Technology : Lee-Anne Broadhead and Sean Howard
THE HEART OF DARKNESS
Small is not always beautiful.
Readers of Resurgence are more familiar than most people with the importance of 'thinking small' as a way of affirming a commitment to a gentle lifestyle built on the appreciation of the delicate balance of nature and the human place within it.
But a series of major technological 'advances' in the field of atomic and molecular engineering now threatens to make a grim and frightening mockery of the spirit of E. F. Schumacher's famous dictum "Small is beautiful." Collected under the umbrella title 'nanotechnology', these new techniques claim to be bringing within reach the Holy Grail sought by western science since the days of Francis Bacon: the wielding of 'godlike' power and control over the basic forces of matter and energy.
In its cold dictionary definition, nanotechnology is "the branch of technology that deals with dimensions and tolerances of less than 100 nanometres, esp. the manipulation of individual atoms or molecules". A nanometre is one billionth of a metre: roughly one-thousandth of the width of a single human hair. On this tiny pin, nanotechnology attempts to set countless 'manmade' angels, designed and programmed to dance to our tune.
The key to this minuscule music of the spheres is self-replication: atoms capable of reproducing themselves, building themselves up 'block by block' into whatever form we, the Masters, choose - supermaterials, superorgans or supercells, supercomputers, etc. Christine Petersen, President of the Foresight Institute in California, recently told Investor's Business Daily: "We can build nanostructures like bodies and plants, or even harder physical structures like shells. Once you design and automate the system, you can make things in the same way that crabgrass or potatoes get made. They grow on their own." As Eric Drexler, the founder of the Foresight Institute, explains, self-replication "leads to molecular manufacturing, which will be a new basis for control of the material world."
In other words, the industrialisation of the molecular landscape: the birth and growth, to adapt Blake's phrase, of 'dark atomic mills', mass-producing the new, standardised 'cogs and gears' of the fully assimilated, mechanised environment. The end of the natural world is, incredibly, the explicit, celebrated goal of much pro-nanotechnology literature and propaganda. But what if the end of the natural world proves to be the death of us all?
A debate over the promise and perils of the atomic-engineering revolution has been going on for some time now, but until Prince Charles's timely and astute intervention in April 2003 the discussion was conducted away from the glare of the mainstream media and thus popular consciousness. The one, brief exception was the furore stirred up by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, in an article in Wired magazine in April 2000. Dramatically entitled 'Why the Future Doesn't Need Us', Joy warned that the successful development of self-replicating 'nanobots' could lead - either accidentally, or by malicious design - to complete, global environmental disaster. This is the infamous 'grey goo' scenario referred to by the Prince of Wales: the potential for the rapid, cancerous conversion of vibrant, natural atomic space - the atmosphere, the oceans - into dead, artificial, irredeemably poisoned matter.
Joy's warning was swatted aside, dismissively rather than angrily, by scientists accusing him, inevitably, of Luddism and scaremongering. Joy himself backed off - not retracting, but retreating - and has reportedly taken a vow of silence on the subject. The same charges have of course been levelled against Prince Charles. Sometimes, however, the assurances offered are less than comforting. Accusing the Prince of 'nano-nonsense' on BBC radio, UK Science Minister Lord Sainsbury conceded: "There are things that could be worrying but basically they are things very much in the future." Or, as Drexler himself comments, "The future is open, and it all depends on the choices that we make. This is of life and death importance…"
Fine, but who chooses, and what choices are available? Would Drexler or Sainsbury allow us to reject the whole project, or at the very least impose a moratorium on all research and development into self-replicating nanomachines? If we only have a choice of different ways to move forward, then the fundamental choice has already been made: full steam ahead and hope for the best. A titanic gamble, one might say.
THE LACK OF public scrutiny of this fundamental new scientific direction is upsetting for a number of reasons, not least of which concerns the vast sums of public money now being funnelled into research that has the potential to radically alter or even destroy human life itself. Triggered by President Clinton's establishment of a National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in January 2000, many countries are now investing in nanotechnology as if there were no tomorrow. If there's no real debate, they may be right…
Eager to point to the potential benefits of this latest attempt to manipulate matter in the aid of human 'progress', the scientists involved in this research see no reason for public participation in any debate about their chosen projects. What, after all, could there be to discuss? For the celebrants of this new conjunction of biology, physics, chemistry, information technology and artificial intelligence, this is all a self-evidently positive step forward. Their message is quite clear: leave it to the experts and wait for the benefits to flow.
There is nothing new in this demand; the prevailing western scientific model assumes scientific inquiry to be both a neutral and (paradoxically enough) a positive activity. (That's the great thing about reductionism: you can dissect your cake and eat it too.) But we surely have enough evidence that this is not the case. Indeed, listening to the charge of Drexler and Sainsbury towards the Brave New Nanoworld, one sometimes wonders which century the world just, barely, lived through - surely not the century of chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, global warming, acid rain and Frankenfoods?
The promised benefits for health care are, unsurprisingly, held up to persuade us to drop our reservations - those 'gut' reactions that non-scientists so often have - and jump on board the bandwagon. Who, after all, wants to stand against any effort that might 'cure Aunt Mildred' or 'save young Johnny'? However, while the development of improved diagnostic, surgical and therapeutic tools might indeed be in the offing, so too could unintended consequences with catastrophic results. Some sceptical scientists, for example, are warning about the possibility that in creating tiny nanoprobes to deliver drugs more precisely, we could be creating the 'next asbestos' - a timely reminder of that earlier, disastrous 'breakthrough' represented by a new 'supersubstance' introduced without due regard for the impact on human health when inhaled.
Beyond this kind of pitfall, however, a much deeper chasm opens: the use of such probes to deliver not medicines or restoratives but toxins, incapacitants and other poisons. As the International Committee of the Red Cross warned last year in its powerful 'Appeal on Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity', the world may be standing on the brink of a revolutionary expansion in the scale, scope, affordability and ease of chemical and biological warfare. Nanotechnology lies at the heart of that darkness.
SUSPICION AND CONCERN are equally valid in the area of environmental remediation, held up as another miraculous virtue of the 'Grail'. The advocates of this technology enthuse about the possibility of building 'planet-mending machines' to mop up any messes we might create. It will be possible, we are told, to build tiny nanobots - self-replicating, of course - to eat carbon dioxide, 'scrub' greenhouse gases or eat toxins in soil to return it to a healthy state. Again, have we learnt nothing from our many previous attempts to move confidently beyond an age of environmental destruction with the aid of new technologies, rather than a radical rethink such as that espoused by Schumacher and others?
One need only recall the celebration surrounding the development of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) in the 1930s, when it appeared that a technological solution had been found to eradicate the toxicity of air-borne chemicals. Widely hailed for being non-reactive in the lower atmosphere, CFCs came back to haunt us, leading to a massive corrosion of the upper atmosphere. With nanotechnology, however, the consequences of failure - the irreversible corrosion and contamination of the atomic atmosphere, the 'inner space' of all life and ecosystems - could be far higher.
We have already referred to the potential transformation of chemical and biological warfare (and terrorism) brought into view by nanotechnology. In fact, nanoscale systems are already driving us research into 'fourth-generation' nuclear weapons. (The first generation was the atomic bomb; the second, the hydrogen bomb; the third, variants such as the neutron bomb; and now, a new level of design sophistication enabling the development of 'mini-nukes' or 'low-yield' weapons, intended for use rather than deterrence.) Another aspect of the growing interest of the military (and security and intelligence agencies) in nanotechnology is its potential to transform existing methods of surveillance and psychological manipulation. Given the existing, contested state of neurological knowledge, it may seem a little early to be suggesting the possibility of manipulating the brain's chemistry to "re-engineer the perceptions of our enemies" with nanomachines - but that is precisely what one consultant to the Pentagon is reported to have said. Indeed, the same adviser called for a Manhattan Project of perception engineering. And who is to say that this technology, once devised, would be used only on 'enemies'?
The call for a moratorium on nanotechnology research - at the very least until a transparent public debate is held about the momentous moral and societal issues involved - is being proposed by a growing number of environmentalists, ethicists and philosophers, disarmament experts, sceptical scientists and others. We are, of course, all 'naïve' idealists, determined to 'turn the clock back' and block humanity's path to a Second Eden. True enough, the clock is already ticking, but toward what fate for the beautiful planet we have already damaged so severely in the name of 'progress' and the 'inevitable' quest for knowledge and mastery?
The demand for an immediate, comprehensive nanotechnology moratorium is one many Resurgence readers may wish to make to their own governments. In what other area of modern scientific advance is strict adherence to the precautionary principle more appropriate or necessary? And the burden of persuasion should not be placed on the new technology's opponents or sceptics: if its champions and advocates are wrong, even to a small degree, the destructive consequences are likely to be terrible, and may well prove irreversible.
For the report on nanotechnology commissioned by Greenpeace visit: www.greenpeace.org.uk/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/5886.pdf
Lee-Anne Broadhead is an Associate Professor at the University College of Cape Breton. Sean Howard is an Adjunct Professor in the same Department.
Keywords: science nano-technology technology
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