Last Sunday, The Independent on Sunday published a comment piece by the Prince of Wales about nanotechnology. It’s a well argued piece, although while we don’t get the histrionics of “grey goo” that accompanied the Prince’s last thought on the subject (not something he claims to have ever believed incidentally), he does mention thalidomide as one of the potential sorts of hazards.
In a couple of places in the article he talks about not being a Luddite, and yet he seems very cagey about some of this technology. Indeed he even wonders what will happen to the companies that rely on previous technologies that are possibly made redundant by the onset of nanotechnology. Well that’s science isn’t it. Did anyone worry about horse-drawn carriage manufacturers when the petrol engine was built?
We evolve our technology and it moves on. Of course we must be sensible, and sometimes “bad” things come of new technology. Although I note that Britain is a major international arms manufacturer constantly improving our weaponry to be bigger and better.
But always remember, that nanotechnology is really just an almagam of the basic sciences – chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, materials science and molecular biology. It’s a great word, but we’ve been doing other work at a molecular level for some time now. It’s also a somewhat broad term covering many different types of technology – some traditional chemistry, and some technology at a microscopic level. This response to The Royal Society is quite enlightening.
Meanwhile, across the pond, scientists are getting concerned about the way science is being misused when making policy decisions. They’ve published a report which follows an earlier report, detailing incidents of scientific misuse.
I have to begin to wonder how much this really is “scientific illiteracy” and how much it’s just willful ignorance of the issues.