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FDA Gets Mixed Advice on Nanotechnology
mikesd81 writes, "There's an article at the Associated Press about how the government must balance close oversight of the fast-growing field of nanotechnology against the risk of stifling new development. Contrasting view came from a panel of experts brought together to discuss how nanotechnology should be regulated. The article states that submicroscopic particles are being incorporated in the thousands of products overseen by the FDA, including drugs, foods, cosmetics and medical devices and the products consist of roughly 20% of each dollar spent by U.S. consumers. Matthew Jaffe of the U.S. Council of International Business says, "The key is to use science to weigh both the benefits and the risks of nanotechnology. That's a balance the FDA already seeks to strike in assessing other products." From the article: "'The success of nanotechnology will rely in large part on how FDA plays its regulatory role,' said Michael Taylor of the University of Maryland's School of Public Health. The FDA doesn't believe nanotechnology is inherently unsafe, but does acknowledge that materials at the nano scale can pose different safety issues than do things that are far larger. 'The FDA wants to learn of new and emerging science issues related to nanotechnology, especially in regard to safety,' said Randall Lutter, the agency's associate commissioner."
This business of calling surface chemistry of finely divided powders "nanotechnology" is a bit much.
The term "nanotechnology" is much too broad. Let's use "nanoscale materials" for this sort of thing, and "nanomechanics" for what all us /.'ers think when we hear "nanotechnology".
IS how the tech is going to be implemented. How will the nano-machines know what to do? Through wireless signals? It sounds like a very insecure method to command the little things. Sure, they could potentially be used for extremely great things. But the risk is great too. Same they're killing cancer cells in some kids body. What happens if someone were able to reprogram them to kill other cells? Maybe I'm crazy, but I think the FDA and the developers/engineers REALLY need to have a good system in place for this before it ever takes off.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
I wonder if we'll see an actual assembler in my lifetime. Even a hydrocarbon only assembler seems unlikely.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The FDA is only concerned with nanotechnology that would be eaten, injected, used internally, or otherwise ingested. I don't believe they would have regulatory authority over nano-assembler use in manufacturing or environmental dumping. The EPA could possibly set regulations on the environmental aspects, and OSHA might be able to deal with the worker safety aspect of nantech used in manufacturing.
BTW: when does ordinary chip lithography become nanotech? I mean, isn't 45nm chip fab just around the corner? A good question to ask is whether regulating all nanotechnology makes sense, or if it is better handled by each respective regulatory agency. I would argue that too much centralization is probably a bad thing. Best to break the problem up and hand it out to the specialists within each field.
In a world where the EPA let firefighters clean up toxic carcinogenic nano-particle riddled debris after the WTC towers left smashed asbestos dust on all surfaces, I really don't trust the FDA with my life. Government will do what is expedient, not what is in the best interest of health based on scientific or even logical reasoning.
Oh You POS
20% of my spending is for FDA regulated products? Hell NO!
Since when did the FDA have anything to do with materials science? I thought they were about drugs and food.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It's not like we haven't been exposed to nanoparticles all the time. Just set a stick on fire. Right before your eyes, thousands of nanoparticles are being created. If you examined the soot, you'd find buckyballs and tubes. And when you smell smoke, OMG, you're inhaling nanoparticles! Plus, your body even has the ability to deal with self-replicating invasive nanoparticles (technically they are not "alive).
Well, I guess we shouldn't go barreling blindly though, we don't want another asbestos.
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
Even more so is when you get past the marketing-speak and read their literature, only to discover that some products being pushed aren't nano-anything.
nano = 1x10^-9
micro = 1X10^-6
A surprising number of companies try to sex up their micron technology with the prefix nano.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is a great all-around introduction to real "nanotech", it's the entire book online, for free.
m l
http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/index.ht
All the FDA has to do is watch Star Trek to understand that nanotechnology is very bad for humans.
As I have repeatedly said before, the whole "nanotech" craze is a bunch of marketing baloney.
Know how long a typical C-C bond in an organic molecule is? Hint: try wikipedia. It doesn't take very many atoms to make a single molecule a "nanoparticle!"
My fellow chemists and I have been doing nanotech for years - that is what the FDA has spent all its existence reviewing! I have the utmost respect for those working on new engineered materials, etc., and am perfectly willing to let them call themselves "nanoengineers" instead of the older "material scientists" if it helps them get elusive grant money, but we can't start regulating gold nanoparticles or quantum dots any differently than we would, say, cisplatin.
There simply isn't any fundamentally different science going on in nanotechnology that isn't already present (albeit perhaps in a previously esoteric realm) in chemistry, materials science, or solid-state physics.
Even in the vat there is a ton of stuff from a chemical, point of view
Storm
I, for one, welcome our new nano-enhanced overlords.
Well, SOMEONE had to say it.
It's not me, but I have no way of proving that. :P
It's full of useful information though.
FDA can go Fuck Dat Ass!
PROVEN FACT ! Buckballs cause retardation in brain, inhaled merely via the nose! (or inhaled in gills in fish)
incredibly small amounts of nano-carbon tech can devastate countless brains rapidly, in an unknown effect, as horrifying as a catayst reaction of some sort.
NANO TECH DETROYS IQ!
it is established fact backed by research
NANO carbon needs to stay out of all facets of human experience until it is regulated carefully from ruining the brains of millions.
>> This business of calling surface chemistry of finely divided powders "nanotechnology" is a bit much.
That's very true. I'll stick with the definitions given by the founder of the field (ie. Drexler), as it's less subject to commercial and political manipulation. Much of the defining material is freely available online, for anyone who wants their information from the horse's mouth.
First of all there's the online version of Eric Drexler's extremely seminal Engines of Creation. It's a fantastic read, even after all these years.
(The online version of EoC used to be maintained at the Foresight Institute, but it's now kept by Drexler himself above. His whole site is a great resource of course, so clear out the tail of the URL and have a look around.)
Then there's the online version of the popular Unbounding the Future, an easily readable and slightly updated introduction to nanotechnology for everyone, although somehow I find it lacks the charm of Engines of Creation.
But nothing beats his textbook Nanosystems though. This book is a 150% must-have for anyone with a strong interest in nanotechnology, because even if you cannot follow the detailed science and mathematics, the diagrams and tables alone justify the cost.
Unfortunately the online version of Nanosystems is still at a very early stage, and is not really useful except as an online table of contents. Buy the textbook, you won't regret it.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Others have pointed out the intentional messing up of definitions of "Nanotechnology" to suit the vested interests, so I won't address that. Suffice to say that any current or envisaged regulation concerns only nanoscale materials, and not molecular nanotechnology (MNT) which is the original "Nanotechnology" as defined by Drexler.
What I will address is regulation of MNT (once it exists). In a nutshell, you can't.
The basic reason is simple: MNT will be a kitchen sink manufacturing technology (ie. do it at home with no special ingredients other than dirt, water, and air for carbon from CO2), and a microdot seeding technology (eg. carry the precursor factories on an invisible dot on your watch, say). So, you won't be able to stop it by restricting ingredients, nor by external monitoring.
As a result, the only way in which MNT could be regulated is by flooding the world with even more nanomachines to monitor everything that is going on --- in other words, a fully invasive world police state.
Furthermore, it would have to be a WORLD police state, because any invasive regulation done purely at home would achieve nothing, other than ensure that the rest of the world takes the lead in MNT.
This is why regulation of MNT makes no sense at all. The only way to avoid the undoubted dangers of MNT in the hands of nasty people is by defense. No, not the kind of defense where you bomb others, but the real kind, wrapping yourself and your community in a shield.
That will be extremely difficult. Nevertheless, it is the only way, and we ought to start planning for it.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
1. Nanobots will not recycle your tissue to create more Nano bots.
2. We reserve the right to change this agreement at any time.
Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these .. things .. these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?
It's not exactly paranoid here. It's a well reasoned and cautious approach that we haven't tested these new nano-particles as food additives, drugs, etc. If they didn't behave any different from the much larger sized particles, then why are companies interested in them?
There's nothing inherently dangerous about nano-particles, just like there's nothing inherently dangerous about chemicals. It's simply the fact that nano-scale implementations of old substances haven't been tested, and behave differently. Why is that so difficult for some people to understand?
AccountKiller
... the only way in which MNT could be regulated is by flooding the world with even more nanomachines to monitor everything that is going on --- in other words, a fully invasive world police state
This was discussed even in the very early days of nanotech theorizing. It was called the "Blue Goo" scenario - one of the possible ways of heading off the "Grey Goo" scenario.
The latter is where unbounded replicators get out of hand, turn EVERYTHING into more of themselves. Potentially a few get picked up by solar wind and carried to other planets, solar systems, and galaxies, where they do the same. Some consider this even worse than the mere total extinction of Earth-origin life (excluding the wild replicators), because the replicators could (and likely would) have been designed with enough error-checking and redundancy that they wouldn't evolve into anything else, and would likely kill off any other life as well, with the result that "Nothing else interesting happens for the rest of time.")
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way