Nanotechnology’s Existential Risks
Posted by Richard on Sunday, 6 of August , 2006 at 3:06 pm
We kick off this week with a series of brain parades on nanotechnology, it’s risks and possible rewards.
Putting aside grey goo style scenarios for a moment, do you think there are other existential risks/safety concerns that we should be worrying about with respect to nanotechnology?
David Berube:
Immediately we have a slew of products on the market, some of which involve direct application of nanoparticles, such as cosmetics and sunscreens. Actually many of the issues raised in the ICTA petition to the FDA are right on base. We, meaning the USA, do not have a viable regulatory method for cosmetics though we handle sunscreens better. We know too little about dermal effects.
We are considering using nanoparticles for nutrients and supplements and regulation of food is mostly voluntary. The labeling subject associated with food needs to be re-examined. We know much too little about gastro-intestinal effects.
We are seeing a lot of government grant money supporting nanoparticles for environmental remediation purposes. While this might be highly desirable, we need a better understanding on life cycle and eco-toxicology before allowing commercialization.
We need exposure studies. Fullerenes might be cytotoxic but without exposure data this finding is meaningless for purposes of regulation.
Finally, we need to know what the implications of the waste streams are for products. This includes the production streams and the product disposal streams as well, including incineration and other disposal media.
David M. Berube, Ph.D is Professor of Communication Studies/Film/English, NanoScience and Technology Studies and Communications Director of Nanohype
Patrick Lin:
Absolutely. I think it’s short-sighted to focus only on immediate environmental risks, and I’m not sure who’s still worried about Grey Goo.
As just three examples, in the near-term, we can expect privacy issues to arise from ever-shrinking devices, which nanotechnology will have a hand in. If we think mobile-phone cameras are intrusive, imagine if we can hardly even see the devices or if they can be easily embedded on our clothing or in our own bodies. They may become so cheap to manufacture that they are ubiquitous.
Existentially, our concept of personal identity is already evolving with the ongoing debate about human enhancement technologies. Do performance-enhancing drugs and future technologies make us more or less than human? How does engineering a class of people to be, say, stronger or smarter impact their relationship with other people or the economy, if “normal” people can’t compete with them?
And of course, we should always be worried about deliberate misuse of technology, especially given the tremendous power that nanotechnology is predicted to give us. Militaries are aggressively working to develop new capabilities based on nanotechnology. Besides the risk of another arms race or to the unfortunate targets of these new weapons, there’s always the danger of terrorists or rogue laboratories using nanotechnology for their own purposes, just as they have been with biotechnology.
These are only some of the social and ethical issues facing nanotechnology.
Patrick Lin, Ph.D., is research director for The Nanoethics Group
Mike Treder:
Global war is the greatest existential risk, and it doesn’t have to involve grey goo type weapons (i.e., self-replicators) in order to be horrendously dangerous. Replicators almost certainly would be harder to create than will other atomically precise weapons and military hardware built from the bottom up with molecular manufacturing. Those non-replicating weapons and devices can be highly advanced and extremely powerful, however. On top of that, numerous factors point toward a nanotech-based arms race being far less stable than the nuclear arms race. So, worry #1 for CRN — and we think for everyone else — is a new arms race that very likely could lead to devastating war.
Mike Treder is a professional writer, speaker, and activist with a background in technology and communications company management. In 2002, he co-founded the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), a non-profit research and advocacy organization. CRN’s goal is the creation and implementation of wise, comprehensive, and balanced plans for global management of molecular manufacturing.
He also has his own blog here.
Dietram Scheufele:
The issue of toxicity is an issue that many lab scientists are concerned about and are increasingly paying attention to. What we’re also seeing already, however, is some interest groups framing the issue of toxicity as something that will be impossible to test for and regulate, once the Pandora’s Box has been opened. Most scientists working on issues related to nanotech would probably disagree, but the argument is difficult to counter in public discourse. The “asbestos of tomorrow” frame that has been used in some European media, for example, plays directly to this. It draws a direct parallel to an issue where the U.S. government acted very slowly in terms of regulation and public information. And the “asbestos of tomorrow” label explicitly plays to these prior experiences and the lack of trust in regulatory bodies. As a result, people also use the frame as an perceptual filter when trying to make sense of the risks and hazards related to nanotech.
Dietram A. Scheufele, Professor Department of Life Sciences Communication, UW-Madison
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Category: Nanotechnology, Science Brain Parades, Technology, Science and Technology, Brain Parades
Tags:Brain Parade, Brain Parades, David M. Berube, Dietram Scheufele, Mike Treder, Nanotechnology, Patrick Lin, Science, Science and Technology, Science Brain Parades, Technology
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2006-08-10 01:22:49
As the development of new technology destabilizes the economic and political balance between competing nations the struggle to prevent global scale war is dwindling. Nanotechnology poses a threat that could bring the war into the human mind leaving the body at mercy.
With groundbreaking developments in brain-computer interface technologies, it is mere years before the relationship between the human mind and the mechanical machines is blurred into the development of a new third party as a result of the interaction between the conscious and the systematic. This would lay a foundations for investigating individuals consciousness for purposes control and intelligence.
The wars fought with blades and bullets bring death and destruction, a war with molecular nano weapons would bring the fight to individuals minds, where your mind is your greatest enemy. The beauty of such a technology is that of science fiction stories, “mind-control” and no freedom of thought.
Aurimas Aniulis
University of Central Lancashire
2006-09-02 07:21:02
In case of drug delivery by the Nanoparticles, show very good results. there is number of drug molicules those we can not deliver by conventional dosage form, nanoparticles make it very easy. There is number of advantages of the nanotechnology in drug delivery like
1.we can deliver all challanging drug molicules, which have low bioavalability and first pass metabolis.
2.we can reduce the dose of the drugs.
2. We can increase the bioavalability of all classs drugs
4. We can reduce the side effect and toxic effect
5. We can increase the efficasy of the drug molicules.
6. Drug release we can control according to our requirement.
7. we can make targeted drug delivery by nanoparticle to any part of the body.
8. we can reduce the cost of the treatment.
these all advantage are also finding in our lab .
The metabolism and excreation of the nanoparticle from the body is safe and by the natural route. there is number of biodegrdable and compatable polymers those we can used for delivery of the drug e.g. PLA,PLGA,PGA, polycaprolactone, plyphiosphozene, chitosan etc.
so we can conclusivey say that nanotechnology will make our life easy in coming future.
thanks
Ashok Kumar Meena
Master sudent
Center for pharmaceutical Nanotecnology
National Instute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research(NIPER)
Sec-67, Phase-X, Mohali, Punjab-160062
India
E-mail: ashokniperst@gmail.com
ashok_niper@yahoo.com
ashoktatwal@rediffmail.com
Mobile-919888213370
2006-09-23 03:41:36
The biggest existential risk is war. Self-replicating weapons are possible now, and molecular manufacturing can only make them simpler, more effective and less expensive.
I remember reading on the net someplace (google it; check wikipedia) that a basic self-replicating system has been estimated to have a net complexity less than a large microprocessor. Adding a weapons system to its genome would be relatively easy. Most weapons are less complex than most machine tools, and a real replicator would basically be a machine tool.
Sensory and AI systems are quietly undergoing a renassaissance. Viz. DARPA’s autonomous vehicle competition. See also “On Intelligence”, a persuasive, testable, general theory of intelligence.
The result could be something very like an industrial war, but without costs for capital formation, resource development, labor, fuel or transportation. This means that it’s not only effective, it’s cheaper than war has ever been in the modern era.
I think the real issue will eventually be to develop something like a national immune system to suppress replicators. It would have to be fractally scaled in size, and as techniques improved, the upper and lower scales would widen, even as strategies became more sophisticated.
I personally believe that some person or group in the U.S. government has already begun development of both types of systems (replicators and immune systems). First, the U.S. has now publically ceased to invest in military IT research, which looks like disinformation to me. Second, more military robots (of various sorts) are deployed by the U.S. than ever before in history, and the trend is upwards, which of course doesn’t fit at all with the end of IT research. Also, there’s a rapid growth of identification technologies such as RF ID tags and personal area networks, the basic items needed for an machine-phase immune system.
Adding self-replication is an obvious enhancement to a high-volume weapons system. Also, it gets -cheaper- as the weapon becomes more intelligent. Just give it hands, and some capacity to learn, and it may quickly get very close to closing its reproductive loop.
2007-07-28 04:29:23
hare krishna