Cover Story: The nano spin

The visionaries think it’s the next stage to human evolution. And they’ve sold politicians on it. Can nanotechnology possibly deliver on the hype?



Almost exactly 10 years ago this week, the scientist Eric Drexler testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee about a field he believes could change the world. Scientists, he announced, could now tinker with matter on the nanometer scale — that is, at scales equal to one billionth of a meter. At IBM just three years earlier, researchers had spelled out the company logo using 35 atoms of xenon on a plate of nickel.

As builders, humans have always constructed things from the top down — coal, iron ore and limestone make steel, for example, which is then shaped into toasters and cars and a new set of Ping golf clubs. Nanotechnology imagined a bottom-up philosophy: atoms — billions of them at a time — would be assembled into shapes and unique materials of our choosing. Cheaply. Quickly.

Nanotechnology, Drexler said, is “a fundamentally different way of processing matter to make products that people want.

“If you can work with the basic building blocks of matter, you can make virtually anything, producing a much wider range of products than can be made by processes that lack this direct control of the fundamental pieces.”

In theory, then, a landfill could be converted to crispy KFC. Molecular-sized nanodevices could seek out diseased cells in the body and gobble them up. The effects of aging could be halted, or reversed. The ozone could be replenished. Nanodevices could be our eyes and ears in dangerous places, seeking out anthrax, terrorists, your mother-in-law, whatever.

Drexler’s testimony captivated one of the subcommittee members, Al Gore, who was just months away from becoming vice-president. “I can’t remember a panel that I have found more interesting,” Gore said. “What we have heard today is that there may be new technologies that can alleviate some of these problems — if we find the resources and political will to make the long-term investment needed to develop them and if we work together nationally and internationally to deploy them.”

The media ignored Drexler’s testimony. In his 1995 book Nano, Ed Regis quotes an unnamed editor from Time magazine, who says smugly, “We only cover things that actually happen, not things that are just supposed to happen.”

That dismissive attitude changed quickly. Later that same year, the magazine reported that the “prophets of nanotechnology insist that it may be only a few years before cell-size robots swirl through the body scraping fatty deposits off the walls of blood vessels, supercomputers-on-a-chip reproduce like tiny organisms and steel mills make alloys that metallurgists never dared dream of, atom by atom.”

Time was hardly alone. In the last decade, thousands of stories touting the coming miracle of nanotechnology have been splashed across glossy magazine covers and pages of newspapers. And the hype shows no signs of abating. Just this past February, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter filed a story from Boston, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Developments in nanotechnology, the story said, had created a “growing sense of anticipation in scientific circles.”

According to the story, researchers were indicating that new devices such as atom-sized nanocircuits “might make it possible to develop a generation of nanorobots that could fight disease on a molecular level, biochemical sensors that could detect a single anthrax cell and computer storage devices that could pack the contents of the Library of Congress in the space of a sugar cube.”

That same week in February, President George W. Bush requested that the National Nanotechnology Initiative, a program created in 1999 under Bill Clinton, get a 17 percent funding boost in 2003, to $710 million. He even declared April 29 National Nanotechnology Day. Not quite a national holiday. Not yet, anyway.

In 1992, Drexler predicted that “large-scale” applications of nanotechnology would arrive by 2007. That’s just five years away.

“There has been a good bit of hype,” says Sidney Perkowitz, an Emory physics professor and author. “That image of Drexler’s of little buzz saws clearing out the cholesterol in your blood vessels is so gripping that you almost can’t resist it. But maybe in a way, it’s unfortunate because that gave rise to this whole set of expectations. But in the last year or so, I don’t hear Drexler’s name so much anymore, and instead, you see real things happening.”

Some of those developments are happening in Atlanta, specifically at universities such as Georgia Tech and Emory. But like any science, progress is measured in slow, halting steps. Anyone who signed on to Drexler’s utopian visions may have a long wait ahead.

The only thing really new about nanotechnology is its name. Sunscreen, on the market for decades, depends on nanoparticles to block the sun’s rays. Your car’s catalytic converter uses a metal oxide coating just nanometers thick to help convert carbon monoxide and other pollutants into nitrogen, water and carbon dioxide. Similarly, a company in Pittsburgh, PPG Industries, sells glass coated with titanium dioxide, a whitening agent also found in toothpaste and paint. The metal reacts with the sun’s rays to break down dirt and, when it rains, the water slides down the glass in a clear sheet instead of forming droplets.

But all these developments were still years away when Richard Feynman, one of the physicists behind the atomic bomb, gave a speech in 1959 that challenged scientists to think small.

In an amazingly prescient address, Feynman described nanotechnology without naming it: the idea that whole libraries’ worth of information could be stored on a computer disk, that computers would one day become tiny, that devices could be constructed on the molecular level that could cure disease, that minerals and objects might be built from the atom up.

At the time, computers still used vacuum tubes and took up whole warehouses. By 1986, though, scientific advances inspired Drexler, an MIT-educated scientist, to publish Engines of Creation, an immensely readable book that gave wide voice to the potential benefits and dangers of nanotechnology.

Drexler paints a rosy picture: “It should be no great trick, for example, to make everything from dishes to carpets self-cleaning, and household air permanently fresh. For properly designed nanomachines, dirt would be food. ... Advanced technologies will make possible a whole world of products that make modern conveniences seem inconvenient and dangerous. Why shouldn’t objects be light, flexible, durable and cooperative? Why shouldn’t walls look like whatever we want, and transmit only the sounds we want to hear? And why should buildings and cars ever crush or roast their occupants? For those who wish, the environment of daily life can resemble some of the wilder descriptions found in science fiction.”

In the years since, despite skeptical scientists who claim the laws of physics make Drexler’s dreams an impossibility, his beliefs haven’t wavered. To Drexler, even death seems surmountable. Last September in Scientific American magazine, he posited that one of nanotechnology’s medical applications would be the “eventual ability to repair and revive those few pioneers now in suspended animation (currently regarded as legally deceased).”

Drexler has hosted conferences, published papers and lobbied Congress. He founded the Foresight Group, a group devoted to “guiding emerging technologies to improve the human condition.”

Indeed, believers say nano will mean not a revolution in science, but an evolution of mankind. With nanodevices building whatever we need from the ground up, famine will end. So will environmental degradation. So will the need for money, or jobs. The technology will be that cheap.

“What makes nanotech different than nuclear power and computer science and all the other waves of stuff in the past is that [nano] was a revolution that’s always had an intellectual agenda,” says Paul Saffo, a director of the Institute for the Future, a long-term forecasting firm in California. “Among the original nanotech people, there was a very strong extropian culture. Extropians believe in a technologically enabled, unbounded future. There’s a subtext of Ayn Rand-ism, of having all their wishes come true.”

Essential to making some of the more outrageous dreams possible — at least the ones that’ll allow you to quit your day job and take up professional hammocking — is the development of an “assembler.” If, say, you want to make a steak without killing a cow, you’ll need trillions of assemblers — atom-sized devices that will build copies of themselves, and will in turn convert raw materials — grass, water, the stuff cows eat — into meat.

Scientists argue whether an assembler is even possible, given the laws of nature. Right now, the current nano research uses existing materials, such as metals and molecules.

Nano experiments have resulted in stronger steels that weigh less than conventional metals. Last month, IBM announced that it fashioned a transistor out of carbon nanotubes. Transistors, the switches used in computers to control the flow of electrons, now are made of silicon. But IBM says the one it constructed from nanotubes — a cylinder of carbon atoms that is extremely flexible and strong — is faster than the silicon-based transistors.

Still, Drexler waits for the day when a scientist will build an artificial assembler — a tiny robot that will pluck atoms from a pile and build something we can see. His group, Foresight, is even offering a $250,000 prize, named after Feynman, to the first person who can build a 100 nanometer robot arm, which would be a crucial first step in creating the first assembler.

“If you can win that prize, you’re close to being done with the whole job,” says Christine Peterson, president of Foresight. “This was deliberately set up to be difficult.”

The scientists on the front lines are skeptical.

“An assembler will require some molecular scale intelligence,” says Shuming Nie, an adjunct professor of molecular biology at Emory. “I’m not betting my career on that type of thing.”

Mostafa El-Sayed, who studies the properties of nanoparticles at Georgia Tech, smiles.

“The surface of these small particles is so unstable. How do we stabilize them? We have to develop the theoretical tools. There is a lot of science. Nothing is impossible. The question is, how can I live in this small world and work with it?”

Gang Bao’s work represents both the potential and the problems with nanotechnology. A mathematician by training, Bao is a soft-spoken academic who for eight years taught at Johns Hopkins University and worked on Department of Defense contracts, helping to design stronger materials for fighter plane engines.

But several years ago, after four of his post-doctorate advisers were diagnosed with cancer, Bao made a career change. He took a year’s sabbatical and learned molecular biology, which is to say he read textbooks that could double as doorstops.

“The DOD work is important for defense, but you don’t really see the end product,” says Bao, who came to Georgia Tech in 1999 as an associate professor of biomedical engineering. “But in biomedical research, you know that if what you develop, if that works, you can really save lives.”

In one sense, Bao’s visions are almost Drexlerian. He works with molecular beacons, specially engineered to release a fluorescent signal when they encounter tumor markers within cancer cells. He imagines the beacons zooming through the bloodstream toward the cancer cells. Once it shows up at the cancer cell’s door, the beacon not only signals that it’s found a target, but it takes out the target. It would work like a smart bomb, killing only the cancer cell and leaving the healthy ones untouched. Chemotherapy would be obsolete. Even cancer itself could be nothing more than an annoyance that’s quickly taken care of.

The question, of course, is when. Bao is making tremendous, essential strides, but he’s a bit like the Wright Brothers tinkering with the first plane; space travel is decades down the road.

The real test of Bao’s work will come during clinical studies, which could be years away. In the meantime, the molecular beacons he’s working with must do four things in the lab first — deliver the beacons to the cell, target the cancer cells, signal that the target has been spotted, and, finally, destroy the cancer cell.

So far, Bao’s team has found ways in the lab to target the cancer cells and release the fluorescence. But even that needs refining. Bao must ensure the beacons don’t glow when they encounter a healthy cell. And right now, Bao and his team inject the beacons directly into the cells in the lab; human applications would likely require the nanoprobes seek out and enter only those cells that are cancerous. Finally, researchers have to figure out a way to deliver the beacons deep into human tissue, and also propel them through the bloodstream.

“Let’s say you make a nanomachine,” Bao says. “There’s a lot of moving parts. How do you drive that? Now, I don’t think you can use batteries. A battery would be huge compared to a nanodevice. In my view, in order to drive those devices, we need to use bio-motors.”

Bao believes the beacons could be propelled by absorbing energy from the body’s own enzymes. But that, too, is research that lies ahead.

Working in concert with Bao is Nie, the Emory professor who also last September was named by Gov. Roy Barnes as one of the Georgia Cancer Coalition’s first distinguished cancer scientists. Nie has injected nanoparticles into mice, just to see how the animals react.

“They take these things very efficiently,” Nie says of the mice. “For example, we inject some of these in a tail of a rat and we find these particles [end up] in the spinal cord of the rat, and the brain. So they move around. They move around very efficiently within the body. We also injected high dosages into the animal, a very high concentration, about 100 or 1,000 times more than what you would normally use. We thought it would kill the animal. So far, the animal is very healthy. Everything’s fine.”

In a few weeks, Nie says, the animal will be sacrificed so researchers can determine where in the body the nanoparticles accumulated.

Nie also is working on ways to use nanoparticles to identify different protein and nucleic acid sequences in the body. In that way, you could have your blood tested to determine what drugs — and in what amounts — would work best for different ailments. Prescriptions would be tailor-made, taking the guesswork out of dispensing medicine.

While that may sound like a luxury, it could be a life-saving development when treating patients where the wrong drug can be deadly.

Perhaps the optimal application of both Bao and Nie’s work would come in the field of preventive medicine. Diseases could be caught early. Treatments could be custom-designed. But knowledge isn’t always a good thing. Imagine what insurance providers would do to get their hands on that information. Your molecular profile shows early signs of ovarian cancer? Sorry, ma’am. Coverage denied.

In fact, the ethics of nanotechnology have already brought out the worriers. No less a technological wizard than Bill Joy, who co-founded Sun Microsystems, wrote a passionate essay in Wired magazine in 1999, arguing that research into robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology was leading humankind down a perilous path. Unlike nuclear bomb-building, which requires hard-to-get raw materials, one small group or just one person could imperil humanity with just knowledge and a few props.

“Robots, engineered organisms and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate,” Joy wrote. “A bomb is blown up only once — but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.”

Joy was referring to the “gray goo problem,” perhaps one of the more benign euphemisms ever coined for the end of the world. The worry is that assemblers could run amok and, as Drexler himself writes, “replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days.”

Suitably alarmed at such apocalyptic scenarios, Joy called for a relinquishment of such technologies. In one interview, Joy told The Washington Post, “I’m sorry, but there are certain technologies so terrible that you must say no. We have to stop some research. It’s one strike and you’re out.” (Asked by e-mail to comment for this article, Joy responded he was in a “blackout” while he finished his book.)

Predictably, the science community blanched at the prospect.

“Bill Joy — I mean, oh God, that piece — it’s a piece that cast things in entirely too black and white,” Saffo says.

As far as relinquishing is concerned, Peterson says, “it’s not going to happen. The military is not going to relinquish nanotechnology. How anybody could not understand that is beyond me.”

Still, Joy’s essay prompted the National Science Foundation to host a conference in the fall of 2000 to discuss the “societal implications of nanoscience and nanotechnology.” Over two days, testimony was heard from dozens of scientists, business leaders and even nano fan Newt Gingrich.

The attitude of most scientists regarding the concerns posed by Joy was perhaps summed up best by Dr. William Tolles, former associate director of research for strategic planning at the Naval Research Laboratory.

Said Tolles: “‘Visionaries’ who have never performed experiments have nevertheless constructed scenarios raising highly questionable possibilities. Due to a lack of contact with reality, they envision a world in which ideal ‘machines’ assemble atomically perfect systems having surprisingly ‘smart’ capabilities. These systems are ostensibly not only capable of reproducing themselves, but are intelligent, and may be constructed to cause harm to the environment or living species. There seems little doubt that such systems are figments of imagination by very creative minds, and are nearly impossible based on the laws of physics, thermodynamics or other laws of nature, as we understand them.”

Better off to worry about the perils that are closer at hand.

“You want something to worry about?” asks Perkowitz, the Emory physics professor. “Say I make a brain chip that is wonderful for you. Maybe unfortunately, you’re a paraplegic and the brain chip lets you do something really great. What if I hack into your brain chip? Could an evil human get control of people that way?”

Similarly, Bao says the real ethical questions aren’t the hypotheticals that may never come up, but the very real possibility that nanodevices used in the body could backfire.

“It is an issue, because if we want to use some of these nanostructures in the body, you definitely need to think about other issues,” he says. “There’s no guarantee they will not get into the brain and change the behavior of the linkage of the neurons. That may change the behavior of the person.

“If a guy all the sudden wanted to kill a person, that guy can claim it was not really him. How could you answer these questions? There would be issues, definitely.”??