Open thread 2007-2008
This open thread is to allow community input on the potential topics for 2007-2008. The main website contains a specific page devoted to these areas. We very much need community input on the direction of these areas and other areas to consider. Please note that anyone can submit an area/controversy paper by March 1, 2007. I would also note that the committee is very interested in considering controversies that have not recently been the subject of policy debate attention.
NANOTECH TOPIC AREA UPDATE
I did not want to rewrite the topic paper, but here is an interesting up date demonstrating that the topic, as a public policy issue, is becoming more and more timely:
Government Considers How To Regulate Nanotech
By Andrew Bridges
October 12, 2006 7:45AM
The key is to use science to weigh both the benefits and the risks of nanotechnology, said Matthew Jaffe of the U.S. Council of International Business. That's a balance the FDA already seeks to strike in assessing other products. "We believe the regulatory process that is in place is significant and adequate to address the issues before the FDA," Jaffe said.
The U.S. government must balance close oversight of the fast-growing field of nanotechnology against the risk of stifling new development, a Food and Drug Administration conference was told Tuesday.
These contrasting views emerged from a host of experts that the agency brought together to how it should regulate products containing tiny particles, some as small as one-millionth the width of the head of a pin.
Increasingly, those submicroscopic particles are being incorporated in the thousands of products overseen by the FDA, including drugs, foods, cosmetics and medical devices.
Those products account for roughly 20 cents of every dollar spent each year by U.S. consumers, giving the FDA a key role in both safeguarding the public and guiding the future development of nanotechnology.
"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 key is to use science to weigh both the benefits and the risks of nanotechnology, said Matthew Jaffe of the U.S. Council of International Business. That's a balance the FDA already seeks to strike in assessing other products.
"We believe the regulatory process that is in place is significant and adequate to address the issues before the FDA," Jaffe said.
Nanotechnology involves the manufacture and manipulation of materials at the molecular or atomic level. At that scale, materials are measured in nanometers or billionths of a meter. Nanoscale materials are generally less than 100 nanometers in diameter. A sheet of paper, in comparison, is 100,000 nanometers thick. A human hair is 80,000 nanometers thick.
The FDA does not 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 safet