RELIGION CASTS NANOTECH AS IMMORAL IN U.S.

Americans distrust the morality of nanotechnology but Europeans have much more faith in the burgeoning science, according to a survey by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor.

Dietram Scheufele, a professor of life sciences communication at the UW, says that is because religion exerts far more influence on public views of technology in the United States than it does in Europe.

Nanotechnology is a branch of science and engineering devoted to the design and production of materials, structures, devices and circuits at the tiniest possible scale, typically in the realm of individual atoms and molecules.

Scientists see huge potential for advances in computers, medicine and many other fields.

But the survey of 1,015 adult residents of the United States found that only 29.5 percent found that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.

Scheufele contends that nanotechnology, biotechnology and stem cell research are lumped together by religious people as means to enhance human qualities. In short, some people believe that researchers are "playing God" when they create materials that do not occur in nature, especially where nanotechnology and biotechnology intertwine, he said.

Separate European surveys with identical questions found a much higher approval of the science. Scheufele and a colleague designed questions similar to those on Eurobarometer surveys that provide data on 30 countries.

In France, for instance, 72 percent found nanotechnology morally acceptable. In Germany the figure was 63 percent and in Great Britain it was 54 percent.

Scheufele told a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that religion causes the major differences.

"The importance of religion in these different countries that shows up in data set after data set parallels exactly the differences we're seeing in terms of moral views," he said. "European countries have a much more secular perspective."

His research over the years has shown that religion plays a more important role in people's lives in the United States than it does in Europe, Scheufele said.

"We also looked at the World Values Survey," he later explained in a blog. "On a 10-point scale, U.S. respondents scored between 8 and 9 on average when indicating how much guidance God provided in their daily lives. European respondents in Germany, France and the U.K., in contrast, consistently scored below 5."