What Can Nanotechnology Learn From Biotechnology?. A Scientific Exploration of the Mind/Brain Interface

335 Pages·2008·3.455 MB·English

by  Kenneth David, Ph.D., and Paul B. Thompson, Ph.D. (Eds.)

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Analytic
PART
Introduction
1
1 Socio-Technical Analysis of those Concerned
with Emerging Technology, Engagement,
and Governance 3
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1
Socio-Technical
Analysis of those
Concerned with
Emerging
Technology,
Engagement, and
Governance
Kenneth David
In a nutshell: our audiences and our core objective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Nano-benefits, nano-issues, nano-fears, and reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Objectives of this volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Contending perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Roadmap to this volume. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Endnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Internet references. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
What Can Nanotechnology Learn from Biotechnology? Copyright © 2008 Elsevier Inc.
ISBN: 978-012-373990-2 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
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4 What Can Nanotechnology Learn from Biotechnology?
In a nutshell: our1 audiences and
our core objective
The emerging field of nanotechnology attracts antagonists (proponents
and opponents), analysts from various disciplines, and a set of stake-
holders: scientists, engineers, technology developers, research admin-
istrators, policymakers, standards-setting and regulatory agencies,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and business executives,
consumers, and citizens. This introduction addresses these diverse
audiences with a communication strategy I learned from Ted Koppel,
formerly of ABC News: Do not assume that the audience is ignorant.
Also do not assume that the audience is sufficiently informed.
What can these antagonists, analysts, and stakeholders learn from
the international controversy over the use of biotechnology involv-
ing recombinant DNA techniques in agriculture to produce “genet-
ically modified organisms”? Biotechnology faced obstacles both
in governance (standards-setting and regulatory agencies) and in
social acceptance by buyers in the supply chain and by the public.
The multinational agriculture and biotechnology company Monsanto,
for example, withdrew its modified potatoes after they were rejected
by two major buyers: Frito Lay and McDonald’s. Monsanto’s genet-
ically modified (GM) corn seed was passed by governing agencies
and accepted by farmers but faced much resistance from the final
buyer—the consumer.
So can lessons from biotechnology be effectively modified and
applied to the much broader field of technologies collectively called
“nanotechnology”?
The objective of this volume is to collect analyses with different
perspectives but with the common goal of providing lessons from
biotechnology for nanotechnology. In it, the contributors present
issues that occurred during the development of biotechnology and
effective practices for responding to these issues that provide partial
orientation for the development of nanotechnology. Each new tech-
nology (such as nuclear energy and biotechnology) poses particular
challenges and hazards as well as benefits. There are environmental,
social, and ethical impacts as well as technical and economic impacts.
Formal standards, codes, and effective practices developed to
deal with the impacts of earlier technologies cannot be applied
wholesale to another new technology. Modifications in standards
and practices must be made. In this volume, we study historical
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Socio-Technical Analysis 5
practices in order to modify them as necessary to meet the current
set of impacts.
In Chapter 13, Busch and Lloyd succinctly set out a more specific
set of questions: “Will the new nanotechnologies encounter the
same or similar resistance? Are there lessons that we can learn by
examining the failures and successes of agricultural biotechnolo-
gies? Can we shape the new nanotechnologies as well as respond to
the concerns of critics and skeptics? What lessons can we learn
from the experiences with the agricultural biotechnologies that will
help us avoid the same result with the design of nanotechnological
products and processes? What actions on the part of companies
and governments might ensure the rapid and satisfactory resolution
of concerns about nanotechnologies? What actions are likely to
enhance public support for the promises that these new technologies
bring? And what actions are likely to diminish that support?”
Finally, the overall intention of this volume is to make a collec-
tion of diverse perspectives on the topic of emerging technology.
The objective of this introduction, then, is to highlight the contribu-
tion of this volume: to recognize contending perspectives with
which various stakeholders or analysts deal with a controversial
new technology.
This introductory chapter begins with a section on nano-benefits,
nano-issues, nano-fears, and reactions, continues with a section on
the objectives of this volume, and concludes with a “roadmap” to
this volume.
Nano-benefits, nano-issues,
nano-fears, and reactions
“Nanotechnology” relates to the science and engineering of materi-
als and devices with dimensions between 1 and 100 nanometers.
One nanometer is one billionth of a meter (approximately 80000
times smaller than a human hair).
New technologies always stir controversy over hazards and bene-
fits, and nanotechnology is no exception. It creates hope and excite-
ment about possible breakthroughs for solving some of society’s
pressing problems. It raises social, ethical, and legal issues, and it
also raises fears—angst that “nature” becomes partially constructed
by humans.
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6 What Can Nanotechnology Learn from Biotechnology?
Nano-benefits
Why did the US Government invest more than $1 billion in nanotech-
nologies in 2005? Possible nano-benefits are no secret. Berube’s
Nano-Hype (2006) amply records the extraordinary, “hyperbolic”
claims made for applications of nanotechnology and Mehta (2004)
provides a selection of applications expected to emerge from
advances in nanoscience:
Environmental
● Remediation of contaminated soil and water
● Reduction in the use of raw materials through improvements in
manufacturing
● Rebuilding the stratospheric ozone layer with the assistance of
nanobots.
Medical
● Improvements in the delivery of drugs
● Development of techniques in nanosurgery
● Mechanisms to repair defective DNA
● Improved diagnostic procedures.
Electronic
● Development of molecular circuit boards
● Improved storage of data
● Development of molecular computers.
Materials
● Industrially valuable fibers with increased strength
● Replication of valuable products (e.g. food, diamonds)
● Improvements in the quality and reliability of metals and plastics
● Manufacture of “smart” materials.
The notion of a single “nanotechnology” is erroneous. In reality
we are dealing with many nanotechnologies with multiple functions
and multiple directions.
Nanotechnology is expected to foster a multi-billion dollar business
with “nanomaterials” playing a prominent role. Among nanomateri-
als are polymer nanocomposites. Polymer nanocomposites have
emerged as a new class of materials that has attracted the attention of
researchers and industry across the world. Polymer nanocomposites
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Socio-Technical Analysis 7
are predicted to find multiple applications in various sectors of the
economy, such as packaging, coatings, consumer goods, automotive,
construction materials, structural materials and even homeland secu-
rity. (Mohanty, 2006)
The promise of nano-benefits has also become part of popular
culture.
Are NT devices small, but stable and helpful? Picture IBM’s 2005 on-
demand Business Help Desk commercial. A truck screeches to a halt
in front of a desk in the middle of a deserted road. When the driver
asks why she is there, the professionally suited woman tells the driver
that she is at the Help Desk and that they are lost. The driver asks how
she knows. She replies that the boxes have Radio Frequency
Identification [RFID] tracking chips. The driver’s buddy then dryly
remarks, “Maybe the boxes should drive.” (Wolfe et al., 2006)
This scenario suggests that humans can now attain a degree of
information precision never previously attained, as well as the pos-
sibility of a new organizational structure—a very flat organization
capable of controlling and coordinating activities.
In short, potential nano-benefits have been forecast in many
directions.
Social, environmental, biomedical, legal, and
ethical nano-issues
The multiplicity of concerns raised by nanotechnologies matches
the multiplicity of promises. Issues can be discerned by the follow-
ing list of topics raised by experts attending a risk analysis confer-
ence in Brussels in 2004 (European Commission, 2004).
● Security problems
● Moving the nanoscience and technology debate forward towards
short-term impacts, long-term uncertainty and the social consti-
tution
● Mapping out nano-risks: considerations on possible toxicity
● Engineered nanomaterials and risks
● Nanotechnology—from the insurer’s perspective
● Emerging concepts in nanoparticle toxicology
● Risks and ethical challenges of nanotechnology in healthcare.
What are the social, legal, and ethical2impacts of a controversial
set of technologies? What issues stem from these impacts? Are there
unambiguous answers to these issues?
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8 What Can Nanotechnology Learn from Biotechnology?
Privacy
Invasion of privacy is a good example. Loyalty cards that include an
RFID chip to identify customers and their purchasing preferences
and facilitate micro-marketing to the customer are ethically ques-
tionable. So are “smart carts,” shopping carts using scanning devices
based on RFIDs. You walk through a supermarket. Each time you
place an item in the smart cart, it is scanned. Then you approach the
exit and find out that the cart has already read the credit card in your
wallet. These perceived threats to privacy have already stirred protest
by a group called CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket
Privacy Invasion and Numbering, www.nocards.org/).
In China, individual cows are already tracked via implanted
RFIDs so that the incidence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy
(BSE) can be revealed and countered (MeatNews, 2007).3 To my
knowledge, a bovine advocate has yet to appear to speak for the
cows and against bovine privacy invasion. Cow producers, however,
are another story, for tracing the origin of cows and tracking the
progress from pasture to dinner table is perceived as violating the
producers’right to privacy.
These examples show that there is no single ethical standard eas-
ily applied universally on the issue of privacy.
Hazard
Another issue is pure hazard. Medical researchers at the University of
Michigan have already developed nano-scale devices that selectively
destroy certain cancer cells. These devices are not ready for use, how-
ever, because they pierce holes through cell walls, leaving the cells
vulnerable to infection. Insurance companies such as Swiss Rein-
surance Company have done extensive work to anticipate corporate
liability (and thus their own payouts) in the areas of environmental
and biological hazards. Nano-risk, just like nano-applications, takes
many forms.
Coated nanoparticles can be extremely mobile in the environment.
Once airborne, they can drift on more or less endlessly, since they—
unlike larger particles—do not settle on surfaces, but are only stopped
when, for example, they are inhaled or their dissemination is limited
in some other way. On land, in the earth, and in the water, the same
holds true. The smallest particles are washed through various earth
strata and spread unhindered in a liquid medium, which means they
pass easily through most filtering methods currently in use. (Swiss
Re, 2004, p. 4)
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Socio-Technical Analysis 9
Other sections of this report on the biological impacts of nanoparti-
cles includes such subtopics as “Inhalation of nanoparticles,”
“Particle absorption though the skin,” and “Particle absorption via
the alimentary canal.”
For a good recent review of the environmental risks of nanotech-
nology, see Dunphy Guzmán et al.(2006).
In short, fears and concerns about nanotechnologies, just like the
benefits anticipated for nanotechnologies, take many forms.
Resources for research on risk assessment
Are sufficient resources being allocated for risk assessment? Is
progress in standards setting hindered because resources for risk
assessment are insufficient? The supplement to the US President’s
2006 budget recommends $1.05 billion for overall National Nano-
technology Initiative investments. Of this amount, only $82 million
is budgeted for societal dimensions:
● $38.5 million for environmental, health, and safety R&D
● $42.6 million for education and ethical, legal and other social
issues.
Recent official reports find these allocations inadequate.
Andrew Maynard, chief science advisor for the Wilson Center’s
Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, said his analysis found the
government spent only about $11 million in 2005. At the hearing,
Maynard called for at least $100 million over the next two years for
“targeted risk research.” (von Bubnoff, 2006)
The National Nanotechnology Initiative, created by the Clinton
administration in 2000, coordinates the many federal agencies that
fund nanotechnology research. In 2003, Congress mandated that the
National Research Council, an arm of the National Academies, con-
duct triennial reviews of the initiative. This council reported that
research on how nanotechnology affects human health and the envi-
ronment must be expanded.
More safety research was also one of the recommendations of the
National Research Council’s triennial assessment of the NNI. The
Congressionally mandated report, released on September 25, calls the
results of safety studies “inconclusive,” and states that there are too
few studies that address the effects of nanomaterials in vitro and
in vivo. (von Bubnoff, 2006)
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10 What Can Nanotechnology Learn from Biotechnology?
Philosophical issues: the ontological angst of
nanotechnology
Anthropologists noted long ago (e.g. Malinowski, 1922) the differ-
ence a society ascribes to a technology considered just adequate to
deal with its intended usage and a technology considered dubious at
best of being capable of coping with its intended function. In certain
island cultures, for example, lagoon-worthy canoes, can be built by
anyone—they require no ritual. Sea-going canoes, on the other
hand, are produced by specific, skilled carpenters, are ritually deco-
rated, and then certified by holy men (Figure 1.1). Ritualization is
necessary when humans are fearful.
As technology advances, fears may subside. Alfred Nordmann, a
philosopher of technology and society, has analyzed the roots of our
fears around the progression of technology in society. Centuries
ago, nature was uncanny, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous
(e.g. the black plague). Progressively, human science, at least as we
know it in the West, technologized nature (Nordmann, 2005). That
is, scientists and technologists gradually reduced the uncertainties
of specific bits of nature and thus tamed bits of nature technologi-
cally. In the eighteenth century, for example, Benjamin Franklin
showed the connection between lightning in the heavens and what
was then called “scintilla”—the sparkling specks produced when
(b)
(a)
Figure 1.1 Sea-going canoes with elaborate prows from Kiriwina Islands (formerly known as the
Trobriand Islands), Papua New Guinea (galenfrysinger.com 2006)
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Socio-Technical Analysis 11
wool was rubbed the right way. Increased knowledge reduced onto-
logical angst regarding nature. From the beginnings of agriculture
in Neolithic times to genetically modified foods in current times,
humans have been attempting to tame nature and cultivate what we
consider socially necessary. Now, with the exploration of nanotech-
nological frontiers, we perceive that we are messing around with the
basic building blocks of nature, such as a nano-ring (Figure 1.2).
Are we entering a realm of the unknown again, this time inhabited by
an uncontrollable pseudoscientific reality of uncontrollable nanobots—
fears of self-replicating self-organizing nanomachines as portrayed in
Michael Crichton’s novel Prey? These fears, whether rational or farci-
cal, elevate the possibility of a new uncanny nature of nature to a very
real status—have we created a new uncontrollable nature and thus cre-
ated a new ontological angst? In this volume, for example, in Chapter 4
Margaret Mellon states that nanotechnology may raise the “same con-
cerns about the meaning of being human and our relationship to
nature” (p. 85) as did biotechnology. In his book Nano-Hype, Berube
contrasts two interpretations of nanotechnology:
Is the technology only about chemosynthesis, catalysis on the
nanoscale? Or is the technology about nanobots working together? If
the former interpretation is accurate, then we need to examine the
consequences of nanoparticles in terms of its interaction with the
environment and its impact on life and world values. If the latter
Figure 1.2 Nano-ring