Nanotechnology & Society: Current and Emerging Ethical Issues

314 Pages·2009·2.257 MB·English

by  Fritz Allhoff (auth.), Fritz Allhoff, Patrick Lin (eds.)

Nanotechnology & Society
Current and Emerging Ethical Issues
Fritz Allhoff (cid:127) Patrick Lin
Editors
Nanotechnology & Society
Current and Emerging Ethical Issues
Editors:
Fritz Allhoff Patrick Lin
Western Michigan University California Polytechnic State University
Kalamazoo San Luis Obispo
USA USA
ISBN: 978-1-4020-9385-2 (PB)
ISBN: 978-1-4020-6208-7 (HB) e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-6209-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007940885
© 2009 Springer Science + Business Media B.V.
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Dedication
This volume is dedicated to our families and to our many possible futures.
We are indebted to many others, including but not limited to: Western Michigan
University, Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo), Fritz Schmuhl, Charles Erkelens, Natalie
Rieborn, Rafael Capurro, Brenna Robertson, and all of our esteemed colleagues
who have contributed papers to this anthology. Special thanks goes to Marcus
Adams for his extensive copy-editing help.
This material is also partly based upon work supported by the US National
Science Foundation under Grant No. 0620694 and 0621021. Any opinions, findings,
and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of
the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science
Foundation.
Contents
Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Biosketches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi
Part I Foundational Issues
1 On the Autonomy and Justifi cation of Nanoethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Fritz Allhoff
2 The Presumptive Case for Nanotechnology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Paul B. Thompson
3 The Bearable Newness of Nanoscience, or: How Not to Get
Regulated Out of Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Arthur Zucker
Part II Risk and Regulation
4 Ethics, Risk, and Nanotechnology: Responsible Approaches
to Dealing with Risk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Commission de l’Éthique de la Science et de la Technologie
5 Intuitive Toxicology: The Public Perception of Nanoscience. . . . . . . . 91
David M. Berube
6 Environmental Holism and Nanotechnology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Thomas M. Powers
Part III Industry and Policy
7 Nanotechnology’s Future: Considerations for the Professional . . . . . . . 127
Ashley Shew
vii
viii Contents
8 The Tangled Web of Tiny Things: Privacy Implications
of Nano-electronics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Jeroen van den Hoven
9 Carbon Nanotube Patent Thickets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Drew L. Harris
Part IV The Human Condition
10 Ethical Aspects of Nanomedicine: A Condensed Version
of the EGE Opinion 21. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
European Group on Ethics
11 Emerging Issues in Nanomedicine and Ethics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Raj Bawa and Summer Johnson
12 Nanoscience, Nanoscientists, and Controversy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Jason Scott Robert
Part V Global Issues
13 Nanotechnology and the Poor: Opportunities and Risks
for Developing Countries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Todd F. Barker, Leili Fatehi, Michael T. Lesnick, Timothy J. Mealey,
and Rex R. Raimond
14 Cultural Diversity in Nanotechnology Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Joachim Schummer
15 Transnational Nanotechnology Governance:
A Comparison of the US and China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Evan S. Michelson and David Rejeski
Foreword: The Double Language of Science,
and Why It Is So Difficult to Have a Proper
Public Debate about the Nanotechnology
Program
Jean-Pierre Dupuy
The promoters of nanosciences and nanotechnologies are numerous, powerful and
influential: scientists and engineers enthused by the prospect of fabulous breakthroughs;
industrialists attracted by the hope of gigantic markets; governments of nations and
regions of the globe terrified at the idea of losing an industrial, economic and military
race in which the stakes are not only jobs and growth, but also the defense capacities of
tomorrow; and, finally, the representatives of that vast and anonymous collective entity
made up of everyone who is rushing blindly to find technological solutions to the unin-
tended and undesirable effects produced by technology itself.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the benefits for humanity of the scientific and
technical revolution now underway are everywhere praised in giddily hyperbolic
terms. A rhetorical record has probably been set by the National Science Foundation
2002 report, whose full title is “Converging Technologies for Improving Human
Performances.” It foresees nothing less than the unification of sciences and technolo-
gies, pacific and mutually advantageous interaction between human beings and intel-
ligent machines, the disappearance of all obstacles to generalized communication and
notably those resulting from the diversity of languages, access to inexhaustible
sources of energy, and the end to worries about environmental destruction. The report
speculates that “the twenty-first century could end in world peace, universal prosper-
ity, and evolution to a higher level of compassion and accomplishment”; and that
humanity may eventually “become like a single, distributed and interconnected
‘brain’ based in new core pathways of society” (Roco and Bainbridge, 2002)
A few grassroots researchers are lucid enough to realize that, by going too far in
lauding the “fabulous” consequences of the revolution underway, one may end up
provoking equally exaggerated criticisms bent on nipping it in the bud. If one takes
Eric Drexler’s program seriously, then one cannot help being frightened by the
unprecedented risks it would entail. The success of Michael Crichton’s novel Prey has
made all America aware of the risk of gray goo, also called global ecophagy: the risk
that a programming accident could spawn an uncontrolled replication of the nanoma-
chines dear to one of the most (in)famous founders of the nanotechnological program.
The biosphere would then be partly or wholly destroyed as the nano-engines in ques-
tion consume the carbon needed for their self-reproduction. This risk can only
frighten those who truly believe such machines are possible. Those who do not share
this belief will dismiss the pseudo-risk with a shrug of the shoulders.
ix
x J.-P. Dupuy
Many scientists would agree with the director of the NanoBio project, a show-
case for French nanobiotechnology, who wrote to her troops: “I do not think a normal
scientist could identify with Drexler’s visions” (Françoise Charbit, private conver-
sation). A tiny minority of researchers, however, admit to having been much
influenced by Drexler’s book, Engines of Creation.
The truth is that the scientific community uses a double language, just as it has so
often done in the past. When scientists need to sell their product, grandiose vistas are
conjured up to beguile the politicians who hold the pursestrings. But when the com-
motion attracts the attention of critics who raise the question of risks, the same scien-
tists beat a hasty retreat, emphasizing the exceedingly modest nature of their research.
First we are told that the genome contains the very essence of every living creature;
then we hear that DNA is just a molecule like any other—why, it is not even alive!
Thanks to GMOs, it is claimed, the problem of world hunger will at last be solved
once and for all; then it turns out that humanity has been improving its food supply
through genetic engineering ever since the Neolithic. Nanobiotechnologies will give
us miracle cures for cancer and AIDS, but there’s nothing new there either—it is just
more of what medicine has been doing right along. By resorting to this kind of double
language, scientists elude the responsibilities incumbent upon them.
“Science does not think,” Heidegger (1977) said. He obviously did not mean
that scientists are all thick-headed. The thesis is that science is constitutively inca-
pable of undertaking the type of self-reflection that characterizes all responsible
human activity. The debate over nanotechnologies, already intense in the US but
still at an embryonic stage in Europe, and especially in my country, France, has
every likelihood of degenerating into utter confusion. Reflection will soon be
nearly impossible, if indeed that is not already the case.
Insofar as it is not yet too late, I would like to make a few suggestions. First, it
would be best not to get bogged down in cost-benefit analysis, the calculation of risks
or the (very European) tendency to invoke the “precautionary principle.” Not that the
development of nanotechnologies is without danger! But the danger is of a sort that
conventional methods are powerless to apprehend. Multiplying potential damages by
subjective probabilities is an approach ill-suited to assessing the effects of what the
technology’s most enthusiastic advocates herald as a “change in civilization.”
The essential question is the following one: how has technoscience become an
activity so “risky” that, according to some leading scientists, it now represents the
principal threat to the survival of humanity?1 Philosophers answer this question by
saying that Descartes’s dream—“to become the master and possessor of nature2”—
1 See the much noticed and discussed warning from one of the most brilliant American computer
scientists, Bill Joy, published in the very “hip” magazine Wired under the eloquent headline: “Why
the future doesn’t need us” (April 2000). Also see the book by the royal British astronomer Sir
Martin Rees, Our Final Hour. A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental
Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future in this Century—on Earth and Beyond (New York, Basic
Books, 2003).
2 René Descartes, Discourse on Method, John Veitch (trans.) (London: Orion Publishing, 1992
[1637]), VI.
Foreword xi
has gone wrong. They say it is high time we go back and try to “master mastery.”
These philosophers do not get it. They have not understood that the technoscience
expected to emerge from the generalized “convergence” of disciplines aims pre-
cisely at non-mastery. The engineer of tomorrow will not be a sorcerer’s apprentice
out of negligence or incompetence, but as a matter of method. He will design
complex structures and endow them with the capacity to self-organize, and he will
seek to find out what they can do, by exploring the landscape of their functional
properties—a “bottom-up” approach. He will be as much an explorer and an experi-
menter as a maker. His successes will depend more on his own creations’ surprising
him than on their conforming to a pre-established set of criteria. Disciplines such as
artificial life, genetic algorithms, robotics and distributed artificial intelligence
already correspond to this scheme. Moreover, since the scientist will increasingly be
someone who explores the properties of his own inventions rather than discovering
an independent reality (let us say the artificial intelligence expert rather than the
neurophysiologist), the roles of the engineer and the scientist will tend to merge.
A grouping of European research centers has adopted the name Nano2Life, which
stands for “Bringing Nanotechnologies to Life.” The ambivalence of the expression is
a prize example of the double language which I denounced earlier. It can mean, in a
modest attitude of retreat, “Bringing nanotechnologies into existence,” or else “Bringing
nanotechnologies closer to the life sciences.” But it is impossible not to hear an echo of
the demiurgic project of using technology to manufacture life. And the person who
wants to manufacture—in fact, to create—life must have the ambition of replicating its
essential capacity, which is that of creating in its turn the radically new.
Today the nanotechnology lobby is afraid. It fears that its public relations opera-
tion may culminate in an even more resounding failure than what was witnessed
with genetic engineering. And yet, at the 1975 Asilomar conference, things had
gotten off to a good start. The scientific community managed to obtain the exclu-
sive right to regulate the field. Thirty years later, the disaster has been consum-
mated. The public, especially in Europe, sees the smallest biotechnological
accomplishment as a monstrosity. Aware of the danger, nanotechnologists look to
“communication strategies” for a solution: calming things down, reassuring, estab-
lishing “acceptability.” There is something indecent about this ad-biz vocabulary on
the lips of scientists.
What is to be done? It would be naive to believe in the possibility of a moratorium,
or even, in the short term, a legislative or regulatory framework, which, in any
event, would have to be worldwide. Such an approach would not stand a chance
given the forces and dynamics in play. The best we can hope for is to accompany
at the same pace and if possible to anticipate the onward march of nanotechnologies
with impact studies and a permanent scrutiny no less interdisciplinary than the
nanosciences themselves. A sort of real-time reflection on scientific and techno-
logical change would be a first in the history of humanity. The acceleration of the
phenomena at issue would seem to make it inevitable.
Science, in any case, can no longer evade its responsibility. This obviously does
not mean science should be given a monopoly on decision-making power. Few
scientists desire this. What it does mean is that science must be forced to abandon
xii J.P. Dupuy
its splendid isolation from the affairs of the community. The question of the respon-
sibility of science has become much too serious for the debate to be left to scientists
alone. The responsibility for decision must necessarily be shared. Yet that is
precisely what scientists, as they are trained and organized at present, do not want.
They are much happier hiding behind the myth of scientific neutrality: let them go
on working to expand knowledge undisturbed, and society can decide where to
take things from there. If this kind of talk ever had the slightest relevance, it is
unacceptable now.
The conditions of possibility for an articulation and division of responsibilities
between science and society are not met anywhere today. One of these conditions, the
most important perhaps, would call for a mental revolution from both partners.
As French physicist Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond neatly puts it, science needs to be
“cultured” (Lévy-Leblond, 1997). To understand science is quite a different thing
from keeping abreast of it. The inadequacy of the scientific programs that the mass
media offer the public results, incidentally, from the confusion between scientific
information and scientific culture. Clearly, the way science is taught at both the
high school and university levels must be completely rethought. Adding the history
and philosophy of science to the curriculum is a must, but it is far from enough:
reflection upon science must be part and parcel of a scientist’s training. From this
standpoint, most scientists are no more cultivated than the man in the street. The
reason for this is the specialization of the scientific profession. Max Weber (1989)
already grasped this back in the early years of the twentieth century. In his 1917
lecture, Wissenschaft als Beruf, he pronounced these chilling words:
In our time, the internal situation, in contrast to the organization of science as a vocation,
is first of all conditioned by the facts that science has entered a phase of specialization pre-
viously unknown and that this will forever remain the case. Not only externally, but
inwardly, matters stand at a point where the individual can acquire the sure consciousness
of achieving something truly perfect in the field of science only in case he is a strict special-
ist. […] Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for
once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will
endure. A really definitive and worthwhile achievement is nowadays always a specialized
achievement. Therefore, anyone who lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, […]
may as well stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the “personal
experience” of science.
Despite their brio, it must be hoped that Max Weber’s analyses will be contradicted
by future developments. Scientists with blinders are precisely what our societies
can no longer afford to train, maintain and protect. Our survival hangs in the
balance. We need “reflexive” scientists: less naive with respect to the ideological
dross enveloping their research programs; but also more conscious of the fact that
the science they do rests ineluctably upon a series of metaphysical decisions.
That said, the nanoethics volume that follows this foreword makes important
early steps in overcoming the obstacles in integrating science with our culture.
It offers the latest thinking in the field by several leading scholars and organizations
worldwide, such as Joachim Schummer, Jeroen van den Hoven, Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars, Meridian Institute, European Group on Ethics in
Science and New Technologies, and others.