Greenpeace's report is correct when it asserts that "some new materials may constitute new classes of non-biodegradable pollutant about which we have little understanding," and that "little work has been done to ascertain the possible effects of nanomaterials on the living systems, or the possibility that nanoparticles could slip past the human immune system."

Nanotech researchers will be the first people to admit this, and at institutes like the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology at Rice University, they're eagerly learning the answers to these important questions. If they discover that horrible things happen to the body when nanomaterials are introduced, yet these materials are still placed on the market without consumers' informed consent, then I'll be right there alongside Greenpeace in demanding their removal. In the meantime, let the discovery process continue.

The Greenpeace report does establish a good framework for the debate over societal implications to nanotechnology, especially when it poses important questions that we all should be asking. Among them: "Who is in control? Where do the benefits fall? Who takes responsibility for resulting problems?"

But Greenpeace's implied answers to these questions again can be applied to the old GM foods battlefield, but not universally to nanotechnology.

"Who is in control?" Well, right now, consumers are. They decide what they'll buy, thus influencing what investors will pay to develop. Genetically modified foods, in contrast, were in many cases thrust on consumers without their informed consent. The report contrasts this with the mobile phone industry, where consumers gladly ignored the unknown risks associated with them in favor of the convenience they provided. Mobile phone buyers know what they're doing, know that there is a shortage of research on their long-term health effects, and went ahead and supported the industry, anyway. A cabal of elite companies did not force feed it on anybody.

Where do the benefits fall? That's a political question that has no correct answer. If you believe that it's a bad thing for small companies to become so successful at selling to consumers that they turn into big companies, then you've already answered the question before it's even asked.

Who takes responsibility for resulting problems? I'll translate this question for you: "Who should the angry mob blame when the technology is perceived to have gone awry?"

Throughout the report, a distinction is drawn between "science" and "society," without any definition of who or what those entities are, leaving us with the assumption that they are inherently at odds, rather than enjoy a symbiotic relationship - one influencing the other through changing consumer habits, varying states of war and peace and the pace of scientific discovery. When Greenpeace talks of a possible "dystopian future" where "the shift of the control of nanotechnology" turns toward "military needs," it dismisses the well-established give-and-take relationship between military and consumer technology.