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June 23, 2005 — Granted, the protest might not even have been noticed by the press if not for the unfortunate death of an officer. Paris Williams, a Philadelphia policeman, died Tuesday of an apparent heart attack during a protest outside BIO 2005, a biotech trade show.
The number of protestors, estimated at 250 by the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, is only a drop in the bucket considering the attendance of more than 18,000. However, the nanotechnology community should not dismiss such protests. What began for the nano industry as a handful of protestors at NanoCommerce 2004 could gain momentum quickly.
As hard as it may be for scientists, engineers and even we businesspeople to understand, this is an emotional issue, not one easily solved with logic or rational discourse. For technology protestors, fear is an important motivator. And some groups take advantage of these fears. While I hate to give this more visibility, I think the following paragraph from a news release on the Green California website is a good example of what nanotechnology could face sooner versus later:
The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) is holding their closed-door annual international convention in downtown Philadelphia from June 19-22 as biotech corporations suck resources out of our communities, leaving us sick and impoverished, and spread terminator seeds, frankenfoods, pesticides, roundup ready crops, bio-weapons labs, and killer drugs like cancers around the world, join us to plant seeds to rebuild our communities and cultivate health, peace, justice, freedom and sustainability.
Closed-door? It’s an industry conference that people have to pay to attend. As for leaving us sick and impoverished, the last time I checked I didn’t have to worry about my kids dying of smallpox or polio. Frankenfoods? Farmers have been changing the genetics of foods for thousands of years by selectively breeding both livestock and crops.
I’m not downplaying that there are legitimate issues with pharmaceutical companies and the bio industry in general, but the real issues are getting lost. Frankly, there is reason to be cautious. PCBs, asbestos, and Vioxx all started with good intentions.
So what should be done? Respect is a good place to start. Respect the public’s need for information and desire to protect their homes and families. Provide real mechanisms for education, dialog, and feedback on technology’s ethical implications. Even more important is going to be industry monitoring itself, which can be difficult when shareholders and investors are demanding quicker time to market and higher profits.
Products need to be tested for both safety to individuals and to the environment. Long-term trials need to be established — using industry coalitions and government funding to support independent results. I’m sure we would all rather the industry proactively identify potential issues rather than have them identified for it.
A real danger is that the public only understands nanotechnology as a lump unit. The fact that it comes in many shapes, sizes, and configurations is not understood. The nanotechnology industry needs to be able to compartmentalize itself, so that if and when the first widespread negative impact of nanotechnology is felt, people only demand the end to the harmful (or perceived harmful) applications and not demand the end of beneficial forms of nanotechnology too.