When we think of the concerns about the effects of organic chemicals from containers in food, hormones and antibiotics in animal feed, and the problems of changing the diversity within a microenvironment, it should be reassuring that the there is a new board concerned with the ethics of nanotechnology (manipulations of materials and the creation of machines on an atomic scale, that can't be "seen" without an electron microscope).
I'm concerned that the board will be window dressing - that (okay, I can't resist: their effect will be too small to notice)we may never hear from them again, and definitely will never hear that the members were able to halt or impede work that appears dangerous.
Oh, Joy!
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Nanoethics board to address our microscopic worries
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Ethics in nanotechnology? What's to worry about?
We are the Borg! Resistance is futile!
Okay, I couldn't help it.
I call science fiction "Lessons we don't have to learn."
The great imaginers of the future can be used the same way that "Pilgrim's Progress" and Shakespeare have been: to help us learn universal truths and to illustrate ethics.
(I'm still worried that we're doing things our grand kids' grand kids will pay for on the genetic level.)
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