Among those who have put energy and careful scrutiny into ethical issues in nanotechnology the group at the University of South Carolina really stands out as not only the most rigorous but the most productive. The group of 20 is run by philosopher Davis Baird, and is the subject of this article in SmallTimes. Baird’s group, though, has assiduously avoided using the moniker “bioethics” and in fact has advanced a fairly unusual claim: better to use humanists up front than ethicists at the back end. He testified to the Senate this way:

We have a real opportunity here. Instead of calling on ethicists to patch things up as best as they can after the fact, if we start now, bringing social scientists and humanists to the table, our understanding of the social and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology can co-evolve with the technology itself. This will make for better, more socially responsive work in nanotechnology, and for fewer problems to patch up later. Nanotechnology can avoid the fate most recently of genetically modified organisms.