The Foresight institute’s Nanodot blog has posted a link to a really interesting discussion from the National Press Club’s meeting about nanotechnology (NanoWorld: Toward a Policy for the Human Future, see here for a press release). Andrew Kimbrell, director of the International Centre for Technology Assessment, gave a speech (from about an hour into the conference) where Nanodot’s blog characterised him as someone who “opposes nanotech”. Just finished listening to his talk (in fact, everyone’s speeches), and I cannot help but feel this characterization to be a terrible misrepresentation of what he was arguing. He did not “oppose nanotech” in so much as he seemed to oppose the non-transparent, corporate and military controlled, profit driven, unregulated, and patented way this technology is being developed, instead wanting to link nanotech development with values, keeping patents within the commons, pushing for transparency etc. I cannot help but agree with much of what he said, probably because he echoed a lot of my own concerns. Here’s a summary of what he spoke about (my apologies if some things aren’t transcribed properly).

Kimbrell, who is a lawyer and not a scientist, essentially focused on one aspect of nanotechnology, namely that “sometimes we approach” questions about new technologies with a “technological amnesia. As each new technology comes in we forget the lessons we should have learned from the last technology.” The first lesson we should learn is that “technology doesn’t always equal progress” (more on this later). He outlined four problems he saw with nanotechnology that needed to be addressed: firstly, intentional “pernicious” or negative misuse of nanotechnology; secondly, unintended consequences; thirdly, corporate control and lack of transparency; and, finally, liability.

Regarding nanotech negative misuse, he pointed out to an article in Janes that spoke about an entire new generation of nanotech weapons becoming available, such as “nano-nuclear weapons”, which are “almost impossible to detect”, with the equivalent power of 50 mega-tons of explosives. Nano-satellites called ANGELS were also available as delivery systems for these weapons. He pointed out that, historically, biotechnology led to designer pathogens with both Russia and the US developing these weapons. Nanotech now represents the most effective delivery system for these pathogens ever developed so far. He then mentioned that, from his own experience, the military/Department of Defence are very difficult to control. Global governance and regulations are difficult to enforce, and he believed that how exactly the military could be stopped from developing such technologies was unclear.

It was not only military misuse that concerned him. He mentioned the work of a Dr. Linus (not sure if I’ve spelt it correctly) who is working with 600 nanometer wide brain wires to monitor brain activity, quoting him from a National Science Foundation Conference as saying that his work “could theoretically lead to devices for modifying people’s behaviour or eavesdropping on their thoughts and feelings. We might envision a day when brain privacy will need to be legally protected.” Mr. Kimbrell remarked that “That doesn’t sound good”.

He summed up his first point by saying that, when we look at these small cases of potential pernicious misuse, it’s difficult to understand how these could somehow be controlled. It was his view that, only once a better understanding of possible misuses and the implications of these would will we know if this technology was, indeed, progress, or if it was something very different. He pointed out that history has demonstrated this, saying that no-one is obviously against the X-Ray, but when the ramifcations of nuclear technology were clear, some people obviously questioned whether this technology was progress (whereby progress includes some value system). Biotechnology, too, he said, resulted in great medical advances but also genetic discrimination by “many of the top fortune 500 companies” and sex-selection abortions. He stressed that what was needed was some sort of balance here, and that corporations were just as difficult to control as the military.

His second point concerned unintended consequences. As an example, he pointed to buckyballs, stating that they have been shown to cause serious health problems to the brains of fish, and that there was possible liver damage and more to humans. He also lamented on the fact that buckyballs are already out in the marketplace in cosmetics such as Loreals wrinkle cream. “If you don’t use the precautionary principle”, he said, you end up with the bucky balls are out there, and “We don’t know how they’re effecting workers. We don’t know how they’re effecting people who are using these creams. We know that they have potentially toxic effects. But they’re already out there with no regulatory system whatsoever in place and [although it’s being workd on] no regulatory system for the near future.” His main point was that “We let the technology out before the regulation. We need the regulation before not after the dangers are already out there” when it’s “more difficult to control”.

His third point revolved around the belief that technology is necessarily developed for the human good. He disagreed with this quite strongly saying That has not been my experience”.

“I have seen numbers of corporations … that have developed these technologies for this thing called profit … a corporation’s profit is not always equal to the public good. … Sometimes it is, but often-times it is not.”

From this corporate development of these technologies, he saw three things happening: one, is that the corporations “control the direction of the technology”, basically controlling what is and isn’t developed. His example was chemical technology and biotechnology where 90% of GMO crops are made to be herbicide resistant, the reason being that a lot of the chemical companies want to keep selling more herbicide. The reason it’s gone that way, he said, is because it’s corporate controlled.

Secondly, he referred to what he called “hype over healing”. He stated that if he were to believe the hype that arose from similar conferences, we would have no cancer, “no-one would be ill in our society and we’d all live 100 years longer”, which he stated were the claims of things like gene therapy, stem cell and other previous medical advances. The hype, he said, is there to attract venture capital which is what all these startups needed. The problem here is that money then goes into solutions that do not work and have not worked because people - congress, corporations - believe in the hype or the profit. This, in his view, is “hype over healing”, “hype over feeding”, hype over actually helping someone because it’s investment driven and profit driven.

Thirdly, he covered patenting. He pointed out that “nanotechnology has seen an explosion of patenting“, that there was already about a 70% increase in patenting in just over the last 4 years for nanotechnology compared to about a 4% with other technologies. This not only means corporations are taking control of things that should remain “in the commons”, he said:

“but this also means it’s going to be private information, privately held and not shared. When corporations patent it them, we don’t find out about it, there’s no transparency.”

Because of a lack of transparency, he carried on, there’s a “veil of secrecy” that’s fallen down over this research where “We don’t know what’s going on” in corporate or military research. Without transparency we cannot have governance.

He then reached his finally point, which was liability: new technologies introduce what he called “low-probability but high consequence events”. Examples of this would be bio-pollution or a nuclear accident. With nanotech, however, there are now extrodinary capabilities for these particles to “invade our bodies” and to be part “of every aspect of our environment”, and this meant that “we have the potential for a very high consequence event”. “Who will pay for that?” he asked. “Who will be liable for that?” This was, in his view, the achilles heal of this new technology as these questions had simply not been answered.

During question time a member of the audience re-asked a rhetorical question Mr. Kimbrell had asked about whether the combustion engine could now be considered as progress (considering the detrimental effects that have arisen from it). Christine from the Foresight institute pointed out that she felt that “it was just not possible” to have known all the effects of the combustion engine. She sees science and technology as a “dynamic and unfolding process” “driven by economic and military changes and drives” but that people try to “shape it” and “mitigate the downsides”. For her, it was inconceivable that we could somehow foresee all the consequences and “make some decision to not do it”. The problem I have here is that this falls into the same trap as Christine’s belief that Kimbrell “opposes nanotech”. He never actually said that we should by trying to make a decision to “not do” nanotechnology. As he pointed out in response to this question, “Progress is an incomplete sentence.”

You should never use [progress] as a complete idea. When it is it is also equated with technology which is the mistake I was trying to point out. Progress is an incomplete sentence. Progress towards “what”, is what we’re interested in. So what is your view of what a city should look like? Is it one that’s smog filled? That you have to take two hours to get through with your automobile? Is that your optimal view of a city? I’ve been on the [inaudible] express way at five o’clock and that’s not my optimal view of transportation, maybe it’s yours. So when we ask the question of progress always say progress towards what and that makes the future vision on each of us. What’s your vision of agriculture? Is it monocultured, patented crops? Corporate-run farms? Maybe it is then you’re going to be for biotechnology and patenting. That’s your vision of progress, but it’s not mine. So I say that’s not progress. So progress is not an abstract. It reflects your values, very much as Charles [Rubin] was saying. And by the way, notice the two words: automobile. Autonomy and mobility. Those are two great values of modern society. If you like those two values then you’ll probably like the automobile. If you think those values may be destructive, fine. And then, finally, at least we can all admit, hopefully on the panel and hopefully everyone in this room, that - whether the automobile represented your vision of progress - the way it is currently utilized, the destruction of public transportation which was done by the car companies as many of you know, a conspiracy they were actually convicted for in the Supreme Court, that they actually took down the public transporation systems in all the major cities so that they could sell their cars, sell their oil, and even the tyre companies got involved, ok. That is not progress. And I think the balance of the two is important. Even if it was progress it was not utilized correctly and that’s one of the questions we need to ask about nanotechnology.

Well worth checking out the videos from the conference. Thanks to Nanodot for posting it!