NANOTECHNOLOGY.
Posted by bmhegde on 1
Medical profession needs to have an idea as to what nano-technology is all about and how nanotechnology could help us to preserve the health of the public. Nano-science, which threatens to change the way we practise modern medicine, is itself in a flux.1, 2 The business community would want us to believe that nanotechnology would solve all our problems ranging from energy crisis, heart disease, drug manufacture, disease prevention, to cancer management. Richard Smalley, a Nobel Laureate chemist, had this to say in concluding the now famous Drexler-Smalley debate of the 1990s. “You and people around you have scared our children. I don't expect you to stop, but I hope others in the chemical community will join with me in turning on the light, and showing our children that, while our future in the real world will be challenging and there are real risks, there will be no such monster as the self-replicating mechanical nanobot of your dreams.” To which Drexler, the Chairman of the Foresight Institute, responds by quoting Smalley on an earlier occasion. Smalley is reported to have said that if a scientist says that something is possible, he/she is probably underestimating the time it will take to fructify; but if a scientist says that something is not possible, he/she is wrong.3 It is no wonder that most people in the medical field know very little about nano-science.
Nanotechnology, a method primarily of molecular manufacturing, for the creation of tools, materials and machines that might eventually enable us to “snap together the fundamental building blocks of Nature easily, inexpensively, and in most of the ways permitted by the Laws of Physics. One of the brilliant scientists, who is now the Evan Pugh Professor of Solid State and Emeritus Professor at the Pennsylvania State University, Rustom Roy, is the real pioneering father of nanotechnology. Even at his age (80+) he has the enthusiasm of youth and continues to do research with the same passion.4
Given the present gross exaggerations associated with the halo-word nano,5 I must confess that it was Rustom Roy in the early 50s, working as a chemist and now for well over sixty years, has worked with ions, atoms or molecules-all genuinely nano. By 1950 he had designed the sol-gel process, still the most widely used route to produce, relatively effortlessly, nanoparticles of myriad compositions. Using this route he and his team started to make genuine nanocomposites by the late eighties. By 1991, long before anyone else in the field, he convened a Symposium on Nanoscience and Technology at the Materials Research Society.
“The idea caught on; the salability of a euphonious slightly mysterious term became caught up in the corridors of Science Funding and the rest is (bad) history” he says with nostalgia. “To-day nanotechnology is a PR bonanza for a subset of science. It is focus of attention on nano, the very small, which had NEVER been neglected by chemists or biologists. Regrettably it causes the neglect of many other fields closer to society’s needs – health of the masses, the environment, employment etc - which are at the Giga end of the spectrum.” opines Rustom Roy in one of his pensive moods.
In matters of inorganic chemistry and social activism Rustom was probably
Linus Pauling's closest disciple. By chance he also worked with both Ivan
Illich (of Medical Nemesis fame) and Norman Cousins, and thus was well
schooled in the failures of conventional high-tech medicine.
Those fortuitous connections are what started Rustom Roy down the path of a scientific appraisal of the field. Moreover as an experimental scientist - Penn State's Materials Research Laboratory, which he founded was ranked #1 in the world, by ISI - strictly on the strength of its Faraday like empirical experiment-based advances – Rustom Roy immediately grasped the value of masses of empirical data contained in long traditions of healing and went into scientifically validating them. And, most important of all, Rustom had his continuous, very successful research in the hard sciences not dependent on the medical establishment he was soon criticizing.
Rustom Roy, having been convinced of the futility of pursuing nanotechnology to cure all our ills, put together an unusual seminar on WHOLE PERSON HEALING (other end of nano-world) during the week ending 14th through 17th of April 2005 in Washington DC which was a run away success.6 Now that Rustom Roy and Nobel Laureate Richard Smalley give credibility to this idea, let us come out of our delusion that genetic engineering and nano-technology would solve all our problems, especially of poverty. Poverty is maintained in the world thanks to the rich man’s proclivity for comfort and his greed.
World poverty is of gigantic proportions! Nearly 1.2 billion people live on less than $ one per day. More than a billion people do not get clean drinking water. More than 2 billion do not have access to any kind of sanitation. Nearly 1.5 billion people, mostly in larger cities in the third world breathe such polluted air that equals smoking three packets of cigarettes per day. Marine life exploitation, soil erosion, and water scarcity have reached the breaking point. Deforestation goes on unabated all over the world thanks to the greedy loggers. World population is going up by nearly 80 million per year. This could only be helped marginally if nanotechnology could produce cheap alternate energy sources in place of the fossil fuel. India, the largest democracy, is paying millions of dollars every year for fossil fuel.
If that money could be diverted to health care (clean drinking water for everyone, three square uncontaminated meals, a toilet for every house to avoid the ravages of hookworms, and avoidance of cooking smoke coming into the house with deadly carbon monoxide, and economic empowerment and education of women) world health scenario will change dramatically. Instead, if we concentrate on cancer treatment using nanotechnology and other treatment modalities we will, probably, end up with more problems than solutions.7
There are so many imponderables in human physiology that one could never predict time evolution in human beings. The slight changes that we have the power to make in the initial state (like surgery in healthy people and genetically engineered molecules introduced into the body) using our hi-tech stuff might not do what they are intended to do, as time evolves. On the contrary, they might even harm (they have) as time evolves through the “butterfly effect” of Edward Lorenz.8
Cancer has remained undefeated so far! Nano effort can not change that so easily. War on cancer has to be fought on a holistic front. While the theoretical possibilities of nanoscience look endless with scientist turned businessmen like Drexler making us believe that the day is not far off when they could even manufacture self replicating nanobots in place of the robots of today. 9, 10, 11 Nanobots could roam the world producing their “kids” at their own sweet will! Science always tried to unravel the mysteries of the universe. When science tries to control the natural laws of the universe, nature would certainly revolt!
Bibliography:
1) Michael Wilson (editor) et. al. Nanotechnology: Basic Science and Emerging Technologies, CRC Press 2002
2) Michael Gross. Travels to the Nanoworld: Miniature Machinery in Nature and Technology, Perseus Publishing, 2001.
3) Drexler-Smalley Debate. Chemical Engineering News. 2003; 81: December 1st issue.
4) Roy R. Personal Communications. 2005
5) Wolf EL. Nanophysics and Nanotechnology: An Introduction to Modern Concepts in Nanoscience, Wiley-VCH, 2004.
6) Hegde BM. Clinician’s view of whole person Healing. Proc. Whole Person Healing Summit, Washington DC April 14th thr.’ 17th, 2005.
7) Jones RAL. Soft Machines - Nanotechnology and Life, OUP, 2004.
8) Hegde BM. Chaos- a new concept in science. Jr. Assoc. Physi. India 1996; 44: 167-68.
9) Rietman Ed, et. al. Molecular Engineering of Nanosystems, Springer Verlag, 2001.
10) Turton R, The Quantum Dot: A Journey into the Future of Microelectronics, Oxford University Press, 1999.
11) Drexler E. Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, Anchor, 1987