BRITAIN collectively gasped this week at the potential horrors of the 鈥済rey goo鈥� about to engulf the country 鈥� and even the planet. For the uninitiated, grey goo is made up of millions of self-replicating nanomachines that breed rapidly and lay waste to everything in their path, like a swarm of artificial, flesh-eating locusts. What triggered this descent into panic? The answer is quintessentially British.
It all began some weeks ago when Prince Charles asked the Royal Society for the names of people who could inform him about nanotechnology. Upon learning of this exchange, a tabloid newspaper splashed a story that the prince, who is a well-known environmentalist, is deeply worried about the impact of nanotechnology. But why? What hazards does nanotechnology present? Enter the grey goo.
Self-replicating nanobots came into being in the mind of Eric Drexler who, in his 1986 book Engines of Creation, outlined a new field that he called nanotechnology. It was inspirational stuff, but was widely criticised by scientists as bordering on science fiction. While nanotechnology has moved on by leaps and bounds, few of Drexler鈥檚 ideas have been as fortunate. The grey goo scenario is not terribly new either. It surfaced in 1990 in an article in Wired magazine. More recently, Michael Crichton based his novel Prey on the idea.
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So, the self-replicating nanobot is an idea that began as speculative science but quickly moved into the realm of science fiction. Sure, if one was ever going to be built, we would need to study what harm it could do. But just how far into the future should the precautionary principle extend?
Great fun as all this is, there is a serious side. Fantasies about grey goo obscure real concerns about nanotechnology. Among scientists and bodies such as the US Environmental Protection Agency and Britain鈥檚 午夜福利1000集合 and Safety Executive, there is growing awareness that problems may exist. What, for example, are the health implications of inhaling nanotubes (New Scientist, 29 March, p 14)? And very small particles have very different properties from larger particles. We need to understand these differences and take account of them in health and environmental policy. But to ban the whole field, as some suggest, is total overkill.
New fields have always created new fears: Mary Shelley鈥檚 monster is proof of that. Perhaps the biggest irony is that nanotechnology is not a new field at all. It鈥檚 just chemistry by a different name. How scary is that?