essay draft

It is commonly acknowledged that technology has made life a whole lot easier. In fact,
technology has significantly improved our standard of living by supplying us with better communication, faster and safer travel, more effective medical care, and more. But nowadays, it seems that technology has begun to shrink. While it may not sound very logical, this rapid shrinking technology will not only help us, but save us as well.

Imagine a time when cancer treatments could ensure a patient’s full recovery, a person with a debilitating spinal cord injury would walk and a disease could be prevented before it became threat. Imagine that the effects of aging could be completely reversed and broken bones could be healed in a matter of hours. Although these may seem like a doctor’s and patient’s wildest dream, with the further development of nanotechnology, these dreams could become reality.

In the most technical terms, nanotechnology is the study of the controlling of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Scientists have begun to engineer extremely small robotic devices, nanobots, which have the potential to revolutionize the field of medicine by 2015. Nanotechnology could help doctors effectively diagnose, treat and cure patients because nanobots could retrieve intimate images from within the body and perform complicated procedures that doctors are not humanly capable of doing. Patient aftercare could also be improved with nanobots that are able to regulate the delivery of a drug to the patient as well as allow the patient to monitor their own body systems. These abilities of the nanobots give doctors, as Ralph C. Merkle, researcher of nanotechnology and author of “It’s a Small, Small, Small World”, would say, “Positional control” that would guarantee “a quantum leap in our medical capabilities”. Given that there is no end to the possibilities nanotechnology offers for the
Betterment of the health of the human race, it is as if there is no possible way this new technology could fail us.

Despite the strides nanotechnology has made in the hopes of improving the effectiveness of modern medicine, some critics have expressed their concerns with the more sinister potential these nanobots have to offer. Critics fear that where there is a way to heal, there is always many ways in which to hurt. Among those critics is Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, head of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, reminds the scientific community of the ethical dilemmas that nanotechnology faces with his message that “everything technologically possible need not be ethically permissible." We must consider the risks of developing a technology to use for good that, with a bit of tweaking, could easily be used for evil. Nanobots could guarantee that we could live for a very long time, but, like with all technologies, if nanobots fell into the wrong hands, all of humanity could be in danger.

Imagine a time when a bioterrorism attack could be completely successful because the terrorists have programmed nanobots to deliver poison that avoids the body’s defenses and but to not attack the terrorists. Imagine that nanobots became so advanced that they could self-replicate until they formed an elite army of super humans that could take over the world. Imagine that scientists engineer nanobots as lethal weapons or that doctors could harvest and spread disease with nanobots instead of preventing and curing disease. And again, although these may sound like the wildest dreams of science fiction novelists, the development of advanced nanotechnology opens the door to these ominous possibilities.

One could debate about the ethical use of nanotechnology for days. The issue with nanotechnology is that its development cannot simply be either beneficial or detrimental to
humans. If the issue was that black and white, the answer for whether or not it should be made and used would be easy. Like all technology, nanotechnology’s main problem is that it is being manufactured by human beings who have demonstrated infinite capabilities for both good and
evil. Some would argue that doctors need the ability to cure people’s cancer, while others would be adamant that rogue nations should not have access to technology that could wipe out an entire country. As Sherri Chasin Calvo, a freelance science writer specializing in genetics has stated, “nanotechnology can be a double-edged sword”.

Taking both the advantages and disadvantages of nanotechnology into mind, I believe, that the advantages of nanotechnology in medicine are numerous enough to outweigh the disadvantages if the proper procedural steps are taken and the rules are enforced. Completely halting the nanotechnology would be unreasonable because technological development would be at a standstill with no onward movement. Also, abstaining from further research and work on nanotechnology in the United States, for instance, would not guarantee that other countries will not continue development of nanobots now or in the future. Giving scientists the freedom to work freely with nanotechnology, however, is not an ideal solution either. Instead, regulatory policies and guidelines should be made and enforced to effectively prohibit the abuse of nanobots’ abilities and the possible negative effects on humanity.

Guidelines for nanotechnology development would hopefully prevent the nanobots from becoming a threat to the public. Ideally, the designers of the nanobots would make certain that the nanobots could not self-replicate or be susceptible to changes in their blueprint ensuring the
nanobots could only perform the job they were meant to do. These policies and guidelines, however, will not be easy to establish and enforce. Obtaining absolute cooperation from every
government in the world will be difficult as will the hiring enforcers to see that international laws are followed. Because nanotechnology applies to other fields beside medicine, regulations will
have to be formed specifically to each field. Despite these obstacles and given the benefits of the technology, I believe that nanotechnology policies and regulations should be established so that research and development can continue on.

New technology always faces ethical dilemmas. I find that as someone who may require medical care in the future or may know someone else in dire need of medicine, the potential that nanotechnology offers to the field of medicine is difficult to deny. The establishment of safety policies and guidelines, though a not an easy endeavor, is not an unreasonable or impossible to carry out. With these policies and guidelines firmly in place, I see no reason why we cannot reap the benefits nanotechnology gives us and remain confident of its safe use and application.

Jamais Cascio, author of “Get Smarter”, describes the human race is an evolving and intelligent species with the ability to use technology for our benefit. Cascio also writes about our “co-evolution” with technology. If nanotechnology is the next step in the evolutionary process for technology and we discontinue its development, can we continue to evolve as a species? Another point Cascio makes is that “with augmented intelligence, we will have a far greater appreciation for the consequences of our actions”. Perhaps with this new appreciation, all of society will want to use nanotechnology for its benefits despite other possible uses. In the end, we must rely on own species and our own choices, for while nanotechnology may be the sword, it will be the human beings who decide which way to swing the blade.