WE ONLY get to decide whether technologies are worth it once we have realised that they are not. Think of DDT or Thalidomide or CFCs — all removed only once the damage was done. The same is happening with the development of nanotechnology — except that the consequences of its going wrong will make a few thousand mutilated babies or a gap in the ozone layer look like a nanodrop in the ocean.

The introduction of most new technologies goes something like this. First the technology is developed behind closed doors. Then the public is excited and won over with breathless pronouncements of wondrous advances and life-improving panaceas. After this, and only afterwards, regulatory regimes are set up and adapted to fit an already packaged product. Given the investments made in developing the technology, it is impossible to redesign it — even when potentially deleterious social or ecological effects have been identified. Already, nanotechnology has reached stage two.

The push for GM crops was a classic example of this three-stage process in action. Throughout the 1990s massive investments were made in optimising herbicide and insect-resistant GM crop varieties before any realistic analyses had been made of whether they would benefit farmers or the land. By the mid-1990s, attempts to ensure consumer acceptance were made via a subsidised GM tomato purée that came out cheaper than its non-GM equivalent. The plan was to get us all used to the idea that

GM could be part of our daily diet. Finally, the corporations developing GM pushed for — and in many countries secured — favourable regulatory regimes that would ensure that farmers and consumers took most of the risks while multinationals made most of the profits.

By the time the public had any say on GM, the genie was already out of the bottle. The result? Protests and crop-pulling once the seeds had already been sown, rather than a reasoned discussion about the direction people wished a future technology to take.

A number of recent projects have taken a different approach, illustrating how specialists and non-specialists can work together to determine mutually acceptable goals for the research and development of new technologies.

After an open brainstorming session, Citizen Foresight (a research tool set up by scientists at the universities of East London and Sussex) asked members of the British public to list a series of options for the future of food and farming. Instead of being given a remit to focus on particular technologies, such as GM crops, the 12 panel members were allowed to set the agenda for the debate. They decided the criteria by which the desirability of different options could be judged. They were also allowed to ask for extra witnesses to address issues not anticipated by the oversight panel. Among the unanimous results was a proposal for a complete restructuring of the UK farming system to promote cheaper, locally produced organic food. GM foods were viewed as unnecessary and not worth the risks to public health.

Similarly, the “Prajateerpu” process in India used a scenario workshop model to enable a jury of marginal farmers from Andhra Pradesh to choose between three contrasting “visions” for the future of food and farming in their region. Their subsequent rejection of GM was an inevitable consequence of their preference for a self-reliant agricultural system over one controlled by foreign multinationals.

Jim Watson was one of the original pair of scientists credited with discovering the structure of DNA 50 years ago. When asked whether scientists were the best people to regulate projects with huge social and ethical implications, he said: “If scientists don’t play God, who will?” Yet at the Royal Society’s People’s Science Summit last month, the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse suggested that genetic technologies ought to be subject to democratic regulation. Sir Paul said that the opinions of non-scientists could be vital in stopping worrying developments, such as DNA birth certificates.

A single dramatic lesson arises from almost every process that involves ordinary people, rather than just scientists, in setting agendas. It is that democratic deliberations tend to move attention away from providing quick technological “fixes” for problems towards the practical delivery of social justice with existing technologies.

What we need in the new nanotech age is an acceleration of such democratic initiatives, with the active involvement of scientists and decision-makers. This should be done at a global, as well as local, level. Only when we have developed proper mechanisms for bringing science under genuine democratic control will we be able to start a rational discussion about what role, if any, nanotech should play in our future.

Tom Wakeford leads the DIY citizens’ jury project at the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute at the University of Newcastle