Religious Fears and Nanotech

To many people in the U.S. and Europe, “nanotechnology” is understood in rather abstract or loosely defined terms – if the word is known at all.

About 30-percent of people in the developed world have at least a passing familiarity with the term, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University and Cornell University. To about two-thirds of these people, however, nanotechnology is only recognized as a vague symbol for looming technological innovations, possessing new – and perhaps even bizarre – consequences.

Given the explosive impact nanotechnology promises to have on industry and society, it’s shocking how unaware people are,” said Nigel Cameron, director of the Center of Nanotechnology and Society at Chicago’s Kent College. “And many who are aware, are afraid.”

Although the relatively low awareness of nanotechnology is fairly consistent across the U.S. and Europe, there is one striking difference between these two regions, said Dietram Scheufele, principle investigator of the study and University of Wisconsin professor of life sciences, communication and journalism.

“More Americans fear the consequences of nanotechnology,” he said.

The survey, which is currently under peer review, shows that only 29-percent of Americans believe nanotechnology is morally acceptable. In the United Kingdom, this number is 54 percent; while in Germany and France, 62 and 72-percent of the survey’s respondents had no moral objections to nanotechnology, respectively. All of the survey’s respondents either already considered themselves informed regarding nanotechnology or were educated through a series of 10 telephone calls.

With a margin of error at only 3 percent, this drastic disparity requires some sort of explanation, Scheufele said.

“We found that people in the U.S. have attitudes about nanotechnology similar to other countries with high levels of religiosity,” he said.

Scheufele’s survey charted people’s relative levels of religious faith and their moral beliefs regarding nanotechnology. It revealed an inverse relationship between a self-assessed importance of God in the respondent’s lives and their belief in the moral acceptability of nanotechnology.

“More aware people tended to be the ones who possessed less fear of nanotechnology,” he said. “But the key to how the public at large will understand nanotechnology has to do with what the first big applications are.”

To this point, many of the public’s first impressions of nanotechnology have been bundled with other contentious moral issues, such as stem cell research and transhumanism, Cameron said.

Since 2001, hundreds of scientific papers have been published regarding the issue of enhancing human performance through nanotechnology, ranging from new nanotechnology-based drugs to actual brain implants.

“This has created a lot of sci-fi, sort of naive talk,” he said. “But it’s terrifying if you’re an investor.”

The fears surrounding nanotechnology have played a role in a general lack of public involvement in the issue, said Julia Moore, deputy director for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. But educating people is going to take a lot of time and the government is wary of what the public will think, she said.

“Most nanomaterials will be proven to be safe,” she said. “But there are still lots of environmental and human health risks that need to be assessed. And they demand public policies now not in existence.”

Since the definition of nanotechnology is so general – potentially including virtually all fields of applied science – it has evaded federal policy as well as accurate public understanding, Cameron said.

“What we need is a far more coherent discussion on the federal level,” he said. “People want to fund the science and move forward. But until we know how the public is going to react, people are reluctant.”

More information: The Nanomaterials Characterization Facility
Dietram Scheufele

Nanotech Luxuries soon to Hit the Market

Most often, the research dollars pouring into the development of nanotechnology and nanoscience are justified by underscoring the likely social benefits the final outcomes of research are aimed at producing – whether they relate to public health, better living, safety or whatever. But, not surprisingly, nanotechnology is already beginning to produce luxuries, which possess little or no social benefits and exist purely as a useless means toward reaping corporate profits.

Researchers at Victoria University in Wellington unveiled a tremendous technological advancement to the world last week at the Nano Science and Technology Institute convention: gold nanoparticles clothing dyes.

Yes, you heard me right, clothing dyes with no advantage over existing dyes other than intense brightness, possible health hazards, exponentially higher prices and, of course, the ability of the consumer to say, “I am wearing a sweater of gold.”

What has made this possible? Corporate partnership with Victoria University research projects and, of course, New Zealand taxpayers have helped make this a reality, according to Stuff.co.nz: “The Wellington researchers are part of the university's MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials & Nanotechnology, which was last year given taxpayer funding over six years of $39.1 million for operational spending and $9.8 million for capital works.”

Is this really an appropriate use of taxpayer money? Is this really an appropriate avenue down which nanotechnology and nanoscience should be traveling?

Well, from the capitalistic perspective, this should be expected and not reviled. If this technology exists and consumers are situated such that they demand and can afford such luxuries, then perhaps there is no reason to object to such applications of nanotechnology.

There is, however, a disturbing alliance between the government and the clothing designers who are likely to profit from these developments, which, clearly, are a product of public investment.

Furthermore, there is the more broad concern that while our civilization is teetering on the brink of the catastrophe of not being able to supply enough energy to prevent collapse – once peak oil hits – that publicly-funded research is going into the production of luxuries rather than technological solutions to the crisis.

Please let them know what you think (especially if you live in New Zealand): http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4585439a28.html.

Also visit Victoria University’s Web site: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/home/default.aspx.

(For more about Peak Oil visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/industries/energy/stories/050508dnbusoilsidebar.3b519e7.html; the Saudis – who we should expect to be disingenuously optimistic – predict oil will reach its production peak in 2037, which is still dangerously close).

Nano Futures: Sewer Surveillance

The last of the Nano Futures scenarios compiled to date involves tracking the movements of individuals within a city through the application of nanotechnology to sewer systems.

The basic idea involves placing a DNA detection and coding system within the sewer system of a large metropolis – using nanopore technology. In theory, this system could be so advanced and work on such a short timescale that people in this city could be located by authorities within a matter of minutes.

A previous blogger objected to this scenario because he or she thought that it was a disgusting topic and that more interesting applications of nanotechnology could be discussed.

Objectively, it really does not matter whether topics relating to human waste are regarded as disgusting or not; this exists as, possibly, a real application of nanotechnology and, clearly, the point of including it in this discussion was not to disgust readers or to present them with what might be an amazing advance in technical science. Without a doubt, the significance of this subject is the extremely high level of surveillance that the full development of these nanotechnologies would allow for law enforcement or, say, anyone with the means to produce and install such a system.

So, we must ask ourselves, is it morally acceptable that the government – or really anyone – might possess such intimate knowledge of members of society? This is not merely a question of whether or not the location of different individuals will be known, but their DNA, presumably, will be known as well. This is because the process by which possibly fugitive individuals would be located would be based purely on their DNA sequence. Naturally, this would mean that the government – or who uses this technology – would be in possession of perhaps millions of people’s genetic codes, regardless of whether or not it knew whom these codes belonged to in particular.

Should this trouble us?

Personally, I am not sure. From a certain point of view, it is always a good idea to implement measures that should ensure the more rapid and accurate administration of justice to those who have broken the laws of society. Yet the cost of this particular technology, again, is the surrendering of a certain level of privacy for apparently law-abiding private citizens – by giving the government a copy of their DNA codes. There are also the further concerns that this technology might not only be used by law enforcement agencies, it could be misused by law enforcement agencies, or that it could start civilization down a slippery slope leading to the knowledge, by some agency, of the locations and doings of every member of society simultaneously.

I find the final outcome of such a scenario highly disturbing. This is because the question should not really just be, “Where are our citizens and are they abiding by the laws of society?” but also, “Who is our government and how can we justify giving those in power such supreme levels of control over the rest of us?”

Let them know what you think: http://cns.asu.edu/nanofutures/blog-sewersurveil.php

Nano Futures: Engineered Tissues

The technology to engineer human tissues and to eventually grow complex human organs is, clearly, one of the most significant goals of medical advancement and nanotechnology.

The Center for Nanotechnology in Society describes the fully-developed result of this technology with an illustration of how it could be used to build organs for the human cardiovascular system: “Cells are arranged by inserting them into a device analogous to an inkjet printer where cells are ink. The cells are then printed in a two dimensional pattern such as a circle. After a circle of cells is laid down on top of a sheet of scaffold, another layer of scaffold is placed on top, followed by yet another circle of cells and another sheet of scaffold. Several circles placed in this way will reorganize the scaffold to form a tubular tissue, thus creating a tissue with a vascular system.”

In some ways, this technology represents the numerous proposed benefits of the end-goals of stem cell research, but without the associated controversy surrounding this somewhat misunderstood issue.

This is the general position of medicine today: extend human life or preserve it to every extent conceivably allowable. From this ethical standpoint, there is little to suggest that the development of nano-engineered tissues should have any detrimental effects on society.

Another blogger noted that this could eventually be extended to animals – creating nano-engineered foods without the necessity of breeding and slaughtering other animals. Doubtlessly, there will be many individuals and groups apprehensive about such an application – such as consumer groups against nanotechnology in food. However, there is the potential for nanotechnology to suddenly become attractive to numerous animal rights groups or organizations.

Still, as is the case with virtually every emerging medical treatments – particularly in the United States – there is the lingering concern of who will have this treatment made available to them.

Clearly, this is an aspect of the debate that is not simply limited to nano-engineered treatments but to the whole United States medical community; it raises the question as to whether or not a privatized medical treatment organization is ever morally justified. Ultimately, many believe, the potential advances that nanotechnology may facilitate will bring these expansive ethical issues to a head. Put differently, nanotech treatments could possibly deepen the social chasm between the rich and the poor and, therefore, pursuing them may be immoral.

Let them know what you think: http://cns.asu.edu/nanofutures/blog-tissues.php.