Last week during a House Science subcommittee hearing, “Nanotechnology: Where Does the U.S. Stand?”(), there was a testy exchange on the role of ethical impact assessment in nanotechnology and who determines this. The focus of the hearing was on how U.S. nanotechnology activities “measure up” to international competition, and one question asked about barriers to nanotechnology commercialization.

The hearing comes on the heals of an assessment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), a report that was required by the 2003 act authorizing federal funding for nanotech R&D. This law called for a National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel to conduct the assessment. In 2004, President Bush designated PCAST as the NNAP.

The law requires NNI activities to integrate research on ethical concerns surrounding nanotechnology into R&D activities, and requires the NNAC (now PCAST) to assess “whether societal, ethical, legal, environmental, and workforce concerns are adequately addressed by the [NNI]” and to make recommendations for improvement. The PCAST report, however, can be interpreted as fairly insubstantial in its treatment of how ethical concerns are being addressed (see Howard Lovy’s entertaining summary). For instance, in stressing the role of “sound science” over “perceived fears,” the language of the report appears to downplay the role of ongoing ethical assessment with respect to R&D activities.

During the hearing, PCAST co-chairman Floyd Kvamme, one of the witnesses, suggested that health, safety, and environment issues are mostly workplace related. For example, employees who install nanotubes into, say, tennis balls may face heath and safety risks. Yet, once the nanotubes are in the tennis ball, Kvamme stated, “we are far less concerned because of the technology involved there.” (By contrast, another hearing witness, Matthew Nordan, stated “the truth is we don’t know right now” whether the nanotubes in a given product may separate from their composite matrix after 20-50 years in a landfill).

Towards the end of the hearing, House Science committee member Brad Sherman had a telling exchange with the PCAST co-chairman. Asked what the administration was doing to carry out the mandate to study the potential impacts of nanotech activity, Kvamme referred to a popular work of science fiction that has come to epitomize the “perceived fear” of nanotechnology.

Later, Kvamme defended the decision not to assess the NNI with respect to ethical issues concerning artificial intelligence – issues mentioned explicitly in the 2003 act – on the grounds that research projects do not appear at present to be “going on.” Sherman responded that the provision to study the impacts of such projects “weren’t designed to become operative a year before [they] were technologically possible.”

At one point, Sherman stated “you’re supposed to be looking at the societal problems and you’re looking at the technological capacity.” In other words, “[you] don’t want to study the societal problems of doing it, [you] want to study how to do it.”

The dichotomy between “science” and “perception” can sometimes suggest an unduly high level of certainty. Consequently, ethical concerns that extend beyond the scientific capacity to address them may fall into the category of unscientific or even irrational, and may be largely dismissed. One problem with this is that real risks and significant impacts that are slow to emerge can be ignored until it is too late to effectively address them. On the other hand, popular perceptions and concerns about an emerging science can certainly be wildly inaccurate. To simply ignore these concerns, however, is to dismiss consumer and taxpayer perceptions, which can undermine commercialization efforts.

The ethics policy that the NNI ultimately adopts will in many ways involve what perspectives on uncertainty happen to be prevalent – for instance, how much legitimacy policymakers grant to the uncertainty surrounding various specific ethical concerns, or the degree to which they consider it important to focus on reducing regulative uncertainty, which can also undermine commercialization.

Another key factor will entail who actually makes the decisions. The congressional authorizing committee upon which Sherman sits contributed to the law’s language about ethical concerns. There is a running debate on what authority congressional authorizing committees actually have in comparison to congressional appropriations committees (a nice follow up post here on Prometheus?). Implementation of the law rests with administrative agencies and committees. When Sherman somewhat sarcastically wondered out loud whether “authorizing committees, even when successful in getting their language into law, are not in a position to influence administrative policy,” the PCAST co-chairman responded, “possibly not.” Needless to say, the congressman didn’t take well to the implication that authorizing committees may simply be “wasting [their] time.”

A webcast of the hearing, entitled “Nanotechnology: Where Does the U.S. Stand?,” is available here.