As reported in The New York Times, a small group is trying have a big impact on nano technologies. The so-called “Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration” or ETC began distributing an 80-page illustrated manifesto called “The Big Down” a few weeks ago at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This gathering is held annually to coincide with the far more well-heeled World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland. The document distribution in Brazil represents ETC’s most elaborate effort yet to generate alarm among the global network of social, labor and environmental groups about the so-called “Grey Goo threat”. ETC consists of just seven employees at its Winnipeg, Manitoba HQ; Carrboro, N.C.; Mexico City; and Oxford, England; its annual budget of over $500,000 is mostly raised from donors like the Rockefeller Foundation that support third-world development efforts. Leading the group is Pat Roy Mooney who already has a reputation for successfully stirring things up on a small scale. During the 1990’s, he faced down Monsanto and other chemical giants in a public debate over the ethics of creating genetically modified plants whose seeds were sterile. After sucessfully protesting against so-called Terminator Seeds that would require third-world farmers to buy them from multi-national corporations year after year, Mooney and ECT are now taking aim at nanotech. “We are not assuming this is an evil, awful technology,” Mr. Mooney said last week. “I suspect quite a bit can be done that’s useful.” The danger, he said, is that governments and public interest groups do not have enough control over assessing risks and setting priorities for the new technology. Putting Mooney most at odds with the nanotechnology community is his call for a moratorium on research and commercialization until international agreements have been reached on ways to assess and monitor nanotechnology’s risks. In terms of its recommendations, though, ETCs highest priority is not moratoriums, but rather the development of an International Convention for the Evaluation of New Technologies (ICENT). An ICENT would give governments a way to gauge the scientific, social and economic effects of all emerging technologies, ETC argues.
The reception of Mr. Moore’s and ETC’s nanotechnology protest efforts varies. Mihail C. Roco, the head of the United States government’s National Nanotechnology Initiative, dismissed ETC as “nonscientific” and “a group that fights against technology.” Others take the group more seriously. “Making fun of Pat Mooney is not the way to go here,” said Christine Peterson, co-founder and president of the Foresight Institute, nanotechnology’s leading forum for discussion. “This is a sincere, smart man who doesn’t have any trouble with logic.” Kevin D. Ausman of the new Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University, concurs. “ETC is the first nonscientific group to start to address the issue of toxic impact of nanomaterials,” Mr. Ausman said.