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"Legal Problems of Nanotechnology: An Overview"
by Frederick A. Fiedler and Glenn Reynolds,
Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal,
Volume 3, Number 2, pp. 593-629.
This law article is the first substantive discussion of legal
issues in nanotechnology to appear in a law journal. Feidler
and Reynolds break new ground exploring both the modest and
the more extreme applications of nanotechnology, particularly
to medicine.
The article discusses both positive and negative
applications, and both the benefits and risks of regulation.
This last point - the risks of regulation - is made vivid
through the example of the unexpected effects of "the
British Explosives Act of 1875, which forbade all private
rocketry experimentation," and which "caused
British rocketry enthusiasts to fall behind others - like
American Robert Goddard and the German Wernher von Braun -
with dramatic results."
Includes a clear layman's explanation of nanotechnology. This
article is understandable for those outside the legal
profession as well as those within.
- Chris
Peterson, foresight@foresight.org
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