Welcome to wonderful world of nanotech

Nanotechnology - portrayed by thriller writers such as Michael Crichton as sinister and by some political activists as a threat to the environment or even humanity - is a science so new that not even the scientists involved know its social, cultural, and economic implications.

But the Bioethics Council yesterday called for the Government to take notice of the emergence of a technology that not only has potential benefits, but may well also be "socially contentious".

Formed last year in the wake of continuing controversy over genetic engineering, the new council yesterday started its formal advice to Environment Minister Marian Hobbs with a call for a watching brief on the latest transformative technology - this century's version of the computer chip.

Nanotech work is done on the scale of a nanometre, or a billionth of a metre - about a fifteen-thousandth the diameter of a human hair or 10 times the size of a hydrogen atom.

Work in the field has accelerated in the past few years as developments in nanoscale magnets offer the scope for tiny, fast computers, medical devices that can be implanted in the body to deliver nutrients or medicine, and nanoscale sensors.

The council sees nanotechnology as having features that parallel developments in genetic technology.

And in some quarters, concerns are being raised that the technology will allow self-replicating "nanobots", as in Crichton's thriller Prey, about the havoc caused by runaway microscopic machines.

The Bioethics Council has not been so melodramatic, but it has called on the Government to watch regulatory initiatives in Britain after an independent review of nanotechnology now under way.

A British strategy for nanotechnology quotes predictions that range up to a $1 trillion global market for nanotechnology by 2011-2015.

"There is an increasing investment in this research internationally, and some strong research initiatives in New Zealand," the council said.

"It is a technology that has considerable potential, but one that may also have associated risks."

- NZPA