That means nanotech must be proven safe

December 14th, 2008

Worrying at this stage about the theoretical potential for nanotech to destroy the worldor to transform us into shapeshifting godsis bit like worrying that if we engage in laser research we might someday create laser weapon so powerful that it could destroy the entire planet. And focusing on dramatic visions of nanotech heaven or hell foster restrictions that delay or block innovations that can extend and improve our lives. In Small CountryTo look at some of the immediate benefits of improved molecular manipulation. If that sounds too distant and speculative, St.

The FDA concedes it has no regulatory authority over nondrug, nonfood products such as nanotechincorporating cosmetics, frequent target of unscientific health scares. Only then could they begin to dream of making the selfconstruction process propagate itself so rapidly that it constituted widening menace. Theres no medical device thats free of risk, he notes. Moore adds that people tend to assume that natural things are safe and that the products of industry are automatically cause for concern. saw an ad for the broadcast, an episode of the BBC series Animal Farm, while was in Scotland.

In press release, Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, noted that nanotechnology promises to be the important innovation since electricity and the internal combustion engine. At the same time, it called for more testing and oversight, warning that some nanotech applications might pose substantial risks to human health and the environment.Although Consumers Union concedes that no confirmed cases of harm to humans from manufactured nanoparticles have been reported, it adds that there is cause for concern based on several worrisome findings from the limited laboratory and animal research so far.

By the middle of the century, the inventor Ray Kurzweil suggests in his book The Singularity Is Near, human beings will live in perpetual clouds of nanobots, moleculesized robots that spend each moment altering our microenvironments to our precise preferences. But theres danger in thinking of nanotech only in godorgoo terms. Over the longer term, he imagines that nanotechnologythe manipulation of matter at the molecular level. Leigh. Nature carries cargo throughout the cells using molecular machines, he says, and that opens up all sorts of possibilities for manipulating the system. Pumping IonMedical uses offer some of the immediate benefits of improved molecular manipulation.