Brad Miller: “Mr. Chairman, I rise also in support of the Bell amendment. The potential benefit of nanotechnology is truly astounding…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise also in support of the Bell amendment. The potential benefit of nanotechnology is truly astounding, but there are also potential harmful consequences. I come from a part of the country where a century ago we imported an ornamental Japanese groundcover, kudzu. It was thought to help prevent soil erosion. Now 7 million acres of the South is covered with kudzu. It covers crops, forests, houses, barns. Many of us suspect that we have lost slow-moving relatives to the kudzu. We are now talking about manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular level. I want to make sure we are not turning loose upon the world a molecular, atomic kudzu. We do not know how manipulated particles, atoms and molecules, will interact with the environment, particularly human tissue. And we do not know if self-replicating molecules and atoms will know when to stop replicating. Mr. Chairman, I hope that all of these concerns will prove to be overblown, and we will look back in 30 years and think of this the way we now think about the concerns about the astronauts bringing back Moon germs from the Moon. But we certainly have plenty of examples of things that we should have worried about and we did not worry about. It includes concerns about toxicity, the toxicity of manipulated molecules and atoms, and the effects on the environment.”