Risk management of nanotechnology is challenged by the enormous uncertainties about the risks, benefits, properties, and future direction of nanotechnology applications. Because of these uncertainties, traditional risk management principles such as acceptable risk, cost-benefit analysis, and...

Two critical questions for the regulatory oversight of nanotechnology are: at what level of government should regulation take place, and what form should regulation take? These questions are intrinsically linked. As to the first, it is widely assumed that national governments are the appropriate...

Profs. Kenneth Abbott, Gary Marchant, and Douglas Sylvester argue that regulation of nanotechnology should be flexible and adaptive; innovative; international; and official. In order to meet these requirements, the authors call for negotiation of an international framework convention on...

With nanotechnology now a major funding priority for governments and industry around the world, devising the manner and timing of regulation presents a challenge. Too much regulation too soon could hinder development of beneficial technologies, while too little regulation too late may allow...

As an international policy issue, nanotechnology (NT) presents a unique set of attributes and poses an extraordinary set of regulatory challenges. Given that NT is a major funding priority for governments and industry groups around the world, it is expected to rapidly evolve and advance,...

This paper represents a very early stage of a collaborative research project on transnational NT regulation. In this project, we seek to apply a multidisciplinary perspective to the question of regulation of nanotechnology (NT). We begin in Section I by considering the nature of NT and some...

In less than a decade, nanotechnology has exploded from a relatively obscure and narrow technical field to a scientific, economic, and public phenomenon. The precipitous emergence of such a broad and significant technology has created an unprecedented opportunity to craft new regulatory or...