Maybe the reporters just really screwed up the reporting here, but ScienceDaily is claiming that a majority of Americans doesn’t think nanotechnology is morally acceptable: “In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.” They go on to say that europeans are more likely to see nanotechnology as morally acceptable (54% in the UK, 62% in Germany, 72% in France). In fact, I’m surprised that those numbers aren’t 100% everywhere. I had no idea nanotechnology was the least bit controversial. The article says that religion is somehow playing a role, and that nanotechnology is tantamount to “playing God”. (A phrase which is thrown around a lot, but I still don’t understand why medicine isn’t “playing God”.) Hopefully, this will fade away like complaints about artificial insemination did (although the Catholic Church apparently still calls it “morally unacceptable” even when it involves married couples).
On a related note, China is planning to expand their nanotechnology research. Meanwhile, the West is being held back by poorly thought-out religious concerns?
If a poll asked if yoyodyne technology was morally acceptable, I’d expect 20% or more to answer ‘no’. (I’d be really curious to see what percent answered ‘Don’t know’, people hate to admit they are uninformed about the latest advances.) There’s a fraction of the population that thinks ‘science has gone too far’, and they’re against it, full stop.
I don’t know if these poll numbers are accurate, but I do think I know why medicine doesn’t involve “playing god”: familiarity. Once people accept that most any medicine or technology is “normal,” they loose their objection to “playing god.” But anything new or shocking must be an affront to the almighty.
I don’t get it either, but I’ve seen it enough to believe that anything new and surprising is considered by many to be immoral on its face.
Assuming that the poll results were reported correctly, I would bet that many of those naysayers do not really know what nanotechnology is and assumed that they were being asked about the moral acceptability of genetic engineering, which does get a lot of religion-based negative treatment.
Maybe it was the “technology” suffix? There seems to be an increasing fear of science and progress in the U.S. these past few years. I agree that most of those polled didn’t know what nanotechnology was. I suspect they were part of that subset of Christians who despise science unless it’s Jesus-flavored pseudoscience, like ID.
Meh,
Put the word “Christian” in front of the word Nanotechnology and watch the poll go in the other direction.
Funny tiny, I wrote about the same thing when I saw it. I was blown away when I saw that article.
kristi and anonomouse, that was very funny….and sadly true.
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