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Nanoethics: The ethical and social implications of nanotechnology Fritz Allhoff, Patrick L/n, James Moor and John Weckert (ed)

In 2006 nanotechnology was incorporated into more than $50bn of manufactured products, however, by 2014, an estimated $2.6 trillion in manufactured goods worldwide will use nanotechnology, accounting for 15% of total global output and 11% of manufacturing jobs.

In a recent issue of The Economist (24 November 2007), Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the US Wilson Center's project on emerging nanotechnologies, highlighted the breakthroughs in medicine, sustainable energy and electronics that form part of the 'enormous promise of nanotechnolgy', however, the article's title: A Little Risky Business, also unscores the comparative lack of research that is currently being conducted to determine how safe nanomaterials actually are.

Apart from threats to human health and the environment from nanoparticles, self-replication has been the main concern throughout the early history of nanotechnology. Back in the 1980s, Eric Drexler depicted the technology's future as the application of mechanical engineering principles on a molecular scale to create nanomachines that could construct any desired material or artefact. This, however, developed into concerns about self-replicating nanomachines that would consume everything before them in their ceaseless replication, some thing that had already been highlighted by John von Neumann even earlier in the 1940s in a presentation at Caltech on complexity and self-reproducing automata.

Back in July 2004 nanotechnology was (in)famously described by the future king of the UK, Prince Charles to have the potential to change the world into 'grey gee', a term that had been coined much earlier by Drexler's followers, although Drexler himself has since suggested that self-replication is neither a desirable nor a necessary feature of a nano-sized robot. So have all the likely impacts been examined or are we rushing into the unknown?

The editors of this book have drawn comment from a wide range of authors who have looked at every aspect, from the possibility of life extension to the potential threat from the use of nanotechnology by terrorists, in their effort to determine the potential impact of what has been described as the technology of the 21st century, and how society might, or should, react to it.

Nanotechnology is at almost a unique point in the development and application of a new science, and has been compared to the development of atomic science in the 1930s and 1940s. Like atomic science it has the potential to be developed into a technology that could be described as a double-edged sword; on the one hand, bringing great benefits, but on the other, posing potential risks that stretch human imagination.

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As one contributor, Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, notes: 'We have the possibility not just of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication....We are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil.'

Another essay contributor, inventor and US National Medal of Technology winner Ray Kurzweil believes that self-replicating biotechnology represents far more of a challenge. 'Near-term applications of nanotechnology are far more limited in their benefits as well as more benign in their potential dangers,' he says. In these applications he includes developments in the materials area involving the addition of nanoparticles to plastics, textiles and other products such as pharmaceuticals.

'This development is not qualitatively different than what we have been doing for decades in that many new materials involve constituent particles that are novel and of a similar physical size', he says. 'The emerging nanoparticle technology provides more precise control, but the idea of introducing new nonbiological materials into the environment is hardly a new phenomenon.'

Kurzweil likens concerns about these applications to those expressed about genetically modified organisms. 'As with nanoparticles, GMOs are neither inherently safe nor unsafe, and reasonable levels of regulation for safety are appropriate', he says. 'However, none of the dire warnings about GMOs have come to pass.'

But Kurzweil also notes that true nanotechnology is still two or three decades away. In his terms, nanotechnology is all about the deployment of nanobots--small robots the size of blood cells that have already been tested in animals. In addition to military applications, Kurzweil believes they could take up positions in close physical proximity to interneuronal connection coming from our senses and provide 'totally convincing virtual reality' as well as acting as brain extenders to tackle neurological diseases like Parkinson's disease. However, such applications raise other issues, like who controls the nanobots? Who do they talk to? What about unrestrained nanobot replication? And what about individual privacy and security?

He also notes, however, that society has managed to respond satisfactorily to that other modern self-replicating pathogen, the computer virus, which although not as potentially damaging, still remains a concern but rather at a nuisance level. 'Keep in mind that this success is in an industry in which there is no regulation or certification for practitioners,' he adds. 'It is premature today to develop specific defensive nanotechnologies since we can only have a general ideas of what we are trying to defend against. It would be similar to the engineering world creating defences against software viruses before the first one had been created.'

Nanotechnology can offer great benefits, often to those in developing countries, those who are ill, or those who can least afford today's solutions. Regulators must therefore consider carefully the restriction of such technology because they might be used for malevolent purposes. Indeed the risk exists that broad regulation might drive these technologies underground, where, as Kurzweil expresses it: 'development would continue unimpeded by ethics and regulation'.

As other essay contributors point out, however, there is no single unifying authority that directs science policy globally, so it will never be possible to control or restrict nanotech research. There are also calls for a greater public involvement in guiding scientific and technological development to ensure socially beneficial outcomes result. As Jack Stilgoe and James Wilsdon from the UK thinktank Demos point out, the public certainly in the form of those involved in the 2005 study by the environmental group Greenpeace, the UK newspaper the Guardian, and researchers from the University of Newcastle, UK, is able to identify the risks and benefits of nanotechnology, and is keen to be involved in the nanotech debate.

So this selection of essays provides much food for thoughts. They should be essential reading for non-experts but not just those who fear the possible futures that nanotechnology may bring. In discussing the ethics of this new technology, these essays will also provide a broad background for those who have yet to discover the many benefits that may result.

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Year: 2007 Pages: 385 Price: 21.50 [pounds sterling] ISBN: 978 0 470 08416 8

Neil Eisberg is the editor of Chemistry & Industry