Farmers are leading a revolt against "biopharming" -- growing genetically modified crops solely to produce pharmaceutical drugs -- citing the risks the enhanced crops pose to food crops.
The author warns that excessive precaution could strangle nanotechnology at birth, arguing that "it is doubly absurd to be anticipating catastrophe, especially when based on implausible claims about machines that nobody can make doing things that defy the rules governing the physical world."
A confrontation over nanotechnology could be as bitter as the current debate over biotechnology, researchers fear. They say the emerging knowledge has the power to revolutionise society.
There is a growing backlash against the rapidly emerging field of nanotechnology that could see a rerun of clashes over genetically modified crops according to experts at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.
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Red Herring predicts that in 2003 a backlash against nanotechnology--and the small science's unintended consequences--will gather steam and slow the pace of commercialization. The backlash will spawn a new discipline: nanoethics.
Nongovernmental groups, scientists and industry are lining up for a major public relations battle over the good and evils of nanotechnology. One side says nanotech will fill the world with self-replicating microscopic ``nanobots'' -- 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair -- that will wipe out humanity. The other calls nano a silver bullet that promises a cure for cancer, an end to crop shortages and the solution to cleaning up pollution.
"Attention from advocacy groups, the publication of a highly anticipated science-fiction novel, and soon-to-be-released environmental research results are keeping a heightened focus on the possible societal impact of the nanotechnology revolution. The result is that today--along with all of the optimism for this emerging science--there is a sense of caution about how the revolution ought to proceed, especially when it comes to public communication."
James Pinkerton argues that recent environmental protests against space expansion to the moon and Mars is futile because it won't influence the People's Republic of China which is "intent on both expanding its terrestrial economy as quickly as possible and also space-racing into the extra-terrestrial vacuum left by America's post-Apollo retreat from the moon."
The author examines the concept of a "technological singularity" from an environmental viewpoint.
Nanotechnology advocates warn that researchers should spend some time educating a public that may be either oblivious to the emerging field or nervous about potential abuses to fend off a luddite backlash.