Knowledge transfer from citizens’ panels to regulatory bodies in the domain of nano-enabled medical applications

Abstract

Science and technology policy is increasingly becoming subject to public scrutiny and to the mechanisms of public participation and debate. New and emerging techniques in the domain of nano-enabled technologies for medical applications are no exception to this trend. Public commitment initiatives are valuable in terms of advancing communication, yet democratic deliberation and reflection exercises are challenging also from an ethical and a regulatory perspective, as it is not immediately clear how actors in these fields may proceed from them. The outcomes of a citizens’ panel, held in the Flemish participatory technology assessment project “Nanotechnologies for Tomorrow's Society”, illustrate that citizens’ reflections express enthusiasm, scepticism and anxiety – and thus ambivalence – towards nano-enabled developments in future health care. The authors first demonstrate these ambivalent responses by means of a contextual ethical analysis based on a limited set of principles and on typologies of differing value perspectives. They then analyze the attempts by regulatory agents and law-makers to limit the possibilities of inconsistent interpretations and to create a climate of “certainty” in which technological innovation can thrive. The article concludes by exploring potential venues of more effective and inspirational knowledge transfer from public participation exercises to regulatory bodies and law-makers. Knowledge transfer, the authors argue, should build on interdisciplinary rather than on multidisciplinary knowledge production and participation.

Keywords:

• Participatory Technology Assessment
• nanotechnology
• interdisciplinarity
• regulation
• knowledge transfer
• ethical principles

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Professor Geert Van Calster and Michiel Van Oudheusden for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article. They are also grateful to the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation through Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT) for research funding (NanoSoc IWT 050182) and the Research Fund K.U. Leuven.

Notes

1. Rip and Te Kulve (2008) speak of technology developers and promoters as “enactors”. Enactors can be differentiated from comparative selectors (Rip 2006). Whereas the enactors “work towards the realization of technology options and are committed to its success” (Van Merkerk 2007), comparative selectors such as regulators and consumers are “not biased toward success of a technological innovation” (Deblonde et al 2008). Rather, ‘the new technological option is only one option and, possibly even, an unwanted intruder’.

2. In NanoSoc, the Bio-on-Chip case was loosely linked to a specific technological challenge: the merger of life-sciences with engineering, thereby combining the strengths of biological reactions and biochemical interactions with electronic signal detection and amplification. This merger is thought to lead to new applications in medicine, diagnostics and therapeutics that would never have been imaginable within the limitations of each domain separately. Hence, the Bio-on-Chip case exploits the coupling between electronics and biological components and aggregates nano-enabled technologies for more efficient (i.e. more accurate, faster and more reliable) and societally robust health diagnosis, monitoring, therapy and enhancement.

3. The first author is involved in NanoSoc as a TA researcher. More information about the NanoSoc project is available via www.nanosoc.be

4. A few themes which emerged in the Bio-on-Chip case related to fictive experiences such as the first implanted chip, shopping and doing sports with implanted chips and a mother's doubts as to whether to give her baby a chip implant and the subsequent impact thereof on her baby's life quality.

5. The framing phase was concluded with an intelligible summary of the panelists’ information. The results serve as input for consecutive NanoSoc rounds: the stakeholders’ forum (27–28 November 2008, Louvain, Belgium) and the road-mapping exercise (spring 2009, Belgium).

6. For the purpose of this article only a brief summary of this analysis framework will be presented.

7. The statements in this section are translated from Dutch and attempt to render as far as possible the sense and tone of the original responses provided by citizens.