Minority Statement

• Ted Stevens

  Senator
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  Minority Statement

  Ted Stevens

  Nanotechnology is a fascinating and revolutionary in many ways, and it has the potential to change and improve our lives.

   

  I think that we all think about it from the golf course to the emergency room, nanoscience is developing novel materials, devices, and systems that are opening up new avenues of science.  Engineering controlling matter at sizes one one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair creates really an interest in the public and everyone concerned with it.  I think that is such an amazing new area that is just plain fascinating to me

   

  As nanotechnology evolves, safety becomes a topic of great interest.  I think there appears to be very little evidence, so far, that nanotechnology is creating any serious dangers to our nation or is unsafe.  On the contrary, I’m told medicine has made use of nanoparticles for at least 25 years without incident.  Therapeutic medicines and magnetic resonance imaging tests already employ nanotechnology and have not revealed any demonstrably negative impacts on human health. 

   

  In the absence of that I hope that Congress and the federal government will not as administrators or policy makers overestimate our role and we will conduct ourselves in a way to support the research and avoid imposing additional regulatory regimes on this developing field of science unless we are convinced additional regulation is warranted.

   

Testimony

• The Honorable Richard M. Russell

  Associate Director and Deputy Director for Technology

  Executive Office of the President
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• Mr. Robert A. Robinson

  Managing Director, Natural Resources and Environment Team

  U.S. Government Accountability Office
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Witness Panel 2

• Mr. Matthew M. Nordan

  President

  Lux Research Incorporated
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• Mr. David Rejeski

  Director, Foresight and Governance Project and Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies

  Woodrow Wilson Center
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• Dr. P. Lee Ferguson

  Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

  University of South Carolina
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• Dr. Anita Goel MD, PhD

  Chairman, CEO, and Scientific Director

  Nanobiosym Incorporated
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• Dr. Jim Heath

  Director

  NSB Cancer Center
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