By Bonnie James
Public opinion has to be involved at an early stage in the development of nanotechnologies to avoid misunderstanding and false expectations, World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (Comest) chairman Prof Dr Alain Pompidou said yesterday.
Addressing an experts’ meeting on ethics of nanotechnologies in the Arab region, organised by Unesco’s Cairo and Doha offices, he said nanotechnologies, a rapidly developing new field of knowledge, lacks extensive norms and standards.
“Science fiction has exaggerated public hopes and fears and there are new challenges for research community and policy decision makers,” Dr Pompidou said in his presentation on ‘Nanorisks? - Challenges and Opportunities.’
In a background document prepared for the meeting, Al Quds University (Jerusalem, Palestine) Medical School’s professor of biochemistry Riyad Amin has described nanotechnology as a multidisciplinary field and a set of innovative technologies and methods for controlling and manipulating matter at near-atomic scale to produce novel materials, structures, devices and products.
“In general, nanotechnology intersects with several scientific fields; engineering disciplines such as materials science, electrical, computer and mechanical engineering, as well as medicinal sciences, information technology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, biotechnology and life sciences,” Amin explained.
Nanotechnology allows designing, creation and manipulation through the control of matter at the nanometre (one billionth of a metre) scale. It can be used to design smart drug delivery systems and other tools that will let medicine intervene at the cellular and molecular level achieving maximal therapeutic effects with minimal side effects.
The development of nanomaterials at the nanometre scale, including nanoparticles that are already present in a wide range of products and widely used in medicine, and the manipulation of molecules to produce genetic material pose several potential risks and safety issues. Ethical concerns have been raised as well, as pointed out by Amin.
Dr Pompidou said that nano objects, which can be visualised under scanning tunnelling microscope and atomic force microscope, exhibit different or enhanced properties compared to the same material at a larger scale.
“Hazardousness of nanoparticles and biomedical and chemical effects on human bodies or natural ecosystems are two concerns that should be addressed,” he said.
Raising awareness and debate are required on environmental impact and health issues. The new definition of the toxicity of these materials is still problematic.
Privacy and confidentiality also feature prominently on the grid as nanotechnologies could pave the way for unpredicted surveillance devices such as nanocameras and GPS nanotrackers.
“Nanomedicine offers new diagnostic methods, including ‘enhancement’ of the human body, enabling people with normal vision to see in darkness or the blind to see by attaching nanosensors to retina,” Dr Pompidou said.
The expert, also president of the French National Academy of Technologies, added that ethics and education have to be reinforced in nanotechnologies.
Unesco Doha office director Hamed al-Hammami, Saudi Arabia’s Center of Nanotechnology (King Abdul Aziz University) director Sami Habib, and Islamic Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation official Abdul Aziz Hamed Ali Ali were among those who spoke at the opening session.