Nanotechnology
The Social and Ethical Issues

Nanotechnology has tremendous potential to contribute to human flourishing in socially just and environmentally sustainable ways. However, nanotechnology is unlikely to realize its full potential unless its associated social and ethical issues are adequately attended. The purpose of this report is to raise the salience of social and ethical issues within ongoing responsible development discourses and efforts by:

• identifying the crucial roles of ethics in the responsible development of technology;
• dispelling common misconceptions about the social and ethical issues associated with emerging nanotechnologies;
•  providing a typology of the social and ethical issues associated with emerging nanotechnologies and identifying several specific issues within each type; and
• emphasizing how social and ethical issues intersect with governmental functions and responsibilities.

Government and Ethics

Among the functions of government that intersect with the ethical and value dimensions of technology are the following:

• Science and technology policy and funding involve decisions about what ends should receive priority and about how resources should be allocated in pursuit of those ends. Justification of these decisions requires that some goals be valued more highly than others—i.e., it rests on comparative value judgments.
• Regulation of science and technology is intended to accomplish something that is thought to be worthwhile and that justifies any associated costs. Regulation also has power, control, oversight and responsibility dimensions, and often involves allocating burdens and benefits. All of these are characteristic of ethical issues and decisions.
• Government can support research on, raise awareness of and promote responsiveness to social and ethical issues associated with technology (as many believe to be the case with the Human Genome Project). It can also obscure social and ethical issues associated with technology (as many believe to be the case with genetically modified crops).

Roles of Ethics in the Responsible Development of Technology

The goal for any emerging technology is to contribute to human flourishing in socially just and environmentally sustainable ways. Given this, the roles of ethics within responsible development of nanotechnology include:

• elucidating what constitutes justice, human flourishing and sustainability;
• identifying opportunities for nanotechnology to accomplish the goal and anticipating impediments to its doing so;
• developing standards for assessing prospective nanotechnologies;
• providing ethical capacity (i.e., tools and resources that assist individuals and organizations to make ethically informed decisions) to enable society to adapt effectively to emerging nanotechnologies; and
• identifying limits on how the goal ought to be pursued.

Three Misconceptions about Ethics and Emerging Nanotechnologies

Several common misconceptions about the social and ethical issues associated with emerging nanotechnologies have obscured their significance to responsible development and thereby hampered our responsiveness to them. Three of the most important of these misconceptions are as follows:

• It is too soon to tell what the social and ethical issues are. This misconception is fostered by a narrow focus on the technology itself when trying to identify social and ethical issues. When broader contextual factors, such as unequal access to technology, information insecurity and inadequate biodefense research oversight are considered, it becomes clear that it is not too early to identify and to begin to respond to social and ethical issues associated with emerging nanotechnologies.
• The nanotechnology revolution is inevitably good. This misconception results from a preoccupation with the crucial contributions that technology makes to the comfort, security, healthfulness and longevity of people’s lives in industrialized nations. If one takes a more encompassing historical, global and ecological view of technology’s development and impacts, it is clear that emerging technologies (including emerging nanotechnologies) are not inevitably good.
• The point of the social and ethical issues is to secure public acceptance. This misconception arises from the desire for smooth commercialization of emerging nanotechnologies coupled with the view that public opposition to them is primarily the result of misunderstandings or baseless concerns regarding them. In fact, people’s concerns regarding emerging technologies are often neither the result of ignorance nor baseless. Moreover, as indicated above, there are robust roles for ethics in responsible development of nanotechnology other than securing public acceptance.

A Typology of Ethical Issues

This typology is intended to organize the social and ethical issues associated with emerging nanotechnologies in ways that are illuminating and productive.

1.  Social Context Issues: Social context issues arise from the interaction of nanotechnologies with problematic features of the social or institutional contexts into which the nanotechnologies are emerging. Examples of social context issues include unequal access to health care, inequalities in education, unequal access to technology, inadequate information security/privacy protection, inefficiencies in intellectual property systems, unequal exposure to environmental hazards and inadequate consumer safety protection.
2. Contested Moral Issues: Contested moral issues arise from nanotechnology’s interaction with or instantiation of morally controversial practices or activities—i.e., those that a substantial number of citizens believe should be prohibited. Examples of contested moral practices and activities in which nanoscale science and technology are, or are likely to be, involved include synthetic biology, construction of artificial organisms, biological weapons development, stem cell research and genetic modification of human beings.
3. Technoculture Issues: Technoculture issues arise from problematic aspects of the role of technology within the social systems and structures from which, and into which, nanotechnologies are emerging. Examples of technoculture issues include an overreliance on technological fixes to manage problematic effects (rather than addressing underlying causes of those effects), overestimation of our capacity to predict and control technologies (particularly within complex and dynamic biological systems) and technological mediation of our relationship with and experience of nature (and
   associated marginalization of natural values).
4. Form of Life Issues: Form of life issues arise from nanotechnology’s synergistic impacts on aspects of the human situation on which social standards, practices and institutions are predicated. For example, if nanomedicine helps extend the average human life span even five or ten healthful years, norms of human flourishing will need to be reconsidered and there are likely to be significant impacts on family norms and structures (e.g., care responsibilities), life plans or trajectories (e.g., when people marry) and social and political institutions (e.g., Medicare).
5. Transformational Issues: Transformational issues arise from nanotechnology’s potential (particularly in combination with other emerging technologies, such as biotechnology, information technology, computer science, cognitive science and robotics) to transform aspects of the human situation. This might be accomplished by significantly altering the kind of creatures that we are, reconstituting our relationship to the natural environment or creating self-aware and autonomous artificial intelligences (i.e., artifactual persons). In such cases, some prominent aspect of our ethical landscape would need to be reconfigured—for example, what it means to be human, personal identity or the moral status of some artifacts.

The Status of the Social and Ethical Issues within Responsible Development

With the misconceptions resolved and the full range of issues elucidated, it is clear that the social and ethical issues associated with emerging nanotechnologies are:

• Determinate: It is possible to identify many of the social and ethical issues.
• Immediate: It is not too soon to begin considering many of the issues.
• Distinct: The issues are not reducible to other aspects of responsible development.
• Significant: Addressing the issues is crucial to the responsible development of emerging nanotechnologies.
• Actionable: In many cases, there are steps that can be taken now by actors, including those in government, to address the issues.

Consideration of and responsiveness to social and ethical issues are needed now in order to anticipate and proactively address, as far as possible, potential negative aspects of emerging nanotechnologies, as well as to identify and promote opportunities for nanotechnology to contribute to human flourishing in just and sustainable ways. The National Nanotechnology Initiative affords a unique opportunity to promote a broad, critical and constructive perspective on the relationships between technology, government, environment and society at the same time that emerging nanotechnologies offer enormous possibilities for making social (not just technological) progress through comprehensive, innovative, and forwardlooking responsible development.

Ronald Sandler is an associate professor of philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, a researcher in the Nanotechnology and Society Research Group and Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing, and a research associate in the Environmental Justice Research Collaborative at Northeastern University.