Americans Reject Morality of Nanotechnology on Religious Grounds

Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences, and a colleague found in their study that only 29.5 percent of respondents from a sample of 1,015 adult Americans agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.

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In the United Kingdom, 54.1 percent found nanotechnology to be morally acceptable. In Germany, 62.7 percent accepted nanotechnology on moral grounds. That percentage climbed higher in France where 72.1 percent of survey respondents expressed no moral qualms about the technology.

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According to Scheufele, Americans with strong religious convictions lump together nanotechnology, biotechnology and stem cell research as means to enhance human qualities. Researchers are viewed as "playing God" when they create materials that do not occur in nature, especially where nanotechnology and biotechnology intertwine, he said.

Christian Post, Feb. 18 2008