Human Values and Nanotechnology

  Michele Mekel, J.D., M.B.A., M.H.A., Associate Director/Legal Fellow
  Center on Nanotechnology and Society

Over the course of the last year, centers and initiatives focused on NELSI (nano's ethical, legal, and societal implications), nanoethics, and nanopolicy have seemingly sprung up everywhere. As a result, a number of different voices on the broad spectrum of NELSI are being heard, NELSI research is yielding preliminary results, and ambitious NELSI studies and education efforts are underway.

But, due to the relative infancy of these NELSI entities, a sense of "community" is lacking. To that end, I recently embarked on an intellectually invigorating and physically exhausting informal NELSI center tour throughout the United States and Canada to meet our peers in person and on their "home turf." Having traveled north and south, and east and west, I am pleased to report that, in the truest traditions of the academy, I was welcomed openly and greeted warmly by fellow NELSI scholars, nanoethicists, and nanopolicy wonks.

Having had a lot of "air time" to reflect between visits, it occurred to me that no two organizations were the same. Each has specific NELSI interests and unique core competencies. Yet, the concerns and challenges faced are nearly identical - ranging from garnering adequate infrastructure funding to engaging a transdisplinary cadre of researchers, and from selecting the most pressing NELSI concerns among so many key issues to engaging all stakeholders in an open, public NELSI dialogue.

As a result, it struck me that now is the time to form a NELSI network among and between our entities. The goals of such a community would be collaboration and creative problem solving - not commiseration. By doing so, not only will the whole be greater than the parts, but the power in numbers will be realized. Diffused, disjointed calls to action may not be heard, but a unified voice - on issues of agreement and common interest - is much more likely to be heeded (and is definitely harder to ignore).

All of us in the NELSI arena call for collaborative discourse and synergistic solution development. We boast that our entities are "boundary-spanning organizations." Thus, we must be prepared to walk the talk, and the first step is working together.

Michele Mekel, J.D., M.B.A., M.H.A., is associate director/legal fellow of the Center on Nanotechnology and Society, and executive director/legal fellow of the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future.