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Nano-Technology, Ethics, and Risks

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Abstract

Nanotechnology is developing far faster than our understanding of its effects. This lapping of our understanding by speedy development is typical of new technologies, and in the United States we let development occur, introducing new artifacts into the world, without any serious attempt to understand beforehand their effects, long-term or short-term. We have been willing to pay the price of pushing the technological envelope, but pushing the nanotechnological envelope has some special risks, requiring more caution.

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Notes

  1. For a succinct introduction to the problems, see [11].

  2. There certainly was no database at the time. As we discuss below, the farmer who pushed the investigation into the cause of his animals dying determined the cause only after someone who investigated new chemical compounds as a hobby happened to recognize the unique signature of PBB. For details, see my Decisions in Doubt: The Environment and Public Policy (Dartmouth NH: University Press of New England, 1994).

  3. See b) in §2 below for the details of this problem.

  4. See Release O6-119 of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, issued March 23, 2006 and revised most recently October 27, 2010.

  5. See http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_intro.htm. Accessed 7.20.10.

  6. Environmental Health News, 3 April 2007 at http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/newscience/2007/2007-0401naritaetal.html. See as well Environmental Health Perspectives summary at http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/9378/abstract.html.

  7. See in this regard Pete Myers, on “Living on Earth,” April 13, 2007 at http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00015&segmentID=3

  8. A nice summary may be found in [2].

  9. After a large number of fires, a great deal of bad press, and numerous lawsuits, Ford agreed to recall 7 million of the 15 million vehicles with ignition switches that caused a fire even when the engine was off. See e.g. “Ford Offers to Settle Class Action,” Consumer Affairs, August 1, 2000.

  10. Congressional Record--Senate, October 6, 2000, pp. 21254–55.

  11. This study details the four main cases where the cargo door blew out, including the crash outside Paris that killed 346 and the crash in Chicago that killed 273.

  12. The patch is at the center of a series of law suits, and so the manufacturer has understandably been exceedingly reluctant to make public any of its own tests about the patches and their failures, and since some cases are settled out of court, the manufacturer follows the usual route for such settlements and demands that no information about the lawsuit be made public. It is, again, one of the features of the litigious United States that lawsuits are likely to cause information to be buried.

  13. Meier, Op. cit.

  14. For those familiar with regulation of medical devices, indeed with many devices, in the United States, it is not a surprise that the reference here is to the New York Times. Guidant did not release any information about the problems with its defibrillators until it discovered that the Times was about to print an extensive, and explosive, article on the problems and on how poorly Guidant responded to those problems. As we mentioned, it is an unfortunate feature of the ways in which medical devices, among other things, are regulated in the United States that companies self-report problems—if, and only if, they judge them serious enough to warrant disclosure. The failure of companies to do that is an object lesson in how the United States ought to reform its regulatory process as well as an object lesson for other countries about how not to regulate companies: a company’s self-interest is likely to trump any concern to self-report problems when the publicity will hurt the bottom line.

  15. See the Report of the Independent Panel of Guidant Corporation, March 20, 2006 for a detailed analysis of what went wrong. Although the panel has “Independent” in its title, it was funded by Guidant.

  16. The press conference transcript is not yet available at the time of this article.

  17. It also seems unlikely that we will be able to go the other way, determining a substance’s macro-features from an understanding of its nano-features. John Locke was right in saying, “Had we Senses acute enough to discern the minute particles of Bodies, and the real Constitution on which their sensible Qualities depend, I doubt not but they would produce quite different Ideas in us; and that which is now the yellow Colour of Gold, would then disappear, and instead of it we should see an admirable Texture of parts of a certain Size and Figure,” but the hope he expressed of being able to know the world fully by understanding its atomic structure thus seems even less probable now that we have gotten down to the atomic structure of things [12].

  18. See http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com/special/sunscreens/nanotech.php for a detailed bibliography of articles on the penetration of skin by nano-particles and some known and potential health effects.

  19. The 31% are those with a mutant form of the androgen receptor AR-T877A. Other mutant forms may respond similarly, but the work to determine that has not yet been reported [18].

  20. See my Decisions in Doubt, op. cit., where, among other things, I compare the responses to the PBB crisis in Michigan and the risk to health with the response to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere and the potential loss of the ozone layer.

  21. It is no cause for wonder that the latest Nobel Prize in Physics was for the development of graphene, that sheet of carbon one atom thick with incredible properties of strength, flexibility, and conductivity.

  22. The quotation is from http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/01/every_dirty_loa.php, Samsung’s press material. Accessed 8.5.2010.

  23. The FDA withdrawal notification is available at http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm234389.htm.

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Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewer of the first draft of this article for some very helpful and insightful comments. I have not made all the corrections suggested, but the comments forced me to rethink a main point in the paper. I think the paper the better for it.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology, 92 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623-5604, USA

    Wade L. Robison

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Robison, W.L. Nano-Technology, Ethics, and Risks. Nanoethics 5, 1–13 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-010-0108-5

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