University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, USA.
J Law Med Ethics. 2009 Winter;37(4):749-58. doi: 10.1111/j.1748-720X.2009.00445.x.
Commentators continue to weigh in on whether there are ethical, social, and policy issues unique to nanotechnology, whether new regulatory schemes should be devised, and if so, how. Many of these commentaries fail to take into account the historical and political environment for nanotechnologies. That context affects regulatory and oversight systems as much as any new metrics to measure the effects of nanoscale materials, or organizational changes put in place to facilitate data analysis. What comes to count as a technical or social "problem" says much about the sociotechnical and political-historical networks in which technologies exist. This symposium's case studies provide insight into procedural successes and failures in the regulation of novel products, and ethical or social analyses that have attended to implications of novel, disruptive technologies. Yet what may be needed is a more fundamental consideration of forms of governance that may not just handle individual products or product types more effectively, but may also be flexible enough to respond to radically new technological systems. Nanotechnology presents an opportunity to think in transdisciplinary terms about both scientific and social concerns, rethink "knowns" about risk and how best to ameliorate or manage it, and consider how to incorporate ethical, social, and legal analyses in the conceptualization, planning, and execution of innovations.
评论员继续权衡纳米技术是否存在独特的伦理、社会和政策问题，是否应该设计新的监管方案，如果是，应该如何设计。许多这些评论都没有考虑到纳米技术的历史和政治环境。这种背景不仅影响衡量纳米材料影响的新指标或为促进数据分析而采取的组织变革，也影响监管和监督系统。被视为技术或社会“问题”的东西，在很大程度上反映了技术所存在的社会技术和政治历史网络。本次专题讨论会的案例研究深入了解了新型产品监管中的程序成功和失败，以及关注新型颠覆性技术影响的道德或社会分析。然而，可能需要更深入地考虑治理形式，这些形式不仅可以更有效地处理单个产品或产品类型，而且还可以灵活应对全新的技术系统。纳米技术为以跨学科的方式思考科学和社会问题提供了机会，重新思考风险的“已知”以及如何最好地减轻或管理风险，并考虑如何在创新的概念化、规划和执行中纳入道德、社会和法律分析。
