Nanotechnology Environmental Friend or Foe

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NanotechnologyEnvironmental Friend or Foe?

• Wiebe E. Bijker
• University of Maastricht,
• Health Council of the Netherlands
• Ethics and the Environment Conference 2007
• Royal Dublin Society,
• 9-10-2007

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Key points

• Nanotechnologies offer important opportunities to
  biotechnology and genetics
• Nanotechnologies possibly entail serious risks
• Policies need to pay attention to risks and
  benefits from the very beginning

Ethics Governance
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What is nano?

• Nano science and technologies
• Scale 1-100 nm
• Top-down bottom-up approaches
• High expectations yet few commercial
  applications (sun crèmes, tires, opto-electrical
  layers, aseptic layers, ...)
• Heterogeneous, enabling technologies
• Promises and risks?
• Nothing new, merely very small?
• Fundamentally new phenomena?

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Possible (medical) applications

• Drug delivery
• DNA- other biochips for diagnosis
• New forms of multiplex screening
• Coatings and tissue-engineering
• Biocompatibility
• Bio-degradable implants
• Anti-bacterial properties
• Mechanical properties

• Lab-on-a-Chip ?
• Biosensors
• Point-of-care applications
• Decentralisation health care by
• New forms of self-diagnosis
• Home-care technologies
• Active implants
• Retina
• Insulin pump
• Neural prostheses
• Brain-machine interfaces
• Human enhancement

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New problem(due to special character of nano-
developments)

• Promising developments that deserve support
• Serious indication for damage, but no firm
  scientific evidence yet
• Unclear to what extent existing rules
  regulations are adequate

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Key questions

• How to balance risks and promises
  democratically?
• How to integrate ethics into nanotechnology
  policies?
• How to combine scientific expertise with
  citizens participation?
• How to govern science and technology?

Since we live in a technological culture,
governing technology is governing lifestyle
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Health Councils report

• Use existing regulation, but do check its
  adequacy
• Apply precautionary principle, but framed within
  a broader risk governance approach
• Stimulate research
• Positive applications that are not commercially
  attractive
• Nano-toxicology
• Social sciences and humanities studies of
  societal effectsand social embedding
• Broad monitoring committee

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Precautionary principle

• Intervene
• because there are serious indications of damage
• although there is insufficient scientific
  knowledge

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Discussion of Precaution

• Two versions
• Strong if no proof of safety, do not apply
• Weak lack of certain knowledge is no reason to
  abstain from intervention
• Burden of proof
• Reversal?
• Redistribution!
• Evaluation between extremes such as
• the end of all innovation !
• at last we can stop capitalist technology-push !
  
• Problem when and how to apply?
• (cf. Wittgenstein)

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Approach

• Key element of democracy not everyone needs to
  participate in everything, all of the time
• Try to be specific about risk situations, types
  of expertise, forms of participation, concrete
  policy measures

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Risk Governance sources

• International Risk Governance Council (Geneva)
• Health Council of the Netherlands
• Also drawing on UK Royal Society Royal Academy
  of Engineering
• Adopted by Dutch government (Nov. 2006)

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Risk Governance core idea

• Classify risk situations
• For each risk situation, there is an appropriate
• Approach of risk management
• Set of involved experts/groups
• Set of possible risk management policy
  instruments
• Continuously monitor ST developments and risk
  situations

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Risk Governance classification
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Examples of classification
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Risk Governance instruments
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HC recommendations (1)

• Politics
• Risk governance as conceptual framework
• Precautionary principle for free, non-degradable,
  synthetic nano particles
• Broad monitoring-committee

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HC recommendations (2)

• Research agenda
• More targeted nano-toxicology (incl. tests,
  concepts, screening strategies)
• More social sciences and humanities research
• Stimulating trans- en multi-disciplinary research
  without direct commercial promises
• Structural inclusion of CTA (Constructive
  Technology Assessment) in nano sciences and
  technologies

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HC recommendations (3)

• Participation scientists, stakeholders,
  citizens
• Increasingly in risk situation that are
• Simple
• Complex
• Uncertain
• Ambiguous

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HC recommendations (4)

• Socially responsible management and governance
• Life cycle analyses
• Adaptations within REACH
• Reflexively-critical attitude, also by government
  agencies

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w.bijker_at_tss.unimaas.nl http//www.gr.nl