Policing Science: Genetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics

The paper opens with the question raised by Grundmann and Stehr, as to whether “knowledge policy” may include “the aim of limiting, directing into certain paths, or forbidding the application and further development of knowledge”. It then explores this theme with reference to contemporary developments in biotechnology and nanotechnology, where the objective of knowledge is to enable us to create and modify at will biological entities (including humans and combined species known as “chimeras”), as well as self-assembling mechanical entities, ab initio through recombinant DNA techniques. I argue that a new category of risks is created by the promised technological applications of these forms of knowledge, called “moral risks”, which threatens the ethical basis of human civilization; these are also “catastrophic risks”, in that their negative and evil aspects are virtually unlimited. The paper asks whether our institutional structures, including international conventions, are robust enough to be able to contain such risks within acceptable limits; or alternatively whether these risks themselves should be regarded as unacceptable, a position which would impel us to seek to forbid individuals and nations from acquiring and disseminating the knowledge upon which those technologies are based.