INTERESTING ARTICLE ON THE NANOTECHNOLOGY DEBATE. Excerpt:

The deletion of the molecular manufacturing study came as a major blow to those who hoped the Drexler version of nanotech was on the verge of getting a fair hearing. Several of them took to the Internet to blame the study’s deletion on the NanoBusiness Alliance, the industry organization that represents the companies now engaged in mainstream nanotechnology. In response to the online criticism, F. Mark Modzelewski, the president of the Alliance, wrote an article mocking the “bloggers, Drexlerians, pseudo-pundits, panderers and other denizens of their mom’s basements” who had developed “an elaborate fantasy about how molecular manufacturing research work was pulled from the bill by some devious cabal.” In fact, another NanoBusiness Alliance official had already admitted to a reporter that the Alliance had approached the staff of Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to have the study removed from the legislation. . . .

Very few technologies have been as feared in advance as nanotechnology has been. If Mark Modzelewski and Richard Smalley really think Drexler’s ideas are just frightening fantasies, then they should quit the name-calling and welcome the chance to disprove those ideas. The government’s feasibility study of molecular manufacturing should be reinstated, and the matter should be put to rest once and for all. If Drexler’s ideas can be proven definitively wrong, then we can relax in our comfortable nano-pants. But if Drexler is correct, there is much work to be done. If the stakes are as high as Drexler and his allies suggest, the world needs to get this right the first time, for there is very little room for mistakes.

Read the whole thing. Modzelewski’s email habits get a mention, too.