Monday, May 30, 2005

QuoteBot


"Too often in the past, the industry has been caught out by the development of new risks. From obesity to nanotechnology, passive smoking to cyber terrorism, we're potentially facing a raft of new types of risk linked to socio-demographic, economic and political change."

Norwich Union
UK's largest insurer, quoted in the Telegraph

Backgrounder
UK sets up a fragmented nanopolicy
A future filled with fullerenes?
2005 the year of nano regulation?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's the insurers who ultimately face the financial risk, and therefore have more caution than salesmen and scientists. The insurance industry learned its lesson with asbestos, which almost put Lloyds out of business (and did bankrupt many Lloyd's "names.")

Salesmen are happy to overlook risks in the face of profits.

Scientists, while motivated by better instincts, tend to discount the risk that those who use their inventions are likely to misuse them as well. The myth of Daedalus and Icarus is very old, but examples of scientists who come to grief from their own inventions are legion, and current.