Peterson, Christine

Testimony on Nanotechnologies

Along with Ray Kurzweil, Vicki Colvin, and Langdon Winner, Peterson served as an expert witness on April 9, 2003, testifying on the societal implications of nanotechnologies at the Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives Hearing held to consider the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. During her testimony, Peterson differentiated between what she called near-term nanotechnology, such as nanoparticles, and advanced nanotechnology, such as molecular manufacturing (also referred to as molecular nanotechnology). She outlined the goals, benefits, and risks associated with molecular nanotechnology, defining molecular manufacturing as factories operating at the nanoscale and referring to Drexler's 1981 seminal publication on nanotechnology. She highlighted benefits of molecular manufacturing to include medical and environmental advances, increasing living standards, and lowering the cost of manufacturing.

Christine Peterson is vice president of the Foresight Institute and frequently lectures on nanotechnology.

Peterson also highlighted the following potential negative effects of molecular manufacturing: accidents, economic disruption, lack of access, and intentional abuse such as terrorism. She offered a solution to each of the above problems, including, implementing safety rules, educating and training a new workforce, using an open source approach to sharing intellectual property, and having an open international research and development (R&D) program on molecular nanotechnology that included arms control verification. Peterson argued for the need for a U.S. federal decision to pursue molecular nanotechnology and to allocate substantial funding to do so. She said that these actions were blocked by the lack of agreement regarding whether molecular nanotechnology was technically feasible. The debate over the technical feasibility of molecular nanotechnology was publicized in a series of open letters between Drexler [Page 620]and Rice University physicist Richard Smalley in 2003 in Chemical Engineering News. In closing her testimony, Peterson called for a feasibility review in which both sides of the debate could present their cases to a panel of unbiased scientists.

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