt to sideline this discussion to a group of experts..."
Great thinking. Let's take the debate out of the hands of the people who know what they're talking about, and put it firmly in the hands of John Q. Public. "But I read a book about nanotechnology, and these swarms of tiny robots killed people. Won't somebody think of the children?"
I'm not saying that it's a mistake to involve society at large in a matter like this, but experts' opinions are going to be the most well-informed, and therefore the most valuable. People who know nothing about nanotechnology except for the fact that a manufactured particle can damage the environment just don't know as much about the issue as people who have been studying nanotechnology for years. The public's opinion can easily be swayed by politicians with hidden agendas, and somehow I doubt that scientific advancement will win out against mass panic and sentimentalism. What we need are some honest, unbiased reports of the pros and cons of nanotechnology: where it's headed, how it could help us, how it could harm us, and what the cost will be. Instead we'll have a mob of people going off half-cocked and writing their senators because them thar robots are goin' take over, and you cain't even see 'um. Give authority to the people who have earned it; they're the ones who will know the right thing to do with it.
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The problem with regulation of nearly anything is it only stops honest people. Usually, the people that weren't going to do anything wrong in the first place.
Now that's a death ray!
In America, everything should be regulated. What are you - some sort of godlesss pink commie?
Heh. This article is nothing but yet another libertarian call for unlimited dog-eat-dog capitalism. Then again, what else can you expect from Forbes?
Of course anything that has as monumental potential consequences as nanotech needs at least proper societal debate -- even when it's still in discovery and development stage. What are we going to do if the promises and nightmares come true? Furthermore, in the case of nanotech we would not only need government scrutiny but international governmental scrutiny and control. You don't have to be a greenie to realize that.
The fact that the people doing the debate do not understand the scientific details has nothing to do with their eligibility to participate in the debate. We already have referendums concerning whether we should build new fission plants and a perfectly valid argument against such a plant is: I don't want nuclear waste buried in my backyard for my grandchildren to take care of. You don't have to be a nuclear scientist to have something meaningful to say in a sociological/political sense. The same goes for nanotech.
So why is this guy saying that we shouldn't have public discussion (not referendums, mind you) about such a revolutionary technology as nanotech? Because it makes the profitmongering more difficult. That's why. The part of the article that I quoted above summarizes the attitude of the author perfectly: "shut up, shut up, shut up - I can make a lot of money with this, so you've better shut up about anything negative we might face when developing nanotech".
And where is that nasty Green Gang anyway? All sources I can see him quoting are respectable research organizations like the British Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering. If his beef is with scientists who're capable of thinking green in any other context than a dollar bill, he's the one who's risking the nanotech revolution.
The owls are not what they seem
However, an earlier report has shown conclusively that just about any substance will cause brain damage in fish, provided that enough of said substance is introduced into their little brain cases.
Seriously, though...just how much fullerene was used in this study? From www.nanomedicine.com:
I really sympathize with the hippie tree-huggers....honestly, I do. My personal opinion is that all industry should eventually be moved offplanet, and the earth itself converted into one big park. But that goal's quite a ways off, and without important technologies like nanotech, we simply aren't going to make it. These Luddite environmentalists who foam at the mouth at the mention of every new technology, and attempt to instill the same irrational, knee-jerk mentality in the general populace are not helping their species, or Mother Earth. Another point in their disfavor: every prohibition simply creates another underground. There's big money to be made in nanotech, and if people can't do it legally, they'll do it illegally, and I'm betting that the people who are bold enough to disregard the regulations won't really put too much thought...not to mention funds...into safety.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I don't know, anything that is two letters short of an alcohol isn't all bad in my book.
- flying cars
- artificial intelligences that pass the Turing test
- cures for the common cold
- concealed laser pistols
- faster-than-light travel.
I think the need for #1, for example, should be obvious -- I'm amazed that nobody's been killed yet, considering the complete lack of traffic regulations. And re #5, according to special relativity, any faster-than-light drive also allows time travel, which has obvious potential for use by terrorists -- surprising they haven't used it yet, given the complete lack of government oversight.Find free books.
The industry is too small to need to be regulated.
the same group that had lobbied against Monsanto's genetically engineered crops in the 1990s--has called for nothing less than a moratorium on the use of synthetic nanoparticles in the lab and in commercial products.
So before we even know even a fraction of the possible benifits and dangers, they wan't an outright ban on anything that would let us find out what the good or bad is? Banning it from commercial products means it doesn't get used in anything, banning it from the lab means we won't ever find out more on it until the moratorium is lifted. Which probably wouldn't happen until we found out more about it. Catch-22.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
There is no such thing as "nanotech". Nanotech was an unfulfilled pipe dream about "molecular assemblers" and the like. Of course, Wolfe is just trying to make money off the name as well; he is trying to present this as a brand new industry that is at risk of being stifled.
Because nanotech was such an abysmal failure, in order for people to save face and sell old research as new, the term has now been applied to traditional areas of material science and molecular biology. Whether those areas need to be regulated and how needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
For example, releasing new materials into the environment, in particular dusts and coatings that can turn into dust, should be subject to stricter regulations--whether "nanoengineered" or just chemical, that sort of thing is a health risk.
Molecular biology generally has regulations in place already; applying the moniker "nanotech" to molecular biology should not let companies or researchers evade those regulations.
More generally, however, I don't subscribe to the notion that a new industry (even if "nanotech" were a new industry rather than just good old chemistry and material science) should not be stifled; if it's potentially dangerous, of course, its growth should be stifled until we know how to mitigate the dangers.
He should learn some history, the Green Gang was the predecessor to the KMT, or Nationalist Chinese and was largely run by "Big Eared Tu" in the manner of organized crime with Chiang Kai-shek as his puppet.
Today's Nanotech is probably tomorrows equivilent to nuclear weapons. Who's to say who can and can't have it? The mighty leader of the free world?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://sundown.greyledge.net/pages/images/Smoky_Th e_Nanobot.jpg
As the technology matures, it will become easier and easier to do virtually anything with nanotech. So, eventually, it will be abused. (Which I assume is what people are worried about.)
The question we SHOULD be asking is how can we develop nanotechnology in such a way as to make sure we can stop dangerous/malicious applications. Because they WILL happen. There are just too many people on this planet for any kind of control to succeed in general on such matters. I suspect in the end nanotechnology will become another kind of virus, and it will take something like nanoengineered biological defenses to stop them, which will have to be continually upgraded.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
CNTs and buckyballs are just forms of soot. You can find them in any fireplace. So whatever regulations are on soot emissions to the atmosphere, they should be applied to CNTs as well.
So we need regulations! Otherwise, it will happen like in AI, where some time it turned out that all the promises we were given never were fulfilled, and the actual achievements of AI are much less. Therefore heavy regulations are necessary, so when the promises can't be fulfilled, you can just blame the over-regulation instead of having to admit that you were just over-optimistic.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The major issue with nanotech in the next few decades won't be a grey goo problem or any other sci-fi apocalypse. The biggest problem will be the toxic garbage mentioned in the article. Self replicating nanobots are still in the distant (20+ years) future but the problem with nanoparticles exists now. Some of the artifical dust being created by the nanotech manufacturing processes is small enough to pass through the various safeguards that organisms have evolved to protect against the environment. Very few things in nature are self contained objects on a nanometer scale so organisms never had a chance to evolve protection against the things we are creating. There is a valid risk of a problem similar to asbestos related cancers and DDT if nanotech becomes widespread before the proper safeguards are in place. I fully support nanotech and do believe the grey goo fears are overstated, but toxic dust is something that people should figure out how to deal with before it becomes dangerous.
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Wired article as proof
What will be funny is when the "Grey Goo" ecophagy theory plays itsself out and the people at Google figure out a way to search the nanobots blanketing the earth and patent it. And yes, it will be called "Grey Goo-gle".
Turk: Let's play Steak. J.D.: What? Turk: Steak. The 1st person to finish their steak is the winner of Steak. -Scrubs
Take carbon nanotubes. Companies allowed to treat it, according to OSHA standards, as graphite. Technically, yes, it is pure carbon. But there are some exotic, and potentially carcinogenic, reactions that nanotubes can create in the human body. Particularly when inhaled.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
We absolutely have to regulate how nanotechnology is used. Think what would happen if spyware and malware authors got ahold of a few nanobots!
Nanomaterials are weird. Gold metal and even sub-hair thin wires are fairly inert; but nanodivide it, and it becomes highly reactive and much more toxic than lead. And we're putting nanocrystal zinc oxide into sunscreens these days. I'll use it anyway-- with my skin and family history, melanoma is the bigger risk. But nanomaterials exposure is already happening.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Outright banning or heavily restricting a particular field of research is the fastest way to create a technological divide and be swept away by the pace of advancement, and at the rate it's going that means the country in discussion will be left in the dust in a handful of years.
You can't question the ethical nature of a technology itself and restrict it appropriately and also have progress. Would nuclear technology have advanced if they were worrying about the very long term consequences? You might argue that nuclear facilities haven't helped us all that much, and have done quite a bit of damage, but we also couldn't be taking steps toward fusion without learning from our mistakes with fission.
Essentially, the countries that take the risks and have the courage to step into unknown territory are going to see the biggest returns the fastest, since ultimately nanotech offers to return more resources than those expended getting to it. Meanwhile, anyone who pussyfoots around is going to find themself quickly losing military, economic, and technological prowess.
The Immortality Institute
There is a common misconception about nanotechnology that even /. editors are not immune to. I suppose this has to do with the fact that nanotechnology has morphed over the years into a discpline that has very little to do with "nanofabrication" and nanomachines, areas in which research has slowed substantially since the early 90s.
Rather, most academic research is now geared towards the production of highly controlled materials at the nano-scale. Nanoparticulate metals and oxides have tons of applications but almost none of them are nano machines. Rather, this work has become advanced form of materials chemistry and physics, designing regular surface features or particles. For this reason, nano-materials are not going to be much more dangerous than normal materials in the big picture. Nano-disperse carbon, which is sometimes called *smoke* or soot, is probably just as toxic as bucky-balls.
An interesting issue is: why have researches have abandoned nano-machines? I think it has to do with the fact that we already know how to build them. There's technology that has a great track record and can do almost anything you'd like at the nano and sub nano scale. They're called *enzymes* and recent enzyme engineering advances have made many nano-related tasks kind of superfluous. Also there are viruses and bacteria(maybe) that range into the nano-scale as well. So I think it boils down to a "why bother" issue with nano machines.
Of course I *might* be biased given my chosen area of research. I'm a chem. Prof investigating enzyme and bacteria engineering. Nah, I'm not biased.....
Gimme a break folks and do your science.
...
By now we should have had multiple nuclear wars
The worst case scenario was "nuclear winter" which implied one game only.
would have extreme shortages of food
Developing Countries
# 815 million people are undernourished
# 1.2 billion people live on less than $1/day
# 153 million children under age 5 are underweight
* 11 million children under age 5 die every year, over half of hunger-related causes
# 1 in 6 people is hungry
# 1 in 4 people lacks safe drinking water
would be all dying from pollution
Europe's children dying from pollution
would no thave enough oxygen to breathe
Decreased oxygen content in the atmosphere--an ecological disaster imperceptibly sneaking up?
Gimme a break folks and do your science.
Well.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Time travel is so dangerous it makes H-bombs seem like perfectly safe gifts for children and imbeciles. With a bomb, what's the worst that can happen? A few million people die. With time travel, we can wipe out the entire universe.
Oh, and flying cars are covered under the FAA rules, as I recall.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
The only evidence he offers is that people were worrying that buckyballs might cause cancer, and the NSF is funding toxicity studies. And the British are also interested in studying nanoparticle toxicity. So what?
But he also offers this, from the same source from which he gets his scary "wide societal debate" quote:So a small Canadian corporate watchdog group with an unsuccessful record of opposing biotech holds an extreme position on nanotechnology. Oooh, I'm scared!
This link found in the article is rather telling:With your subscription for the special introductory price of only $195 (a 67% discount off the cover price), you will receive 12 monthly hard-copy issues of the author's Nanotech Report delivered right to your door. No doubt each issue will be filled with screeching about nonexistent political threats to nanotechnology from powerful Canadians.
So buckyballs may be bad for you? Not exactly a big surprise--there are buckyballs in soot, after all, and breathing soot is not beneficial.
For the most part, nanotechnology is just a novel approach to doing chemistry--creating molecular assemblies of atoms. It makes possible some novel chemistry, and there will probably be some novel hazards, but there's nothing to indicate that there is some kind of "generic" hazard as is the case with radioactivity, where many different isotopes emit only a handful of energetic particles. So it makes no sense to try to create generic regulations for nanotechnology.
So we're going to have to investigate the risks of nanosubstances just the way we investigate the risks of biological substances (which are just "evolved organic nanotechnology," anyway) and new chemical compounds--case by case. A company that wants to discharge some nanotechnological waste should be subject to exactly the same scrutiny as a company that wants to discharge a new chemical. Eventually, we'll probably begin to figure out whether particular classes of nanosubstances have particular hazards, like asbestos or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. But targeting nanotechnology per se for some sort of heightened scrutiny is just obstructionist fear of new technology.
Ok, everyone keep it quiet that molecular biologists are doing way too much nanotech already. Enzymes are molecular machines that can build things at nano scales. When the nanotech regulators come around remember to call it biology. Storm
Such a pathetic reason.
There are many reasons to include regulation in such development when the potential fallout from the products could be lethal. But hey, as your logic goes, let's remove the FDA and get all those drugs out onto the market faster! Doesn't really matter if they kill a few thousand or so because they weren't properly tested, or because the company (as just about ever f'king company that ever existed does) cut corners and shaved off the testing time of development in order to make their buck NOW and beat the competition.
Maybe it'll be fine and there's no reason to worry. That'd be nice. Maybe it won't and having regulations in place would save our asses. Who knows! I, for one, would err on the side of caution, especially when all the promises made by the development are so grandiose. What better reason to approach with caution then when they tell you it'll give you the wonders of the world, yet haven't proven that it will.
But when I peruse web sites of companies claiming to sell nanotech what I actually find are companies selling small amounts of powder that has been ground up really small. For example a medical application of nanotech is really small bits of ground up magnet with antibodies attached giving a nice way to detect antigens through a magnetic field. Or another application comes from the fact that really small particles have a high surface area to volume ratio making good reagents and catalysts for chemical processes. So nanotech is really just finely ground stuff. (It sounds a lot less sexy when you actually say the truth free of jargon.) And that, IMHO, is far more dangerous than imaginary robots because it can get in your lungs and lodge in other parts of your body. But this doesn't necessarily need specific regulation, we can just use existing regulation for particulate pollution more finely grained (no pun intended) to limit how much nanoparticle sized stuff may be released into the air.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
There's a problem comparing the regulation of email et al to that of nanotech.
When firms were developing novel internet based system, we could say there wasn't much danger inherent in the process. What's the worst that could happen with email?
But with nanotech we're talking about altering the construction of matter at the molecular level. That's obviously more dangerous than sending 1s and 0s around a network.
What if the US were to regulated nanotech like it did email? We'd have months of grey-goo outbreaks before the Congress passed the CAN-GOO act (Citizens Against Nanotech's Grey Onmipresent Ooze) allowing citizens to opt-out of being decomposed into their individual molecules.
OK I jest - but the point is that more dangerous technologies; eg nuclear power, contagion research, human cloning; need more regulation than technologies like email and internet search engines.
[litany of negative stats on nutrition]
Some other stats:
* Since late 50's, the price of food has fallen by two thirds.
* Since '60, average calories per day in the *developing* world has risen by 40 odd percent.
* Proportion of starving people has fallen in all continents since the 70's. Varies per region and the worst is Subsaharan Africa where it's only fallen 7-ish percent.
* Proportion of undernourished children in the developing world has fallen from 40 to 30% in the last 15 years and is expected to fall further.
And this all when:
* Population has doubled since 1960.
So it's unacceptable, but getting better, contrary to what some might have you believe.
Of course we could all go 'organic' and starve billions if we wanted to.
Most of "Nanotechnology" is just hyped up stuff that used to be called "Chemistry" or "Molecular Biology".
:).
Yes, and nanotech regulation used to be called micromanagement.
PHB's just love to make themselves look important
my blog
Is it really better to inject products into the general public without having a good idea of whether they're actually safe or not? Once you've put the stuff out there, it's hard to get it back. If we can't do a good job recalling defective car seats, what are the odds that we can get individual molecules out of circulation?
Yes, there are risks to moving too slow. People die by the thousands when the FDA is too slow to approve a product. But when a substance gets widely adopted and then is discovered to be too dangerous (asbestos, PCBs, etc), the costs of taking them back out of the environment range from ludicrous to prohibitive.
I simply cannot fathom this neo-connish "all regulation is evil evil evil" mentality that so many people have. I think it's absurd to regulate "nanotech" in the sense that it's absurd to regulate "computers": The field is too broad for a one-size-fits-all approach. But the article seems to be suggesting a "once the horse is gone, maybe commission an underfunded and non-binding study to see if locking the barn door might have mitigated the problem" approach.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I'd like to pick a bone with this labelling people with environmental concerns as some kind of wierdo hippy gang.
We live on a planet that is vital for our existence, yet we (as a species) seem to take every opportunity to destroy it or damage it, because each individual small piece of damage doesn't seem much on it's own. It seems that only once it's too late and we've poisoned the whole place will we think about changing our ways.
Quite frankly, if you aren't really, really concerned about protecting the environment that gives you and those you love the chance to live, then you don't deserve a life here at all.
When making money comes ahead of protecting our home, that's when you know we are fucked. But then, only a complete asshole would put profits ahead of planet anyway.
I'm not going to comment on the nanotechnology issue as I'm still undecided, but trying to label people who care about the environment as a minority freak group is just bullshit.
Everybody needs to care about the environment we live in, because if we don't, there will come a point where the environment we live in will be damaged beyond repair, and we will no longer be able to live in it.
Unlike nanotechnology, this isn't fiction. It's already happening, and will continue to get worse unless we act right now to improve our ways. No amount of technology can save us from the terminal stupidity of our species, and making fun of people for looking out for our home is about as low as you can go.
Organic free-range music... yum!
That's where the stupidity in the proposed falls. Nanotech is a bunch of very disparate materials that have been lumped together 1) by people who don't understand them, and 2) researchers trying to make their work sound more interesting than it might actually be.
Nanotech is pretty much nothing and everything. This is just baseless fear of the unknown. We've been doing nanotech for years, it's called pharmaceuticals. Just like any other material, safety needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
We've been breathing buckyballs, nanotubes, an other nanoscopic carbon structures since the domestication of fire. It's called "soot", and is where buckyballs were first discovered.
Harmfull stuff, too. Humans have evolved to be MUCH less damaged by such things as a result of long use of fire in enclosed places. (To the point that some dioxins amount to deadly poisons for EVERY animal but people, for whom they're just a medium-grade carcinogen/teratogen at exposure levels high enough to overwhelm the detoxification enzymes.)
Granted industrial production of nanoscopic materials means more exposure to a wider variety of stuff. But biochemical/nanomechanical warfare has been in progress since the advent of single-celled life. Most nanotechnological hazards are likely to be a matter of degree, not something totally new - even if particluar materials ARE totally new.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
To establish my credibility: IAAPP (I am a physics professor). I'm an active researcher in nanoscale electronics, and I teach a two-course sequence on nanoscale physics and engineering.
Josh Wolfe is emblematic of what is wrong with media perception of science today. He has no undergraduate or graduate training in any physical science at all. His background is in business, and he works for a VC firm. He has no scientific credibility.
He is, however, articulate, bright, and very slick. That is why this guy, with less training than the undergrad working in my lab, is able to get national attention from the media (be it Forbes, or CNN, or MSNBC, all of which have deferred to him as an "authority on nanotechnology").
He has every right to speak his mind, and when it comes to investing in high technology companies, I think he knows his stuff. However, there is no way this guy should be viewed as an appropriate authority to whom policy makers should pay attention.
(By the way, I actually agree with his position on this issue. I simply take issue with the idea that he is viewed by the media as worthy of a bully pulpit on this.)
Why are we discussing this in this forum where only a few are well informed on the subject? Nanotech will be regulated to some extent and there are active knowledgeable groups like the Center for Responsible Nanotech and the Foresight Institutte that are able to say what is likely to be needed with credibility.
Lots of basic materials science is regulated. It is overseen and done in secure facilities. If the nano hypers say it cures old age, require drug company oversight. Apply appropriate means based upon the claims being made. You inhale billions of tiny particles all the time. So if you are really afraid, STOP BREATHING!
This article mentions a few ancedotal accounts and scary potentialities. Hardly enough to get worked up about yet or cast blame on the enviornmentalists. If we want to castigate the enviornmental movement there are plenty of other places to start, for instance their refusal to prioritize issues which makes it very difficult to achieve victories on global warming (for instance here in the bay area the enviornmentalists want to tear down a dam to rescue the scenic landscape before offering another renewable energy replacement for the hydroelectric power). I think there are plenty of instances happening right now where enviornmentalists are putting emotion before reason to the ultimate detriment of the enviornment and we should worry about these far before this tenous concern about regulating nanotech.
However, I think the article is right to challenge the reflexive call for social discussion and debate about these issues. This isn't restricted just to nanotech but to virtually all scientific and even complex policy questions. It appears that somewhere along the line the fact that the voters have the right to vote on whatever opinion they have was confused with the idea that its okay for the voters to have whatever opinion they want and that it is somehow discussion amoungst the general populance which should decide issues of public policy.
Quite simply the average voter just doesn't have the training or expertise to understand these issues. Thus it is NOT societal debate which should decide the question but scientific debate. Just as it is a bad idea to let public discussion drive the debate about how much arscenic we should have in our water rather than scientific experimentation (the public will probably come up with the unrealistic standard of 0).
Of course at the end of the day the public needs to decide which experts to trust but it should be emphasized that this is the role the general voter should aspire towards. The voter should not aspire to making up their own mind based on emotions and intuitions they have about nanotech (or GMOs or whatever) but based on the degree of trust and credibility they have in the various experts.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
...for the same reason you don't fear the bacterial equivalent. Fuel energy is scarce, as are vital resources, so the search for food takes up approximately 100% of a small organism's time and effort.
For nano to be useful it will either have to be in a food-rich environment (eg: inside the human body) or else plug into the power socket in the wall. Grey goo (were such a thing invented) would munch through the power cord, and just stop.
As a bonus, here are some of the results from some others' research on nanotech:
* When rats inhale carbon nanotubes, the tubes bypass the blood-brain barrier and cover the brain. The resultant rats had black brains!
* Titania dioxide, a common ingredient in paint, sun screen and tooth paste, is very toxic to cells and rats.
* Silica dioxide, also a common ingredient in paint and food, is not toxic.
* Fullerenes (aka, bucky balls) are deadly to fish (verified by Richard Smalley from Rice University --- he created bucky balls)
Note that all of these materials exhibit very different properties from the bulk. You won't get sick from most of these products if you use the same concentrations of material, but simply change the size of the particles.
Our work will be published early next week on http://www.nanotoxicology.ufl.edu/.
Nanotech is chemistry. Why shouldn't chemistry be regulated? Of course, it shouldn't be regulated wrong, but that's another word for "no regulation". Unless Wolfe can somehow indemnify us with his vital organs for when he's surprised to find that a chemical company has damaged us with a nanotech screwup, he's just another greedy opportunist.
--
make install -not war
Full Disclosure: I'm a Senior Associate with the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing http://imm.org/.
n es.html
I have to say that this article seriously misses the mark.
Recombinant DNA research self-regulation has been in place for 30 years now, and it has worked very well to prevent "Andromeda Strain" style accidents. The most recent full overhaul was in 1994:
http://www4.od.nih.gov/oba/rac/guidelines/guideli
There are people who are holding debates about similar regulation for molecular nanotechnology already: The National Nanotechnology Initiative http://www.nano.gov/, The Foresight Institute http://foresight.org/, The International Council on Nanotechnology http://icon.rice.edu/, and many others, including the IMM. The intent of these organizations is to establish guidelines for developement of nanotechnology, and to explore applications.
Here is the first set of guidelines which have been established:
http://imm.org/guidelines/current.html
I fully expect that this will be updated, as the technologies involved become more capable.
A good analysis of the actual societal implications is available from NNI here:
http://www.nano.gov/html/facts/society.html
Don't blow things out of proportion until they are actually implemented; the amount of regulation of any technology has historically always been as much or even much more than was necessary at the time.
-- Terry