The Convergence of Nanotechnology, Policy, and Ethics

Abstract

This chapter reviews the role ethical and societal issues associated with nanotechnology have played in the development of national, and particularly US nanotechnology policies. The prominence of nanotechnology as a matter of national policy is significant, as is the attention being afforded to ethical and societal considerations. Notably, there is an emphasis on the early anticipation of societal dimensions of nanotechnology and of collaborative socio-technical integration during research and development activities. While these policies are fairly unprecedented and pose considerable challenges to the societal and technical researchers to whom the tasks of early integration may fall, there is reason to believe that continued efforts aimed at their implementation are likely. The chapter provides a brief history and explanation of the US nanotechnology “ethics policy” in reference to the discourse and concerns motivating policy makers. It then surveys some of the growing body of literature emerging around what has been termed nanoethics. This literature includes a similar emphasis on early and collaborative anticipation of the ethical and societal implications surrounding nanotechnology. Finally, the chapter identifies a list of fundamental tasks that would be necessary to address for the sake of developing the capacity of social and technical researchers to effectively engage in socio-technical integration. These tasks include defining the scope of nanoscale science and engineering subject to the ethics policy, and the interactions, responsibility, participation, and regulation envisioned or implied by the ethics policy under consideration. A few emerging cases of socio-technical collaborations are noted, and key statements made by congressional witnesses and others are cited. Throughout the chapter, an attempt is made to frame the statements within conceptual considerations drawn from the diverse contexts of nanotechnology, policy, and ethics.

Introduction

Given the vast amount of differentiation in subject matter, methodologies, and envisioned applications that populate the research agendas and practices of those working at the nanoscale, a comprehensive yet meaningful definition of the term “nanotechnology”¹ is both elusive [49] and contentious [4], [17]. The term, however, has already become a subject of national policy in numerous countries, both developed and developing [82]. The inclusion of the term in the 2006 Presidential State of the Union address as one of “the most critical basic research programs in the physical sciences”[13] gives some indication of the status nanotechnology has acquired as a matter of national interest in the US. From a national policy perspective, the term is associated with economic growth and competitiveness. Increasingly, nanotechnology is also fast becoming the locus for an abundance of ethical and societal concerns.

The creation of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000 was, on the one hand, a response to an international “funding race”[22] that at the time involved over 30 countries. On the other hand, it also seems to have accelerated the global effort: after 2000, worldwide funding for nanotechnology increased significantly, with several countries adopting national frameworks and programs. A Congressional mandate for the program in 2003 raised its annual budget to nearly one billion dollars and made it in the words of one US Senator “the single largest federally funded, multiagency scientific research initiative since the space program in the 1960s”[1]. While policy makers around the world are investing in nanotechnology for economic advantages and competitiveness, many are also taking pains to avoid the unwelcome prospect of a “technological backfire”[102]—the possibility that public mistrust of the emerging technology's stewards could limit its envisioned commercial success and public funding base. As a result of concerns and over the uncertain socio-technical consequences of engineered nanoparticles, nanoenabled capabilities, and public perceptions thereof, various national nanotechnology programs are promoting the largely unprecedented integration of broader societal considerations into the early stages of nanoscale research and development (R&D) activities.

In the US, one of the four formal goals of the NNI is to “support responsible development of nanotechnology”[65, p. 10]. Accordingly, in 2005 the US National Science Foundation (NSF) granted $14.3 million to establish a “series of initiatives,” including two Centers for Nanotechnology in Society, with “national goals” for “50-state outreach programs and stakeholder participation”[68]. NSF funding of numerous smaller projects dealing with broader societal considerations related to nanotechnology date back to at least 2002, and other US agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology are looking into environmental, health, and safety dimensions of nanotechnology. Elsewhere around the world, the European Commission has employed language of “responsible research, development and innovation in nanotechnology”[27, p. 5], and governments in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium have instituted programs intended to influence the early stages of nanotechnological development trajectories in response to ethical and societal considerations. International organizations with a focus on responsible governance include the International Dialogue for Responsible Nanotechnology R&D [79] and the International Council for Risk Governance [45].

While the early attention being placed on the societal dimensions of nanotechnology and the budget allocations that follow in this name are significant, neither of these phenomena are particularly unique. Emerging technologies of the past have been marked by similar concerns as those now being associated with nanotechnology [56]. Moreover, funding for nanotechnology related societal research does not begin to approach the high watermark set by the Human Genome Project, which entailed ethical, legal, and societal implication research that was funded at 3–5% of the total project budget and that commenced virtually from the beginning of the program. What does make the “ethics policies”² that are emerging for nanotechnology in various forms and settings potentially innovative, however, is their emphasis on functionally linking societal research, processes, and considerations with their scientific and technological counterparts. This emphasis is evident in the language used to describe such policies: Societal considerations pertaining to nanotechnology are intended, in the Netherlands, to “broaden the scope of strategic choices”[77, Appendix 2]; in the UK, to “shape scientific priorities”[100, p. 22]; and in the US, to “influence the direction of research”[44]. Such aims go beyond traditional risk management and product regulation, and hold implications for the broader governance of science and technology development processes themselves. Judging from government, scholarly, and civil sector publications, the goals include influencing research priority setting but also the actual conduct of research, development, and design of nanotechnologies.

In theory, to the extent that scientific, engineering, and technological development activities explicitly or implicitly involve ethical and societal considerations, they afford potential intervention points for ethics policy agendas. Depending upon what is interpreted as an ethical or a societal issue and the means used to address them, such ethics policies could go well beyond traditional scientific, engineering, and professional approaches to ethics and end-of-pipe regulatory approaches. In this respect, they suggest new roles for social scientists, ethicists, scientific researchers, and the public. They also hold implications for long standing de facto science policies, which have hitherto carefully protected scientific and technological endeavors from broader social attempts to control them. As is to be expected, the prospect of integrating ethical and societal research into nanotechnology policies and nanotechnology R&D activities faces significant challenges. For instance, existing ethics frameworks and approaches have been traditionally designed more in relation to identifying and addressing obvious and egregious violations of established norms and codes of conduct. Shaping technological development trajectories towards more socially robust platforms and systems, however, would require more granular fine tuning of research agendas and practices, which have hitherto been shielded from such attempts. De facto science policies have largely assumed the ethical neutrality of techno-scientific innovation and have relied for the most part on market forces to do this work.

As some have argued, traditional ethical frameworks and “rule based reasoning”[6] are not adequate to address macro-level and system-wide societal considerations during the emergence of new technologies. A significant challenge for new ethical and societal frameworks would be to acquire the ability to interface productively with the complex and evolving dynamics of R&D settings—which often move at a highly accelerated and unpredictable rate of change and are sheltered from broader societal considerations—without compromising research integrity or unnecessarily hampering its productivity. This chapter provides an account of the role that ethical and societal concerns have played in the history leading up to the creation of the NNI and the federal legislation that authorizes it. It surveys some of the growing body of scholarly literature on the ethics of nanotechnology, or “nanoethics,” and discusses some of the challenging tasks implied for developing a new capability for collaborative “socio-technical integration” during R&D.