Hype is something has dogged nanotechnology from the early days. Whether it was Drexlerites promising a utopian world free from hunger and death or pundits predicting the death of all manufacturing by 2005, it seems to be human nature to allow the imagination to run way ahead of the science, which may have potentially disastrous consequences. Fortunately, nanotech is not alone in this, and about now Robert (Lord) Winston is giving a speech attempting to defuse some of the hype surrounding embryonic stem cell research.
Like nanotech, embryonic stem cells is an areas that is currently poorly understood but with tremendous potential to cure disease and regrow organs and tissue. The key word here is potential, one of those words often linked with nanotech, along with could and might.
The problem is that we can never say for sure what or when we can use nanotechnologies for, the possibilities are endless, but so are some of the problems associated with getting new scientific and engineering processes to work reliably and predictably.
Lord Winston also identifies the desire to sidestep legislation concerning the sourcing of stem cells from embryos, which probably led a number of the field’s proponents to hype outcomes just to get liberal legislative approval. While we have not encountered a general desire to ram nanoparticles down peoples throats (at least not literally) we have detected a whiff of to hell with the legislation well do it anyway in some areas of the nanotech community.
A dilemma of a different kind is whether embryonic stem cells are the new nanotech from both a hype and ethical point of view?