20.1 Risk, Hazard and Uncertainty

Technological progress typically means doing new things. It may be considered unethical to proceed with any scheme that exposes the population to risk. But how much risk is acceptable? Human progress would be impossible if every step taken had zero risk. In fact, the risk of doing something for the first time is formally unquantifiable, because the effects are formally unknown (although they may be estimated from existing knowledge). In practice, the variety of past experience is used to extrapolate. Steam locomotives traveling on rails allowed faster travel than previously, but initially not that much faster than a man on a horse. Tunnels caused some problems, but natural caves were known and had been explored. Flying was a greater innovation, but birds and bats and insects were familiar. Furthermore, only small numbers of people were initially involved.

New technology raises two aspects of risk: do we proceed with a new technology and do we need to regulate an already existing state of affairs? The former is typically the decision of a person or a company. The latter is typically a collective decision of society, through its institutions.

Both cases imply firstly the need to quantify risk, and then the need to decide on a limit. Let us tackle the quantification.

Risk is reasonably defined as the hazard associated with an event multiplied by the probability of the event occurring (cf. Section 14.2). This provides the most common current basis of risk analysis and risk management. Two major difficulties immediately present themselves, however: how can hazard be quantified and how is the probability to be determined?

The answer to the first difficulty is typically solved by using cost. Although in a particular case it might be difficult, practically speaking, because events are typically complex, nevertheless intelligible estimates can usually be made, even of the cost of events as complex as flooding. The insurance industry has even solved the problem of costing a human life. The numbers of people affected can be estimated. Hence, even if there are imponderables, a basis for estimation exists.

To answer the second difficulty, one needs an appropriate probability model. If the event occurs reasonably frequently, the frequentist interpretation should be satisfactory. However, successive events may be correlated. Subevents aggregating to give the observed event may be additive or multiplicative. As with the first question, heuristic approximation may be required.

The units of risk, as quantified in this manner, are cost per unit time.

Risk analysis comprises the identification of hazards (or “threats”)—operational, procedural etc.—and evidently the better one understands the operation, procedure, etc., the better one can identify the hazards. Risk management comprises attempts to diminish the hazard (its cost), or the probability of its occurrence, or both. The two are linked by comparing the costs of remedial action with the challenge of risk.

The overall object is to decide whether to undertake some action to diminish the hazard, or the probability of its occurrence, or both. If the cost of the action is less than the value gained by diminishing the risk, then it is reasonable to undertake the action. A slight difficulty is that sometimes a single action is carried out and there are no recurrent costs. In this case the cost of the action should be divided by the anticipated duration of its effect. A more severe difficulty is that often hazard and probability of occurrence are linked. For example, installing airbags in motor-cars diminishes the hazard of an accident, but the driver, knowing this, might tend to drive more recklessly, hence increasing the probability of an accident [4]. This factor, often neglected, frequently makes the actual effects of remedial actions very significantly less than foreseen. It is pertinent to nanotechnology because many of the envisaged applications are associated with obvious mechanisms for promoting questionable lifestyles. For example, artificial glands (Chapter 6) could be used to compensate for many kinds of lifestyle diseases induced by behavior that could be altered with less social cost by modifying behavior.

Nanotechnology has introduced other predicaments into medicine. For example, burn dressings containing silver nanoparticles are now commercially available, offering superior antimicrobial protection compared with the cheaper ones lacking the nanoparticles. Healthcare professionals treating a wound increasingly tend to invariably specify the superior product, to minimize the chance that they will be accused of malpractice should microbial infection occur. This not only increases the cost, hence putting pressure on other services if the overall budget is fixed, but may also lead to other problems germane to that of antibiotics increasing antimicrobial resistance.

Yet another problem is the possibility of “dual use”—the capacity for harmful misuse (for bioterrorism) of research, such as work leading to mastery of the molecular manipulation of virulence factors and the directed reversal of the blood–brain barrier by nanoparticles, carried out with therapeutically beneficial motivation [5].

20.2 Should we Proceed?

The practical ethical question confronting the entrepreneur or the board of directors of a limited liability company is whether to proceed with some development of their activities. Let us travel back to the early Victorian era. It has been fairly observed that “the engineers of the Industrial Revolution spent their whole energy on devising and superintending the removal of physical obstacles to society's welfare and development” [6]. This, surely, was ethics to the highest degree. But a qualitative change subsequently occurred: “The elevation of society was lost sight of in a feverish desire to acquire money. Beneficial undertakings had been proved profitable; and it was now assumed that a business, so long as it was profitable, did not require to be proved beneficial” [6]. And there we have remained to this day, it seems. Profit has become inextricably intertwined with benefit, but the former is no guide to the latter. The utilitarian principle (the greatest benefit to the greatest number) is only useful when two courses of action are being compared. The most important principle is elevation of society, which should be the primary criterion for deciding whether to proceed with any innovation, without even bothering about an attempt to determine the degree of elevation—only the sign is important [7]. For Brunel, it was inconceivable that a railway engineer could have had anything other than the elevation of society in mind, hence the public was able to have total confidence in him, and he could be clear-minded in his opposition to regulators. Nowadays, we have to admit that this confidence is lacking (but not, one might hope, irremeably), and therefore society has built up an elaborate system of regulation (cf. Chapter 15), which seems, however, to have hampered the innovator while providing fresh opportunities for profit to individuals without benefit to society.

20.3 What About Nanoethics?

All that has been written so far in this chapter is generic, applicable to any human activity. How does nanotechnology fit in? Is there any difference between nanoethics and the ethics of the steam engine?

Possible reasons for according nanotechnology special attention are its pervasiveness, its invisibility (hence it can arrive without our knowledge), and the fact that it may be the technology that will usher in Kurzweil's singularity.

Pervasiveness scarcely needs special consideration. All successful technologies become pervasive—printing, electricity, the personal computer, and now the Internet.

The invisibility of modern technological achievement stands in sharp contrast to Victorian engineering, whose workings were generally open to see for all who cared to take an interest in such matters. Even in the first half of the 20th Century, technical knowledge was widely disseminated, and a householder wishing to provide his family with a radio, or an electric bell, would be well able to make such things himself, as well as repair the engine of a motor-car. Nowadays, perhaps because of the impracticability of intervening with a soldering iron inside a malfunctioning laptop computer or cellphone, a far smaller fraction of users of such artifacts understand how even a single logic gate is constructed, or even the concept of representing information digitally, than, formerly, the fraction of telephone users (for example) who understood how the technology worked. And even if we do understand the principle, we are mostly powerless to intervene. Genetic engineering is, in a sense, as familiar as the crossing of varieties known to any gardener, but few people in the developed world nowadays grow their own vegetables [8] despite the fact of mounting frustration at the unsatisfactory quality, in the culinary and gastronomic sense, of commercially available produce.

The answer to invisibility must, however, surely be a wider dissemination of technical knowledge. This should become as pervasive as basic literacy and numeracy. Hence it needs to be addressed in schools. It should be felt to be unacceptable that even basic concepts such as atoms or molecules are not held as widely as knowledge of words and numbers. Today they are not; to make “technical illiteracy” a thing of the past will require a revolution in educational practice as far-reaching as the Nano Revolution itself. To be sure, just as among the population there are different levels of literacy and numeracy, so we can expect that there will be different levels of technical literacy, but “blinding by science” should become far more difficult than it is at present.

Even without, or prior to the occurrence of, the singularity, productive nanosystems (PNs) imply an unprecedented level of technological assistance to human endeavor. All technologies tend to do this, and in consequence jobs and livelihoods are threatened—we have already mentioned Thimonnier's difficulties with tailors (Chapter 3). The traditional response of engineers is that new jobs are created in other sectors. This may not be the case with PNs, in which case we can anticipate a dramatic shift of the “work–life balance” q in favor of leisure (see Section 12.6.2). Provided material challenges to human survival (Chapter 19) are overcome, finding worthwhile uses of this extra leisure remains as the principal personal and social challenge. Here it should be noted that as work–life balance shifts in favor of life (i.e., more leisure), implying decreasing q [9], the marginal utility of money possessed saturates much more rapidly (equation (14.3)). This may have profound social consequences (involving greed or its absence [10]), which have not hitherto been analyzed and which are difficult to predict.

The answer should, however, be available within the world of productive nanosystems (Section 18.1), with which everybody will be able to create his or her own personal environment. It represents the ultimate control over matter, and does not depend on an élite corps active behind the scenes to maintain everything in working order. In this view, the age-old difference between the “sage” and the “common people” that is taken for granted in ancient writings such as the Daodejing should disappear. Is such a world, which each one of us can shape according to our interests and abilities, possible? That is at least as difficult a question to answer as whether productive nanosystems will be realized.

Even if they are, and even if we all become “shapers”, will not our different ideas about shaping conflict with each other? Will there not be incompatible overlaps? That is presumably why we shall still need ethics. But human solidarity should be enhanced, not diminished, by more knowledge of the world around us, and it is that to which we should aspire. Anything less represents regression and loss. Let us proceed with nanotechnology in this spirit, not indeed knowing whither it will lead, but holding fast to the idea of elevation.

As discussed in Chapter 19, nanotechnology may promote the desire for simple lifestyles, which would appear to be essential for sustaining civilization on earth. The 5th century bc Chinese scholar Mo-tzu spoke of past kings as having built houses high enough to avoid the damp and sturdy enough to withstand the onslaughts of nature; in other words houses were erected from necessity and to sustain a moral life, not for show [11]. If nanotechnology promotes civilization as civility—“good manners and the arts rather than the construction of a dominative material world” [11], it will be a force for great good.

One of the key themes of our time is sustainability, which in its widest sense means the ability of human civilization to continue to exist and to develop. Nanotechnology provides some of the physical means to achieve sustainability; is, therefore, South Korea, whose dramatically impressive progress in nanotechnology has been noted (Chapter 17), an example for us all to follow? On the other hand, the country is said to have tremendous social problems, as evinced by the rapidly falling birthrate. But, painful as that is in the short-term (as other countries are finding too), in the longer term it may be that the whole world has, likewise, to drastically reduce its population. Without such a reduction it is very difficult to foresee how nanotechnology, however minimal the resources it requires and however maximal the functionality it can confer on materials and devices, can rescue a rapidly degrading environment.

Nanotechnology is clearly a natural continuation of the trend towards ever-improving control of structure at all length scales. How this control is applied needs careful, responsible thought.