Freedom to Care Return to INDEX
European Institute of Health & Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, UK
Paper delivered
at Institute of Seizon and Life Sciences, Tokyo on 5th July
2003.
Introduction
Nanotechnology
may help the human race to survive the global problems we have created; or
it may accelerate our downfall. This depends very much on the development
and globalisation of another innovation, not in technology, but in human
relations. I am speaking of organisational accountability.1
Organisational accountability is an expression of our moral
and ethical concern for each other, including future generations. Its basic
premise is that large organisations have a duty to explain and justify their
decisions, acts and omissions in so far as they affect the public, and the
public has a right to know and
to be involved in decision-making.
Nanotechnology has the potential
to bring about a revolutionary transformation of our material world, a
transformation that may surpass that brought about by information technology
and telecommunications. Yet there is currently little or no public knowledge
of, let lone involvement in, the rapid expansion of this technology and its
dangers. Mnyusiwalla et al
are right in identifying an enormous gap between the rate of development
of nanotechnology (NT) and the current volume and quality of ethical, legal
and social discussion.2
Aware of the tremendous public
resistance3 to genetically modified foods, and widespread suspicions
about many new developments in science (such as cloning and genetic engineering),
the UK government has recently launched (11th June 2003) an
independent study into the benefits and risks of NT.4
Nanotechnology
is the development of engineering processes at the atomic and molecular level
of matter. It is manipulating and constructing matter measured in nanometers.
A nanometer is one-billionth (thousand millionth) of a meter, or ten hydrogen
atoms side by side, or about one-thousandth of the length of a typical bacterium.
Since a
single human hair is around 80,000 nanometres
in width, objects measured in a few hundred nanometres are invisible to the
human
eye.
Nanotechnology is a general term for all those diverse techniques, now under development or envisaged, for engineering new and useful molecular structures. NT will have many applications in biomedicine (including genetic engineering and diagnostics), environmental management, a wide range of manufacturing processes (including food), intelligence and defence, transport and space travel, and telecommunications. However, there are also many potential dangers and ethical problems.
Such a new technology draws upon a wide variety of existing theories and techniques including those in quantum physics, electronic engineering, molecular biology, chemistry and biochemistry, high-resolution microscopy, and materials science. At this microscopic level, the laws of classical physics may fail, and those of quantum physics prevail. NT takes advantage of the sometimes unexpected properties that emerge at the quantum level. The term ‘nanotechnology’ is often reserved for inorganic materials, although combinations with organic molecules are feasible. Of course, in a sense, all of life is already ‘nanotechnological’.
Huge investments
The growth of NT in the last decade has been phenomenal. Currently
(mid-2003) there are about 500 NT companies, nearly 300 university departments
involved and about four billion US dollars-worth of investment in the US,
Japan and Europe. Japan is currently investing most, with a six-fold leap
in spending from £75m to £470m over a five year period. (See
Table.)
Global growth in
Nanotechnology Research and Development |
|
Country/region
1997
2002 |
|
USA
432
604 |
Western Europe
126
350–400 |
Japan
120
750 |
South Korea
0
100* |
Taiwan
0
70 |
Australia
0
40 |
China
0
40 |
Rest of world
0
270 |
*
Per year, for 10 years (in millions of
dollars). |
Cited in Mnyusiwalla op. cit. p
R10. |
One might regard vaccines or the carbon particles in vehicle tires as early forms of NT. But it was Richard Feynman’s 1959 paper ‘Plenty of Room at the Bottom’5 that is the visionary starting point of NT, and then the idea entered the popular imagination in 1986 with Drexler’s futuristic book, Engines of Creation.6 In fact, it was a Japanese scientist, Norio Taniguchi, who (in 1974) invented the word ‘nanotechnology’ for machining with a tolerance less than micrometer (one-millionth of a metre). In 1981 Gerd Binnig and Heinruch Rohrer of IBM (Zurich) invented the scanning tunnelling microscope, that makes so much of NT possible. Regarding materials for NT, the discover of carbon nanotubes in 1991 by Sumio Iijima of NEC, Tsukuba, Japan is of great importance.7 It is not surprising that in 2000 the U.S. President, Bill Clinton, announced the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and both Japan and Europe have continued to compete.
New NT instruments emerge every year, including refinements
to the scanning tunnelling microscope and atomic force microscope. These
microscopes can create pictures of single atoms, or move them around and
etch surfaces.
IBM has already spelled out its name using an arrangement
of atoms; and
wires one
atom wide can be produced.
NT uses either top-down processes (lithography) to cut out or add material to a surface, or bottom-up processes in which NT materials self-assemble to create larger structures. One approach is to build smaller and smaller nano-machines from MEMS (micron-scale micro-electromechanical systems) so as to arrive at nanoscale assemblers of atoms and molecules, called nanobots. It is said that eventually, these will have to be self-replicating, otherwise mass assembly would remain impossible.8
Nanoscale electrical devices follow the laws of quantum physics. The quantization of electrical conductance leads to many novel features that are superior in several respects to existing technologies. For example, so-called ‘quantum dots’ have been produced that can be used as labels to tag proteins etc., which is better than fluorescence. Their colours depend on the quantum effects of the dots’ sizes, and emit a pure light that does not fade. Many pure colours can be derived from one nano-engineered material. Beads containing different dots could also be used as ‘bar codes’ for labelling genetic sequences.9
Advocates of nanotechnology promise to give us the molecular repair of the human body, the destruction of malignant cells as soon as they appear, the removal of all bodily toxins and the indefinite extension of human life. Drexler even dreams that NT could repair the cells of cryogenically preserved human brains.10 Certainly, the accurate delivery of drugs, e.g. in NT-engineered dendrimers (molecular ball of branches) now seems possible. Such dendrimers could also perhaps transport DNA into cells for gene therapy (possibly more safely safer than using modified viruses). Nano-scale modifications of implant surfaces could improve implant durability by better bonding.
Tagged molecules could bind with diseased cells and tissues for early diagnosis, nano-scale delivery of contrast agents could be used in non-invasive diagnostic imaging, and laboratory samples could be screened at high speeds using NT devices that bind to certain genetic sequences e.g. for disease susceptibilities.
There have already been notable achievements. Scientists have already created a tiny vehicle that can cross from the blood into the brain to deliver tumour-destroying chemicals efficiently. Researchers in USA have already developed Nanoshells - tiny beads of glass coated in gold that kill cancer cells when an attached capsule of poison bursts11. The Gilead Sciences company has encapsulated anti-cancer drug for treating Kaposi’s sarcoma, found in AIDS patients.
Although in NT terms a human cell is a giant structure (about 1,000 nanometres in size), some futurists have speculated that there are many ways in which tiny nanomaterials or devices could enter the cell and interact with its physical/chemical processes, even changing the whole cell. Perhaps even the manufacturing ability of ribosomes could be hijacked for NT manufacture, inside or outside the cell.
While we would all support safe medical advances to reduce human physical suffering, ethical concerns arise over the unexpected and possibly uncontrollable effects of such biomedical applications, especially those involving genes. It is hard to know whether NT medical applications might not increase human suffering for some individuals or even for many or most over the longer term.
The Bio-Materials interface – misfits?
A more controversial aspect of NT possibilities concerns the interface between inorganic molecular engineering and biology. Nano-devices could be a combination of biological and physical artefacts, or could interact with biological molecules and genes in non-natural ways.
A Cornell University researcher ‘has shown that it is possible to engineer a primitive nanomachine with a biological engine [when he] .. extracted a rotary motor protein from a bacterial cell and connected it to a metallic nano-rod...’.12
Most dramatic of all, perhaps, is that DNA, which carries genetic information, has been proposed as a computer material. Leonard Adleman in 1994 showed that a DNA computer, if technically feasible, would have superior functions (Lieber, in Fritz 100-101). The use of the vital code of life will make many people morally uncomfortable.
Is it ethical to use a basic component of life for the production of a electronic commodity? Are these novel cell-machine interactions acceptable? What will be the ethical implications of implantable nano-chips? How do we know that accidents will not create germ-line propagating genetic damage, or new virus strains? Furthermore, NT may facilitate and speed up existing frontline medical technology, such as gene therapy, that is already ethically controversial.
New Materials
Futurists envisage NT applications in almost every area in which materials are currently being produced. It is said that anything we make, we can better make by molecular engineering. This is rather speculative at present, because the fact is that although atoms can now be seen and touched and moved around, they cannot be assembled. There is still no such thing as a nanobot (nano-assembler) in practice.
Among the possibilities are the benefits of the extraordinary properties of carbon nanotubes in new extremely light, strong and flexible materials that could be used, for instance, in spacecraft or safer road and rail vehicles, or even earthquake-proof buildings. Molecular manufacturing processes may minimise the production of unwanted or toxic by-products, recycle waste already produced, as well as create new biodegradable materials and pesticides. Drexler even suggests that, “with nanotechnology, excess greenhouse gases could be inexpensively removed from the atmosphere”13.
Only a few NT conceptions have actually entered production processes. For example, ExxonMobil uses nanoscale zeolites as catalysts for gasoline production, and Nanophase Technologies is producing nano-crystals for highly effective use in sun-block.
It is also claimed the food could be produced by NT, and one ethical argument for this is that it would no longer be necessary to kill anything. This assumes that such a novel food does not itself kill anything.
New materials carry new dangers. If nanobots are really to mass-produce materials then they would have to be self-replicating; but could such a process go out of control? Alarmists has spoken of a multiplying “grey goo” (grey-coloured jelly) of nanobots eating everything in its path. A more realistic danger lies in the unknown effects of manipulating molecules at the atomic level. ‘But as we try to assemble complex networks of these [chemical] bonds,’ says Michael Roukes, ‘they certainly will affect one another in ways we do not yet understand and, hence, cannot yet control.’14
I.T. and Communications
It is estimated
that by about 2015 miniaturisation of the microprocessor will have reached
technical and economic limits - at about 5 billion transistors per machine.
At this point NT, it is said, could carry us beyond the current 1 micron
size of components. ‘In nanoelectronics, transistors might be organic
molecules or nanoscale inorganic structures.’ (Lieber, in Fritz 93).
In fact,
researchers
have already created a single-molecule transistor.
Instead of metal wires deposited on silicon,
nanotubes made of carbon or other materials may be used, and the principles
of operation would be quantum
mechanical.
Very high speeds, low-energy requirements, much less problem with heating-up side-effects, and the advantages of certain quantum effects make nanotube-IT very attractive.15 Batteries would last for a very long time. This would also impinge on all sensors currently in use. This is an argument in its ethical favour.
IBM is already producing nanoscale layers on disk drives for higher density data storage; and Carbon Nanotechnologies makes affordable carbon nanotubes, which could be used as conductors and ultra-fine microscopic probes and so on.
Military, Intelligence, Terrorism
On the face of it, there would appear to be no particular ethical worry about nano-engineered IT devices. They could bring enormous benefits in communications and control of the environment and natural disasters. But when we think of such I.T. being applied in the area of military power and intelligence-gathering systems we may become very concerned indeed about civil rights and political subordination.
Military applications and certain biomedical applications are probably the
two biggest ethical problem areas of NT.
Merkle says:
In the future, even weapons
as small as a single bullet could pack more computer power than the largest
supercomputer in existence today, allowing them to perform real time image
analysis of their surroundings and communicate with weapons tracking systems
to acquire and navigate to targets with greater precision and
control.
When we also think about how governmental, military and other kinds of surveillance and spying may be hugely enhanced by microscopic (even invisible) cameras, microphones and interception devices, we may really grasp the immediate need for global ethical regulation of further NT development. It seems that in the future a monitoring or tracking device may not only be in your bedroom, but undetected in your lung or under your skin.
We already live in an era in which one super-power, of dubious democratic credentials, is able to exert its will anywhere by means of superior military technology and intelligence. Now imagine that superiority multiplied many times over.
There is also the, probably remote, possibility that terrorists or ‘rogue
states’ could use simple NT devices, such as
disassembling nanobots (at the time
in use perhaps to recycle waste) as weapons or
threats.17
A Question of Global Economic Power
What will NT do for the developing countries? We now know that technology and development are linked by exploitative economic elations in such a way that technological advances nearly always exacerbate rather than ameliorate the global inequality. Futurists such as Drexler do not appear to understand this global dynamic. He says,
Improved manufacturing would also drive down the cost of solar cells and energy storage systems, cutting demand for coal and petroleum, further reducing pollution. Such advances raise hope that those in the developing world will be able to reach First World living standards without causing environmental disaster.18
Ten years ago, I suggested in my chapter in a book on international justice that it is citizen participation, not technology, that holds the key to ‘third world’ development.19 People who are marginalized from the decision-making process by poverty as well as politics cannot benefit from technological advances.
The research agenda is mainly
driven and controlled by the governments (USA, Japan, European) financially
supporting, with citizens’ taxes, the economic risks taken by
entrepreneurial companies. The result is that even in the ‘developed
world’ the race for NT, and other technologies, is now directing
and stifling universities, academics, researchers and intellectuals. Many
are afraid to raise ethical concerns for fear of losing funding and patronage.
One speaker at a National Science Foundation
(USA) workshop in 2000 was brave enough to say:
Ethical questions about university/industry
relationships are hardly novel, but they are virtually certain to arise …
By now, some specialists contend that institutional accommodations to new
relationships with private companies have transformed universities, bringing
significant changes in university values and practices … The close
association of university research with the private sector has brought problems
of conflict of interest to the forefront. For example, questions arise about
whether a university researcher’s ties to a for-profit firm threaten
reliable judgment in university research. Observers have suggested that
universities as institutions can have conflicts of interests …
20
In my view, the real hope for a sane and democratic future lies with citizen action in the form of NGOs and NPOs. Only they would have the independence and conviction to be completely honest. The very least they can do, with regard to NT, is demand a new multi-stakeholder global institution to monitor and regulate (see my ‘Recommendation’ below).
Two Approaches: Risk Management and Public Accountability
The companies and entrepreneurs who are
promoting NT are afraid of a public backlash, as there is already against
GM foods. An article in the new journal Nanotechnology, appears to
be urging the new industry to control the ethical agenda now, before the
NGOs do so:
As
the science of NT leaps ahead, the ethics lags behind. Activist groups have
appropriately identified this gap, and begun to exploit it. We believe that
there is danger of derailing NT if serious study of NT’s ethical,
environmental, economic, legal, and social implications (we call this NELS
research) does not reach the speed of progress in the science.
21
Thus ‘ethics’ itself is an arena in which struggles for political-cultural hegemony, in Antonio Gramsci’s sense, take place.22 ‘Ethics’ is not neutral – after all, whose ethics are we talking about? Who frames the questions and therefore the legitimate answers? The struggle to define the ethical ground is reflected in two dominant approaches to dealing with the ethical anxieties: a ‘risk management’ approach, promoted mainly by the NT industry itself, and a ‘public accountability’ approach, promoted by NGOs and citizens.23
The first approach focuses on addressing specific technical safety aspects from the narrow point of view of technical expertise. The second approach addresses the NT development as a whole, questioning its rationale, its motives, and challenges the exclusive role of experts.
As an example of the ‘risk
management approach’ of the NT industry, there are The Foresight
Guidelines. These recommend that:
MNT [molecular NT] device
designs should incorporate provisions for built-in safety mechanisms, such
as: 1) absolute dependence on a single artificial fuel source or artificial
‘vitamins’ that don’t exist in any natural environment; 2)
making devices that are dependent on broadcast transmissions for replication
or in some cases operation; 3) routing control signal paths throughout a
device, so that subassemblies do not function independently; 4) programming
termination dates into devices, and 5) other innovations in laboratory or
device safety technology developed specifically to address the potential
dangers of
MNT.24
As an example of the ‘public accountability
approach’ we may refer to the global NGO Greenpeace. It has said:
As
nanotechnology, artificial intelligence and new biotechnologies emerge, the
need for a new contract between science, business and society becomes compelling
...
If we believe it’s right for people to elect their governing
party or president, why is it considered acceptable for the appropriateness
of new technologies to be decided on solely by scientists and big business,
as if funding alone were enough to confer legitimacy
upon
a cause? …
Allowing public input
into the decision-making process over crucial scientific and technological
developments must direct this new knowledge in ways that go with the grain
of public values and not against
it.25
It seems to me that the risk management
approach by itself is too narrow and exclusive, merely reactive and rather
fragmentary; while the public accountability approach may, in its present
form, be too populist, too general and rather uninformed. What is needed
is a public accountability framework in which experts, industry representatives
and government officials have their role among other stakeholders. This is
what the NGO Greenpeace calls a ‘new
contract’.
Recommendation: An International Nanotechnology Agency
The United Nations should convene an international conference with a view to the creation of a permanent international multi-stakeholder body (International Nanotechnology Agency) to review, monitor and regulate NT developments. There is as much reason to create such a body as there was to create the International Atomic Energy Agency with its monitoring powers.
Such an agency must not be restricted to the representatives of governments, corporations and research institutions, but must involve NGOs/NPOs, representatives of major world religions and ordinary citizens. The Agency will function on the principles of organisational accountability. It is now the priority of mankind, to engender through stakeholder dialogue, a more mature understanding of trusting and cooperative human relations at the organisational level.
Footnotes
1 For clarification of the concept of organisational accountability see ‘The Charter of Public Accountability’ on this website.
2
Mnyusiwalla, A.,
Daar A.S.,
and Singer,
P.A.
‘“Mind the gap”: science and ethics
in
nanotechnology’.
Nanotechnology 14 (Feb. 2003) R9–R13 PII: S0957-4484(03)57090-8.
Online at:
stacks.iop.org/Nano/14/R9.
3
In UK, Prince Charles had already warned of the potentially
“enormous environmental and social risks” from nanotechnology,
but was chided by some leaders of science for doing so.
4
The Royal Society and the
Royal Academy of Engineering have been asked to consider how it should be
regulated as it rapidly develops. Ann
Dowling, professor of mechanical
engineering at Cambridge University, will lead the
inquiry. The report has been
commissioned by the government's Office of Science and Technology (OST).
Professor Dowling, who has held visiting posts at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and California Institute of Technology in the US, and worked
for the UK Ministry of Defence.
5 Feynman, Richard P. (1959) ‘Plenty of Room at the Bottom’. <www.//its.caltech.edu/~feynman>
6 Drexler, K. Eric. (1986) Engines of Creation. Random House, New York.
7 In 1993 Warren Robinett and R Stanley Williams (USA) devise a virtual reality system connected to a scanning tunnelling microscope, to touch and show atoms, and six years later James Tour and Mark Reed (USA) show that single molecules can act as switches.
8 See Ashley’s chapter in Fritz, S. (ed) (2002) Understanding Nanotechnology. From the editors of Scientific American. Warner Books, New York.
9
See Alivisatos’ chapter in Fritz (2002), op. cit. Ralph Merkle,
Principal Fellow of Zyvex
in USA, the first molecular nanotechnology company, has overviewed
some nanotech possibilities in his 1997 paper, ‘It’s a small, small,
small, small world’, originally published in MIT Technology Review
(Feb/Mar). Now at:
www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/merkle.html.
Note that most of these are speculative.
See his website at:
<www.merkle.com>.
10 Fritz op.cit., 105-106.
11 Fritz op.cit., 67-68.
12 Fritz op.cit., p. 52.
13 In Fritz, op.cit., p. 107.
14 In Fritz, op.cit., p. 21.
15 Collins, in Fritz, op.cit., p.124 et seq.
16
See Merkle (1997) op.cit.
17 Philosopher, John Leslie (Canada), also thinks that the biggest threat of future nanotechnology, is from deliberate misuse. Leslie, John (1996) The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction. Routledge, London.
18 In Fritz, op.cit., 105.
19
Hunt, G. ‘Is There a Conflict between Environmental Protection
and the Development of the Third World’, chapter in Attfield, R. &
Wilkins, B. (Eds), International Justice & the Third World: Studies
in the Philosophy of Development, Routledge, London, 1992. (In other
important respects my political-philosophical views have changed substantially
since this chapter was
written.)
20
V.
Weil, in National Science Foundation (2001) Societal Implications
of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Final Report
from the Workshop held at the National Science Foundation, Sept. 28-29, 2000,
p.
196. See especially section
6.5:
Focus on Social, Ethical, Legal, International and National Security
Implications. Online
at:
www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications
).
21
Mnyusiwalla et al, p. R9.
22 Antonio Gramsci, Italian political theorist during the fascist era. See: Hunt, G. ‘Gramsci & the Concept of Homo oeconomicus’, International Studies in Philosophy, XVII:1 (1985) 11-23; Hunt, G. ‘Gramsci, Civil Society & Bureaucracy’, Praxis International, VI:2 (1986) 206-219. [Both articles now included in vol. 2. of James Martin (ed) Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments, Routledge, London, 2002, four vols.]
23 Drexler himself seems to have a rather narrow ‘expert approach’ when he writes: ‘..we need to focus now on avoiding accidents and preventing abuse of this powerful technology. Solid work has been done on the problem of heading off major nanotechnological accidents.’ He mentions the possibilities of misuse by ‘aggressive governments, terrorist groups or even individuals’ and compares it to problem of proliferation of WMDs (in Fritz op. cit. p. 107.) I wonder what ‘solid work’ he is referring to?
24
Foresight Institute (June 2000). ‘Foresight Guidelines on Molecular
Nanotechnology.’ http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/index.html [NB
Foresight promotes nanotechnoloy.]
25 Greenpeace(2002) Transforming Science: A Matter of Public Involvement. At: www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/4924.pdf.
Bibliography
Alivisatos, A. P. ‘Less is More in Medicine’, in Fritz, S. op. cit., pp. 56-69.
Anderson, P.W. (1972) ‘More is different’. Science 177, 393. [Discussion of emergent properties.]
Drexler, K. Eric. (1986) Engines of Creation. Random House, New York.
Drexler, K. Eric. (1991) Unbounding the Future. Quill, New York.
Feynman, Richard P. (1959) ‘Plenty of Room at the Bottom’. <www.//its.caltech.edu/~feynman>
Foresight Institute (June 2000).
‘Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology.’
http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/index.html [NB Foresight promotes
nanotechnoloy.]
Fukuyama, F. (2003) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Profile, London.
Fritz, S. (ed) (2002) Understanding Nanotechnology. From the editors of Scientific American. Warner Books, New York.
Geary, J. (2002) The Body Electric: An Anatomy of the New Bionic Senses. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London.
Greenpeace(2002) Transforming Science: A Matter of Public Involvement. At: www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/4924.pdf
Jeremiah, Admiral David E. USN (ret.), ‘Nanotechnology
and global security.’ Presentation at the Fourth Foresight Conference
on Molecular Nanotechnology (1995).
See:
www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nano4/jeremiahPaper.html
Merkle, Ralph C. (1997) ‘It’s a small, small, small, small
world’, originally published in MIT Technology Review (Feb/Mar). Now
at:
www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/merkle.html.
Mnyusiwalla, A.,
Daar A.S.,
and Singer,
P.A.
‘“Mind the gap”: science and ethics
in
nanotechnology’.
Nanotechnology 14 (Feb. 2003) R9–R13 PII: S0957-4484(03)57090-8.
Online at:
stacks.iop.org/Nano/14/R9.
National Science Foundation (2001) Societal Implications of Nanoscience
and Nanotechnology. Final Report from the Workshop
held at the National Science Foundation, Sept. 28-29, 2000. Especially section
6.5:
Focus on Social, Ethical, Legal, International and National Security Implications
(including the contribution by V. Weil, Illinois Institute of Technology).
Online
at:
www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/NSET.Societal.Implications ).
Other websites covering nanotech:
ETC group: www.etcgroup.org/main.asp
Nanotechweb: www.nanotechweb.org
National Nanotechnology Initiative,
USA. www.nano.gov
Freedom to Care, 18th January 2004