Regulating Nanotechnologies
I was lucky enough to take a holiday over Christmas, and my wife and I were able to visit my parents in the States. So, I was in a little bit of a rush to finish all my most pressing work at the beginning of December. While I still had plenty of work to finish over my holiday, my latest trend alert, Regulating Nano, fell by the wayside. My trend alerts are posted in Shaping Tomorrow’s newsletters, but this one was also published on the InnovationManagement website.
Nanotechnology has been a pet topic of mine ever since my graduate studies. At that time, nanotoxicology was just beginning to be taken more seriously by the research community at large. Watching the theory of Cultural Lag play out has been quite interesting. Here is the repost:
Regulating Nano: Tiny Particles, Huge Questions
It is a difficult time for regulators trying to make sense of nanotechnologies, the engineering of super-small particles to utilize their size and unusual properties. While environmental, health, and safety (EHS) concerns abound, so too do the technological and economic benefits which extend particularly to the electronics, green tech, and health industries. As regulators seek to protect the populace, they also need to avoid undue public backlash which could damage these huge benefits because of poor communication and limited scientific research.
What is changing?
The number of products enabled by nanotechnologies has risen from 212 in 2006 to more than 1,300 today with advances ranging from smell-resistant clothing to less expensive water filters to antibacterial goods. However, regulators are still taking baby steps to significant regulation. In June, two US government agencies and the White House released statements about nanotechnologies and their regulation, but even these statements did little more than reinforce what had already been said. The White House iterated a need for a scientific approach to regulating nanomaterials to avoid knee-jerk reactions to speculative concerns. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) called for responses to its proposed policy for information gathering from manufacturers, and the FDA (Food and Drugs Administration) reinforced its policy of regulating nanomaterials on a case-by-case basis.
The USA’s attempt to develop an adaptive and responsive regulation strategy seems to be prevailing with the European Union as well even though individual European nations still express a desire for stricter, more overt regulations like the labeling of products. Other countries like Australia resist the notion of mandatory labeling worrying that such labels would send the wrong message to consumers who may throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Another contentious area is a viable definition of nanotechnologies for regulatory purposes. Some researchers argue that safety concerns of nanomaterials would best be addressed without a specific definition, but regulators feel they need a standardized vocabulary. The European Commission received a great deal of criticism when they released their working definition of nanotechnology recently especially over questions of the deciding body’s political integrity. The US FDA is also flooded with comments and requests which mostly surround the vagaries of their proposed definition. If regulators make the definition too specific, they risk allowing dangerous materials to slip through the cracks, but if they define nanotechnology too broadly, products may be gridlocked delaying important innovations such as lighter, more efficient aircraft and better treatments for addiction.
Why is this important?
Nanotechnologies have the potential to revolutionize virtually every industry—from philanthropy and sports to fashion and communications. The health industry alone could see targeted cures for cancer with minimal side-effects, more effective tests and drugs for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and treatments for patients with spinal cord injuries to enable them to walk again. Along with the medical potential come promises to boost the electronics industry and accelerate some much needed clean tech advances like economically viable solar cells.
Too many questions remain unanswered. Many environmental, health, and safety concerns have been raised over nanotechnologies, and research suggests these concerns may be valid. Just because a material is inert in its standard size does not mean it is safe when engineered at the nanoscale because nanoparticles behave differently. However, other research suggests humans have long been exposed to nanoparticles from silver, copper, and other substances. Ultimately, no fatalities or environmental degradation has been directly attributed to nanoparticle exposure, and swift, harsh regulation of nanotechnologies could needlessly postpone the myriad of innovations they promise.
Minorities in Recession?
In the US, the Pew Research Center reports that Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. Likewise in the UK, IPPR reports that women are seeing severe discrimination when trying to borrow from British banks. It’s not a big surprise to any cynic that minorities are hit the hardest in times of economic crisis, but one of the hardest hit minorities worldwide are the younger generations. In the US, the wealth gap between young and old is the widest ever. CNBC has a series of articles on the global crisis. One more global problem which is also hitting the US is concentrated poverty, as the US once more sees growth in poorer areas.
Clearly, the previous recession is not the only culprit, but it exacerbated preexisting issues. And then what happened? An unemployed youth, 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi, ignited the Tunisian revolution. The ensuing “Arab Spring” influenced both the London riots which spread throughout Britain and the Occupy Wall Street protests which spread throughout the US and around the world. While the English riots were actually ignited by a protest against questionable police actions and furthered by criminals, reports are coming in that the riots also spread, along with plain old hooliganism, because of frustrations among the youth about unemployment and underemployment. Likewise, the Occupy protesters pointed to rising unemployment as a key purpose for their demonstrations. Other non-English speaking countries, like Spain and Malaysia, used the Occupy movement to further their own existing agendas which were similar in nature–anti-greed, anti-corruption, anti-authoritarian, and also anti-youth-unemployment. The opinion pages are awash with ideas that the youth and minorities simply lack the right work ethic, but even if that were true, these protests clearly indicate that these people are frustrated, not lazy.
All of this happened after only one recession. Now, many experts say the troubles in the eurozone could spark a double dip recession impacting the globe. What will the knock-on effects be? To what lengths could global social unrest extend and how fast could they spread? Will there be a lost generation wave through the coming decades with high debt, low job experience, and criminal records? How quickly could the nations 0f the world pull out of such a crisis? What would the international power balance look like afterward? Could the signs of similar crises in the future be seen with a standard set for broader international metrics beyond GDP?
Wellbeing as a policy objective
Ever since the 70s when the king of Bhutan suggested the idea of a Gross National Happiness metric to replace the Gross National Product, academics and politicians have explored the notion of softer research for measuring national progress. The UN developed their Human Development Programme which provided a much broader set of indices for nations to measure their progress and success against other nations. Likewise, many have followed suit with the Happy Planet Index, Genuine Progress Indicators, etc.
In what ways may happiness and wellbeing be useful as metrics for national progress and international success? Brookings Senior Fellow Carol Graham says higher levels of wellbeing translate into greater productivity in the workplace, and people report to be less happy when they make less than $60,000USD annually. Above that optimal salary, the measurement of happiness becomes much more complex. The Legatum Institute also posits opportunity and balance as necessities for prosperity and wellbeing. People in countries with faster rates of growth are less happy than those with slower rates. Fast growth means change and uncertainty, and people adapt to unpleasant certainty more readily than uncertainty. However, for people without the opportunity to change their station, day-to-day things matter more—greater focus on friendship, religion, etc.—which means contentment rather than necessarily happiness. So while uncertainty reduces wellbeing, the confidence to exploit opportunities raises it tremendously.
The balance between certainty and opportunity provides fuel for theories of human development because certainty of basic needs like food and water leads to a desire for higher aspirations. Maslow’s hierarchy of need and the theory of Spiral Dynamics may have their critics, but the simple fact remains that the more needs an individual is able to satisfy, the more developed the person is likely to be. Therefore, the more highly developed individuals a nation has, the more developed that nation is likely to be. If the Occupy Wall Street protests going global should tell economists and politicians anything, it is that GDP should not be the only metric of growth. If people feel their needs to be unmet, they eventually act out. If economists and politicians measure various forms of wellbeing on top of GDP, they may find weak signals of unrest which could eventually turn disruptive. Clearly these weak signals could then be attended but only if softer measures are adopted. Even the OECD is developing such metrics, but other organizations are still slow to adjust to the changing needs of global society.
My Body, My Right?
I was scanning and found a few articles about elective amputation. Electing to amputate a limb? Well, official elective amputation is reserved for those with diminished use of a limb when even a dumb prosthetic, much less a modern prosthetic capable of reaching and grabbing, would actually be better than their own limb. However, there was some suggestion that a minority of people might want to volunteer to amputate their completely healthy limbs. These people are dominated by a condition called body integrity identity disorder. They are usually completely normal in all or most respects with the exception of this one very odd obsession, amputating a specific limb at a specific point. In the above link, Dr. Michael First says one man with the disorder lost his arm in a car crash. Did he feel suddenly normal with a loss of a limb? No, because he wanted to lose his legs. He yearned to be a double leg amputee, and losing his arm did nothing to diminish this desire. The disorder has been known for decades, but prostheses are only now coming to a point where sympathizers might defend the ethics of allowing such extreme desires.
I combined this strange disorder with Anonym’s story for my latest trend alert for Shaping Tomorrow which I will reprint below. Anonym is a biohacker. She is going straight DIY punk style to enhance her body to feel something beyond current human limitations like magnetic fields. She has approached doctors, but they do not want to help her for ethical reasons. So she has resorted to implanting herself with special magnets using an anatomy book, scalpels, and buckets of vodka.
People with body integrity identity disorder may not believe themselves to be transhumanists, but any transhumanist who wants to be a cyborg may benefit from the ethical discussions these people pose. Actually, I found that Kyle Munkittrick beat me to the punch. While I was trying to write this trend alert, I found his blog post in Discover Magazine’s Science Not Fiction. I have a few reservations with Munkittrick’s narrow view of society, but he brings up some important questions about what the legal and ethical ramifications are of allowing people to do what they wilt in regards to asking doctors for help.
To see the rest of the sources for my trend alert, you may have to login to Shaping Tomorrow, but here is the alert as it appears in ST:
My body, my choice?
As technology advances to a point of enhancing human functionality and not just adornment or redressing loss, technology and the philosophy of transhumanism are influencing the way we define the human body by raising new ethical boundaries and issues about personal choice and control.
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Body modification has been happening for centuries with ear piercings and tattoos. Recent decades have even brought about the legitimate medical practice of gender reassignment in some countries. Yet when a young woman wants to extend her senses to feel magnetic fields, doctors refuse to help. Anonym is a biohacker who is implanting her fingertips with magnets in her own kitchen with medical books, scalpels, and buckets of vodka. Seeking to enhance her human experience, she is also working on a way to internally sense the magnetic poles–something scientists believe humans could be biologically enabled to do.
Prostheses are going fashion forward and adding greater benefit to the lives of the disabled. The curved blades worn by paraplegic Olympic hopeful, Oscar Pistorius, are a prime example of practical prostheses which function better than those that look like natural legs, hands, etc. Researchers are developing prostheses with an increasing range of motions and functions which could eventually strengthen the ethical argument for voluntary amputation for people with body integrity identity disorder, a psychiatric condition marked by an overwhelming desire to have one or more limbs amputated. Official elective surgery is reserved for those patients with lost or reduced functionality in an attached limb, but some people with body integrity identity disorder are voluntarily freezing and damaging their limbs—often having to do so more than once—to force doctors to amputate.
Voluntary amputation and DIY implantation may be extreme examples, but gene therapy, brain enhancements, and possibly certain forms of life extension will also be part of the ongoing and ever more complex debate over what an individual can do to themselves or what they should be allowed to have a doctor more safely do for them. The behavior of such people is being defended and heralded by some bioethicists who align the individual’s right to amputation and implantation with abortion, euthanasia, etc. “My body, my choice” is the rallying cry for a growing number of people seeking more personal freedoms regarding health.
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In the future, there may be specialist doctors specifically trained to handle the needs of people seeking “transhumanist operations”. Transhumanists anticipate a time when technology is able to do more than supplement a lost limb but actually grant humans greater functionality, both mentally and physically, than that which nature provides. Eventually, society will have to address the concerns of transhumanists medically and legally, potentially revolutionizing society. Should legal and ethical systems protect individuals from themselves, or should personal rights prevail in voluntary extreme body modification and other elected enhancements?
Enhanced humans could play a mediator role between humans and robot workers. Eventually, people with certain prostheses may be sought out by employers to perform particular functions more efficiently. If that should happen, employers may even be willing to pay for an employee’s required procedure. Like most technologies, countries which do not allow such augmentations may cause greater social disparities, and such disparities would be heightened even more once scientists are able to enhance the brain.
Approaching Androids
An android is a robot that resembles a human, and their potential applications include customer service, communication technologies, education, and health care. Japan has produced a number of androids, but they still only look like humans. They still feel, smell, sound, and presumably taste synthetic. My latest trend alert shows where researchers are advancing in the work to make robots resemble humans: http://www.shapingtomorrow.com/trendAlert.cfm?id=21015. But, is it all for nothing? Scientists at the University of California, San Diego have shown how and why people are often creeped out by robots that too closely resemble human beings. Essentially the androids do not match what people expect of them, http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/soc/20110714BrainAndroids.asp. So, robots used in public places will not only require extra safety precautions but also satisfy the public’s expectations either through the design of the robot or through extensive marketing to adjust public attitudes.
