eb Bennett-Woods doesn’t
have anything against
nanotechnology. “It’s an
enabling technology,”
Bennett-Woods says about the
science of controlling matter on an atomic
and molecular scale.
“There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s
morally neutral,” adds the author of
“Nanotechnology: Ethics and Society,” and a
chair and associate professor of health care
ethics at Regis University in Denver,
as well as director of the university’s
Center for Ethics and Leadership in the
Health Professions.
But when it comes to the next step
—specifically, what to do with the new
technology—well, that’s where things get
complicated, she says.
She’s not alone in her thinking. Many
researchers, scientists, ethicists and others
studying nanotechnology are pondering the
moral and ethical questions its use raises.
David Guston, director of the Center
for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona
State University in Tempe, says some of the
questions concern the potential dangers
the new technology might pose to the
environment and how equitably the benefits
from nanotechnology might be distributed.
He believes that before nanotechnology
becomes too prevalent, we have
opportunities to make it a positive presence
in our lives and secure an outcome we all can
live with. In fact, Guston says “anticipatory
governance”—a way of managing through
preparation rather than prediction—is
touted by the ASU center.
In any case, Bennett-Woods says, more
people need to learn about nanotechnology
and its potential impact. But she says she
feels like she’s preaching to the choir.
“The question isn’t, ‘Is it good or bad?’ ”
she says. “It’s, ‘What should, or should not,
nanotechnology enable us to do?’ ”
d
The public really should have
information about this. To me,
that’s a moral imperative, without
totally holding up and dragging out
innovation and discovery.
– Deb Bennett-Woods, ethics researcher
‘Embedded Humanists’
One way in which the center at ASU seeks
to bring about more thoughtful scrutiny of
nanotechnology is by going straight to the
source: the scientists.
“We work with people in their labs and let
people know their decisions go beyond their
laboratory,” Guston says.
The researchers who visit with the scientists
for several weeks are what the center calls
“embedded humanists.” They conduct their
visits in a conversational way, he says, and no
judgments are made.
“The model is not to go in and
inform people of the social and ethical
consequences of their work,” he says.
“The model is to allow them to come to
their own conclusions through their own
thought processes.”
Although the embedded humanists have to
do the initial asking to get into a lab, Guston
says scientists are welcoming hosts. Indeed,
he says they find it in their best interest to
take part in such a project.
Getting as many people in on the
conversation about nanotechnology is
exactly what Bennett-Woods advocates.
Like others who have studied the science,
she has myriad questions. For example,
she notes that nanotechnology may
revolutionize manufacturing as we know it,
and that could lead to job cuts as well as up
the ante for those jobs that aren’t slashed.
And what about nanomaterials used in
manufacturing? She wonders: Will they be
present in the environment; will they be
toxic; and if they get into the human body,
do they remain there?
“The public really should have information
about this,” she says. “To me, that’s a moral
imperative, without totally holding up and
dragging out innovation and discovery.”
She notes that while anything that makes
manufacturing more efficient and less
polluting—which nanotechnology may
do—society also needs to be aware of and
consider the idea that such technology could
