Handbook of Nanoethics

Gunjan Jeswani, Marcel Van de Voorde, Gunjan Jeswani, Marcel Van de Voorde

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110669473
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technik & Maschinenbau
• Subtopic: Nanotechnologie & MEMS

With nanotechnology being a relatively new field, the questions regarding safety and ethics are steadily increasing with the development of the research. This book aims to give an overview on the ethics associated with employing nanoscience for products with everyday applications. The risks as well as the regulations are discussed, and an outlook for the future of nanoscience on a manufacturer's scale and for the society is provided.

Handbook of Nanoethics is perfect for, academicians and scientist, as well as all other industry professionals and researchers. It is a good introduction for newcomers in the field who do not want to dive deep into the details but are eager to understand the ethical challenges and possible solution related to nanotechnology and ethics.

Part I: Highlights of ethics in nanotechnology

1 Nanoethics: Giving orientation to societal reflection

Frans W.A. Brom

Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR), NL-2500 EA, The Hague, The Netherlands

Ethics Institute, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Rinie van Est

Rathenau Instituut, The Dutch Parliamentary TA Organization, The Hague, The Netherlands

Technology, Innovation and Society, Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Bart Walhout

National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, (RIVM), Bilthoven, The Netherlands

Abstract

We are now looking back at over 20 years of social reflection on nanotechnology. Gaining legitimate trust is vital for the nanotechnology community. That is why nanotechnologists engage in public discussions, social engagement, and interdisciplinary nanoethical research. Ensuring safety is an important element in ensuring trust. The transformative potential of nanotechnology, however, becomes apparent in its convergence with other emerging technologies.

The notion of converging technologies helps to explore this potential. It opens a new perspective for nanoethics and helps to identify societal challenges that need to be on the agenda of societies. The ethical issues raised by nanobiology, nanomedicine, and nanoelectronics illustrate these challenges: from nanobiology to the discussion on synthetic biology, from nanomedicine to the discussion on human enhancement, and from nanoelectronics to the discussion on artificial intelligence (AI). In all three fields, we will show a similar structure: (1) development in these fields is impossible without nanotechnology, (2) these fields raise fundamental and relevant normative issues, and (3) a nanoethics cannot confine itself to the direct and strict impact of nanotechnology itself, but needs to open up to the broader questions raised by the interaction between nanotechnology and other emerging technological fields. This shows us the challenge for nanoethics: it needs to orient societal reflection on the impact of nanotechnology, and in doing so it cannot confine itself to the direct consequences of specific nanotechnologies. Nanoethics needs to orient the societal reflections and discussions on where to go (direction), what to protect, and whom to empower in order to protect themselves (protection), and on practical ways to govern these developments (organization).

Key Words: Public deliberation, Technology Assessment, NBIC-converging, Human Enhancement, Synthetic Biology, Artificial Intelligence, Trust, Intimate technology,

1.1 Introduction

Nanoethics emerged in the debate on nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is new, and nanoethics therefore has two goals: to give orientation to the development of nanotechnology and to structure and orient the social reflection on the future of nanotechnology. Nanoethics can thus be seen as a form of “reflexivity”: it is part of social reflection and it looks at ways to stimulate and structure this social reflection. It is important to take this reflexivity into account, because it emphasizes the double task of nanoethics: to support the ethical development of nanotechnology and to support societal reflection on the ethical development of nanotechnology [1]. In this brief introduction, we will combine both tasks. We will use the content of the first task – giving orientation to the development of nanotechnology – as an agenda for the second task – fostering societal reflection. In this way, we develop three fields where nanoethics orients societal reflection: (1) direction, (2) protection, and (3) organization. These three fields revolve around three normative questions: (1) where to go and thus what to stimulate; (2) what to protect and whom to empower to actively protect; and (3) how to organize stimulation and protection in practical terms. These three normative questions require normative answers. Our main message is that, in order to fulfill its goals and to orient societal reflection on the impact of nanotechnology, nanoethics cannot confine itself to the direct impact of specific nanotechnologies. Nanoethics – just like nanotechnology – needs a broad perspective.

In this introductory chapter, we will neither try to give an overview of the ethical issues that nanotechnology raises, nor present all the various methods and approaches that are being developed in the field of nanotechnology. Instead, an in-depth analysis of specific issues in nanoethics will be given in the following chapters. We will give a thematic introduction to the field of nanoethics, showing the challenges for nanoethics in orientating societal reflection in the future of nanotechnology. We start by looking backward. The social reflection on nanotechnology has a history of over 20 years. A core issue in the engagement of scientists and engineers working in nanotechnology in these debates was (and is) the need to gain justified societal trust in the development of nanotechnology (Section 1.2). Ensuring safety is an important element in ensuring trust. That is why we continue this thematic introduction with an inquiry into an issue that is specifically raised by nanotechnology: the safety of nanomaterials (Section 1.3). Next, we will look at the societal and ethical issues that are raised when we consider nanotechnology as an element in the broader development of technology. For this purpose, we explore the notion of converging technologies. The convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science (NBIC convergence) involves increasing interaction between the life sciences and the natural or engineering sciences. This convergence opens a new perspective for nanoethics (Section 1.4). We illustrate this development with an inventory of ethical discussions in nanobiology, nanomedicine, and nanoelectronics. These sections illustrate how for society the transformative potential of nanotechnology becomes apparent in its convergence with other emerging technologies. Developing a nanoethics from this “converging technologies” perspective helps to identify societal challenges that need to be on the agenda of societies. In each section, we use an actual societal field to illustrate this claim: from nanobiology to the discussion on synthetic biology (Section 1.5), from nanomedicine to the discussion on human enhancement (Section 1.6), and from nanoelectronics to the discussion on AI (Section 1.7). In all three fields, we show a similar structure: (1) development in these fields is impossible without nanotechnology, (2) these fields raise fundamental and relevant normative issues, and (3) a nanoethics cannot confine itself to the direct and strict impact of nanotechnology itself, but needs to open up to the broader questions raised by the interaction between nanotechnology and other emerging technological fields. This brings us to the conclusion of this introduction and the challenge for this book: nanoethics needs to orient societal reflection on the impact of nanotechnology, and in doing so it cannot confine itself to the direct consequences of specific nanotechnologies. Nanoethics needs to orient the societal reflections and discussions on where to go, what to protect, and whom to empower in order to protect themselves, and on practical ways to govern these developments.

1.2 From gaining societal trust to engaged interaction

The social reflection on nanotechnology has a history going back over 20 years. The potential societal impact of nanotechnology was already being discussed in the comprehensive foresight study coordinated between 1996 and 1998 by the Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends [2]. And from the start of the twenty-first century, the discussion on the social and ethical implications of nanotechnology [3] got underway, not only in academia but also in public discourse. In 2003, the report “The Big Down” by the ETC group (a Canadian NGO) played an important role in the public debate, because it posed the legitimate question as to what the benefits and risks of this new technology would be for society, and pointed to the many uncertainties with regard to the health impact of nanoparticles [4].

For many scientists, the ETC group’s criticism had a familiar flavor, reminding them of the debate on genetically modified organisms (GMOs). They saw GMO technology as one of many promising and useful technologies that had been unable to connect successfully to the broader society, due to negative campaigning by environmental groups such as Greenpeace. As a commentator wrote in Nature, “Nanotechnology is set to be the next campaign focus of environmental groups. Will scientists avoid the mistakes made over genetically modified food, and secure trust for their research?” [5]. One could say that the debate on nanotechnology followed a recurring type of argumentation in which the various societal actors play a pre-scripted role in the debate [6]. As Swierstra and Rip indicate, a debate of this kind takes on a predictable pattern in which different arguments “hang together” in the sense that they provoke each other into existence. The tropes and the “storylines” in the argumentative patterns have become a repertoire that is available in late-modern societies, both as a framing of how actors view issues and expect others to view them, and as a kind of toolkit that can be drawn upon in concrete debates” [7]. Ethical reflection aims to open up these ossified patterns.

For the good development of nanotechnology, a more responsive relationship with society was seen as necessary. This relationship is important because those working in the field of nanotechnology mostly have the honest belief that it can be an important aid to meeting societal challenges. Nanotechnological developments bring hope with regard to fighting famine, helping the transition to non-fossil energy, or developing new treatments for diseases such as cancer. That is why securing adequate societal trust in nanotechnology through a more responsive relationship with society is important. At least two elements are important in this responsive relationship: systematic consideration of the societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology, and more and better communication between the nanotech community and society.

The wish to develop a better understanding of the implications of nanotechnology and better processes of social reflection led to various research programs and organized societal deliberations on nanotechnology in the years 2003–2010. In the Netherlands, for instance, the national research consortium NanoNed decided in 2002 to include research into the societal and ethical implications in their research program and to link these implications with nanoresearch and innovation [8]. In the UK, several “upstream” activities [9] were organized in 2005–2006 to include citizens in the discourse on nanotechnology and its development [10, 11]. And in Germany, the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag “was already commissioned by the research committee of the German Bundestag to carry out a TA study on nanotechnology as early as 2000. The results were presented to the committee and published in 2003” [12].

As the German example makes clear, a third element is needed to secure societal trust: adequate and democratically legitimized oversight and governance. From our perspective, the search for a more responsive relationship between nanoscience and ...