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Nigel M. de
S. Cameron
In voting almost a billion dollars for nanoscale funding in the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, the US Congress has determined that "ethical, legal, societal and environmental" research is a key part of the package. The ethical and social issues at stake are many, but chief among them lie issues of safety, and what Mike Roco, who heads the National Nanotechnology Initiative at the NSF (the lead funding agency), recently described as "respect for the human condition." It is this combination of safety concerns (which have led Swiss Re, for example, the world's second largest re-insurer, to raise fundamental problems about the proper assessment of nanoscale risk, and draw parallels with asbestos), and concerns about the impact of this technology - in combination with others - on "the human condition," that give raise to major uncertainty in respect of public acceptance. This is not the only reason for focus on ethical and social issues, which in the context of public policy are important in themselves. And there are special reasons that help account for the European GMO food debacle. Yet it offers a classic example of the importance of early and transparent discussion of social and ethical issues raised by technology, as well as prudent approaches to risk. While this may seem to raise needless hurdles to successful research and development in the early stages of the technology itself and of individual product development, the enduring lesson of the European GMO story is that without such a process there is always the possibility of a highly effective technology that has all the trappings of success with the exception of a market.
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Presented at the International Congress
of Nanotechnology, November 7-10, 2004 San Francisco, USA
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