FDA Gets Mixed Advice on Nanotechnology 54
mikesd81 writes, "There's an article at the Associated Press about how the government must balance close oversight of the fast-growing field of nanotechnology against the risk of stifling new development. Contrasting view came from a panel of experts brought together to discuss how nanotechnology should be regulated. The article states that submicroscopic particles are being incorporated in the thousands of products overseen by the FDA, including drugs, foods, cosmetics and medical devices and the products consist of roughly 20% of each dollar spent by U.S. consumers. Matthew Jaffe of the U.S. Council of International Business says, "The key is to use science to weigh both the benefits and the risks of nanotechnology. That's a balance the FDA already seeks to strike in assessing other products." From the article: "'The success of nanotechnology will rely in large part on how FDA plays its regulatory role,' said Michael Taylor of the University of Maryland's School of Public Health. The FDA doesn't believe nanotechnology is inherently unsafe, but does acknowledge that materials at the nano scale can pose different safety issues than do things that are far larger. 'The FDA wants to learn of new and emerging science issues related to nanotechnology, especially in regard to safety,' said Randall Lutter, the agency's associate commissioner."
Re:20% seems high (Score:3, Informative)
2. You're not an old person, probably, so you don't take lots of drugs. But many do.
3. You're not a drug addict, probably, so you don't take lots of drugs. But many do.
Add up the above and you easily get 20%.
Re:20% seems high (Score:2, Informative)
I think the amount might be higher than you think.
Here's something worth reading (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.foresight.org/UTF/Unbound_LBW/index.ht
Hey FDA... Resistance is futile! (Score:4, Informative)
Nanotech Nonsense (Score:3, Informative)
Know how long a typical C-C bond in an organic molecule is? Hint: try wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. It doesn't take very many atoms to make a single molecule a "nanoparticle!"
My fellow chemists and I have been doing nanotech for years - that is what the FDA has spent all its existence reviewing! I have the utmost respect for those working on new engineered materials, etc., and am perfectly willing to let them call themselves "nanoengineers" instead of the older "material scientists" if it helps them get elusive grant money, but we can't start regulating gold nanoparticles or quantum dots any differently than we would, say, cisplatin [wikipedia.org].
There simply isn't any fundamentally different science going on in nanotechnology that isn't already present (albeit perhaps in a previously esoteric realm) in chemistry, materials science, or solid-state physics.
Online references defining Nanotechnology (Score:4, Informative)
That's very true. I'll stick with the definitions given by the founder of the field (ie. Drexler), as it's less subject to commercial and political manipulation. Much of the defining material is freely available online, for anyone who wants their information from the horse's mouth.
First of all there's the online version of Eric Drexler's extremely seminal Engines of Creation [e-drexler.com]. It's a fantastic read, even after all these years.
(The online version of EoC used to be maintained at the Foresight Institute, but it's now kept by Drexler himself above. His whole site is a great resource of course, so clear out the tail of the URL and have a look around.)
Then there's the online version of the popular Unbounding the Future [foresight.org], an easily readable and slightly updated introduction to nanotechnology for everyone, although somehow I find it lacks the charm of Engines of Creation.
But nothing beats his textbook Nanosystems [amazon.com] though. This book is a 150% must-have for anyone with a strong interest in nanotechnology, because even if you cannot follow the detailed science and mathematics, the diagrams and tables alone justify the cost.
Unfortunately the online version of Nanosystems [foresight.org] is still at a very early stage, and is not really useful except as an online table of contents. Buy the textbook, you won't regret it.
nanoparticles behave differently than non-nano. (Score:3, Informative)
There's nothing inherently dangerous about nano-particles, just like there's nothing inherently dangerous about chemicals. It's simply the fact that nano-scale implementations of old substances haven't been tested, and behave differently. Why is that so difficult for some people to understand?