Big Article on Tiny Particles

November 1, 2005

To mark the opening of International Congress of Nanotechnology 2005, The San Francisco Chronicle has an article on the various issues raised by nanotechnology.

A new discipline, Nanoethics, is emerging. According to Patrick Lin, a philosopher from Santa Barbara, Nanoethics is devoted to the study of “the societal, ethical and policy implications of nanotechnology.”

Nanotech is an area where some interesting coalitions have formed. For example, “chemical-industry giant DuPont Corp. and New York-based activist group Environmental Defense issued a joint statement in the Wall Street Journal urging the federal government to greatly boost research funding on the possible hazards of nanotech.”

The article does a good job of sketching out the territory of the debates.

On the one hand, “I think people are skeptical of some of the hype around nano,” says McCray, who is also co-director of UCSB’s new Center for Nanotechnology in Society. He noted that “these utopian ideals crept into the rhetoric of people advocating for technology” in the past.

“Why do people still continue to do this (today), despite the fact this utopian rhetoric often disappoints in the long run?” he wondered.

On the other hand, McCray said, the worst-case fears of nanotech — for instance, the “gray goo” scenario, in which out-of-control nanomachines devour a landscape — are “overhyped … and have become the poster child of nanotechnologies run amok.”

Such extreme fears are themselves potentially dangerous, he said, because they’ll distract the public from the less sensational — yet still potentially worrisome — environmental issues posed by nanotech, such as “legitimate concerns about possible issues of nanotoxicity.”

Well said.