Good Is Never Sexier than Bad

The major press was all over a study that came out a couple weeks ago observing carbon nanotubes and C60 buckyballs (or fullerenes) to have potential carcinogenic pathologies.

But this week, a major story was released showing that, although engineered nanomaterials can be transferred up the lowest levels of the food chain from single-celled organisms to higher, multicelled ones, the amount transferred was relatively low, and there was no evidence of the nanomaterials concentrating in the higher-level organisms. But in the mainstream media, that coverage was, well, MIA.

Fear and greed sell, not facts. Once again, it’s the curse of marketing over science—unless you’re talking about psychology over chemistry, I guess.

My theory is more people loved to be scared by the unknown than to explore it and learn from it. Granted, that approach likely has a great deal of merit when attempting to keep you and your tribe alive. And natural selection likely gives a nod to the safety seekers over the curious.

But fire wasn’t tamed by the handwringers. And exploring the boundaries of science isn’t for the meek.

I guess the underlying issue is, most people—especially those who don’t don lab coats to go to work—don’t like change and find it somewhat foreboding to have to learn a new skill set and wrap their busy minds around a whole new concept.

But that’s only if it’s a vague concept. siRNA inhibitors are boring unless you know they can cure cancer. Nanotech is weird unless it makes computers faster or makes iPods—or kills you.

I talked to green builder and local solar power proponent who, when I mentioned I cover nanotech, said “Oh yeah, I just read that story how those nanotubes can kill you.” Score one for our nonscience-based media.

First of all, the study saw more issues with buckyballs than carbon nanotubes. Second, the study was so preliminary relative to the issues with which it’s grappling that it’s going to take 20 more studies to prove or disprove these initial observations.

All it means, even if it’s really true, is the production facilities need to be monitored (which is already being done) and the end products may not be able to have biological applications. But that doesn’t exclude deposition technologies or other nonbiological applications. Plus, there are plenty of other nanotubes not fashioned from carbon.

What’s more, this new, underreported and somewhat conflicting study demonstrates the need to look at this burgeoning field scientifically and not emotionally. If we decide to let our fears paralyze us from exploiting the opportunities of nanotechnology in a few decades, we’ll look like an underdeveloped tribe compared to the expanding knowledge and stature of countries who are aggressively dealing with the scientific, ethical and societal challenges that come with such an enormously transcendent technology as nanotech.

But they’re following the science, not their fears.

Speaking Engagements

My colleagues at KCI Communications Inc., Neil George, Roger Conrad and Elliott Gue, will be heading west Aug. 7-10, 2008, to attend the San Francisco Money Show, where they’ll discuss infrastructure, partnerships, utilities, resources and energy, and tell you what to buy and what to sell in 2008.

Click here or call 800-970-4355 and refer to priority code 011470 to attend as their guest.