News Archive: 1995 Letter to Nature
Preparing for
nanotechnology
Dr. Fahy wrote the following letter to Nature,
which is reprinted here with his kind permission, in response to
a book review published in Nature. Background information to this
letter.
Gregory M. Fahy, Ph.D. Box 2517 Gaithersburg, MD 20886
5/9/95
Sir --
David E. H. Jones' review of Ed Regis' popular book on
molecular nanotechnology (Nature 374, 835-837); 1995) was
largely devoted to demolishing a straw man. If Jones had
actually read the technical literature he chose to criticize
so extensively rather than criticizing an impression of this
literature obtained from the popular account, he would not
have made the embarrassing error of criticizing
misconceptions that do not exist. It is symptomatic that he
is unable even to identify Drexler's correct affiliation. The
answers to his criticisms are found, among other places, in
Drexler's book, Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery,
Manufacturing, and Computation (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
1992). If this is not sufficient, he might want to consult
with some of the Nobel laureates who have been working on or
otherwise supporting this area.
Unfortunately, Jones has gotten the impression that
molecular nanotechnology necessarily involves reducing
"a chunk of raw material into its component atoms"
for later manipulation of the single atoms "like so many
marbles." He fails to understand that living systems
attain atomic specificity in their molecular products without
such heroic measures, and that this is why Regis has
emphasized the parallel between life and molecular
nanotechnology that Jones erroneously dismisses. Jones'
further argument that "the chemistry of life centres on
some highly specialized organic chemicals" ignores
information processing by non-organic computers as well as
demonstrated examples of self-replicating chemicals other
than DNA and RNA
Jones' notion that molecular nanotechnologists have
overlooked Maxwell's Demon amidst their cogs and bearings
suggests that the scientists and engineers working on
molecular nanotechnology are fools. This is an error.
Jones concludes that "nanotechnology need not be
taken seriously." Yet virtually every current issue of
Nature(including the issue in which Jones' review appeared)
contains articles describing successful engineering and
occasionally even successful device fabrication on the
molecular level, and, as Nature has chronicled, the Japanese
government has devoted major resources to creating the
technology that Jones dismisses. Like it or not, this
relentless technical progress and relentless international
competition have significant implications for the future, and
these implications deserve serious attention. Perhaps future
critics of molecular nanotechnology will at least acknowledge
that the limits of molecular engineering are a proper subject
of study.
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