Citizens' jury to weigh up the case for nanotechnology

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Citizens' jury to weigh up the case for nanotechnology

Greenpeace and scientists at Cambridge University have launched a public debate on nanotechnology, the science of the vanishingly small.

The debate, taking the form of a five-week citizens' jury, was set up amid fears that without public consultation nanotechnology could suffer a backlash similar to that over genetically modified food.

Nanotechnology concerns materials measuring just billionths of a metre and was first muted as a serious proposition by the Nobel prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman. Advocates see the technology as a route to powerful drugs and "nanomachines", though others fear such molecule-sized machines could self-replicate out of control causing environmental disaster.