Development Ethical and Societal Issues Satyen Baindur PhD

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Stewardship in Nanotechnology Development: Ethical and Societal Issues SATYEN BAINDUR, PHD Ottawa Policy Research Associates, Inc. OPRA Report 2006-4-1 Issued April 2006 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A precaution that has been suggested (e.g. in an editorial in Nature 7 ) is to engineer these new life forms in a way that they become nutritionally dependent on materials available only in the laboratory, but not in nature. In this way, it is hoped that the new life form would not be able to survive outside a laboratory. This is a sensible precaution but cannot be viewed as foolproof. A line of reasoning that attempts to criticize this concern about runaway nanolife forms – turns on the definition of ‘nano’ – it is asserted that viruses (the only autonomous biological entities that are smaller than 100nm in size and thus truly exist at the nano scale) – cannot reproduce without taking over the cellular machinery of another higher organism. Therefore, it is asserted that ‘not even nature’ has a truly self-reproducing organism at the nano scale. The subtext seems to be that the nanoscale cannot possibly embody the full complexity required to sustain self-organized self-reproducing processes. Yet this can be countered by realizing that a possible new nano life form could also learn to self-replicate by the same technique as viruses now do 8 , even if one grants that the full complexity of life processes cannot be reproduced at the nanoscale – though even that is not fully clear. That is, a new nanoscale life form could be intrinsically parasitic in its reproductive mechanism. This is not unlike a computer virus that is designed to take over its host computer’s disk space and operating system in order to reproduce. The other weakness of such an argument is a narrow focus on the definition of the nano scale – it is quite possible that a new nano-based life form could have a hierarchical organization. Just as cells are made of molecules in living things today, so a possible new nano-based life form could be based on nanoscale materials and then self-organize itself into its equivalent of (nano)biological cells. Thus, while an obsession with the worst-case scenario is not justified, an overly dismissive stance regarding concerns about the very nature of nanotechnology also does not appear warranted. In this context, even a modest, 8 7 Nature 24 November 2005. Similar precautions were suggested earlier by the Foresight Institute and also by the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. 8
Stewardship in Nanotechnology Development: Ethical and Societal Issues SATYEN BAINDUR, PHD Ottawa Policy Research Associates, Inc. OPRA Report 2006-4-1 Issued April 2006 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ incremental change in technological terms, could lead to quite profound social impacts with ethical consequences. 9 9
Page 1 and 2: OPRA Report 4-2006-1 Stewardship in
Page 3 and 4: Stewardship in Nanotechnology Devel
Page 7: Stewardship in Nanotechnology Devel
Page 35: Stewardship in Nanotechnology Devel

Development Ethical and Societal Issues Satyen Baindur PhD

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?