The Goals and Funding of ELSI under the NNI

  Debra Bennett-Woods
  Regis University

The recent International Congress of Nanotechnology 2005, held in San Francisco, provided an eclectic collection of presentations ranging from nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, and nanomedicine to a single track that combined "ethics, societal, legal and environmental" issues. The content of this last track is what has come to be referred to as ELSI or ethical, legal, and societal implications. The origins of the acronym ELSI can be traced to the Human Genome Project and its effort to integrate scientific discovery with an ongoing dialogue of the meaning and potential impact of new knowledge and its applications. The outcome of ELSI in the greater scheme of human genetics research is debatable, leaving us with ever more complex questions to address and no clear answers. The potential impacts of nanotechnology and its interface with other emerging technologies are equally significant, and the need for work in this area is widely acknowledged.

While it is heartening that an ELSI track was deliberately included and promoted at this international conference, the attendees of this track largely represented "the choir" in terms of any preaching that might be going on. What's more, the overriding feeling an observer must come away with is that the technology is simply moving in a much faster and more coordinated manner than any accompanying consideration of the broader societal impacts, despite genuine interest and many good efforts on the part of those members of the social sciences, humanities and even the nano-related sciences and engineering, who are engaged in ELSI activities.

The recently released report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology provides an overview of progress in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).ⁱ With respect to societal concerns, the report concludes that the current level of funding, estimated at 8% of the total NNI budget for 2006, is adequate to the task. In 2006, 8% of the NNI budget amounts to $82 million, a substantial commitment to be sure. However, consider the scope of where that money is to be spent.

According to the NNI website, approximately $39 million will be earmarked for programs working on environmental, health, and safety research and development. The remaining $43 million is split between education-related activities targeted at workforce development, as well as public understanding and acceptance, and research on the broad implications of nanotechnology for society, including economic impacts, barriers to adoption, and "ethical issues in the selection of research priorities and applications."

This is a staggering range of content, much of which lacks any explicit definition, representing an array of academic disciplines. What infrastructure there is for interdisciplinary collaboration is barely beginning to emerge. And there is no effective precedent for the very idea that scientists and engineers should be working collaboratively with the social sciences and humanities to proactively assess societal impacts and ethical implications. Therefore, what is being implied is fundamental change in the culture of science and technology, as well as its relationship to both policy making and public dialogue. Finally, the combined elements of ELSI, as they have been outlined here, are being outspent 9 to 1 by NNI-funded, nano-research and development and an uncalculated additional amount of private-sector investment.

If the opportunities and perils of nanotechnology are real, and we are to adequately prepare to take advantage of the former and avoid the latter, we are likely to fall short unless additional action is taken. The first possibility is to simply increase the funding to give the ELSI researchers a fighting chance. One way to do this would be to roll health, safety, and environmental concerns into the 92% of funding that is creating the technology as part and parcel of the R&D process. A second action should be to recognize the inherent conflict of interest between actively promoting the technology through education and workforce development, and objectively assessing other potential societal impacts. Both activities are necessary but not interchangeable in the mix of funding. Finally, ELSI researchers must rapidly and creatively re-imagine a more open, flexible, responsive, adaptive, and strategic process for assessing risk and opportunity, projecting and measuring impacts and attitudes, and working collaboratively with scientists and engineers. Traditional academic methods are slow, highly discipline-specific, and fragmented. We need our own nano-scale of time in which to respond to the accelerating pace of the emerging technology.

For more on ELSI goals and funding, see the NNI website at http://www.nano.gov/html/society/ELSI.html.

Dr. Deb Bennett-Woods is an associate professor of health care ethics in the Ruckert-Hartman School for Health Professions at Regis University in Denver, Colorado, and she is a Fellow of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society.

¹ President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, The National Nanotechnology Initiative at Five Years: Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory panel, available at http://www.ostp.gov/PCAST/PCASTreportFINALlores.pdf (2005).