Abstract: Examining those risk and benefit perceptions utilised in the formation of attitudes and opinions about emerging technologies such as nanotechnology can be useful for both industry and policy makers involved in their development, implementation and regulation. A broad range of different socio-psychological and affective factors may influence consumer responses to different applications of nanotechnology, including ethical concerns. A useful approach to identifying relevant consumer concerns and innovation priorities is to develop predictive constructs which can be used to differentiate applications of nanotechnology in a way which is meaningful to consumers. This requires elicitation of attitudinal constructs from consumers, rather than measuring attitudes assumed to be important by the researcher. Psychological factors influencing societal responses to 15 applications of nanotechnology drawn from different application areas (e.g. medicine, agriculture and environment, food, military, sports, and cosmetics) were identified using repertory grid method in conjunction with generalised Procrustes analysis. The results suggested that people differentiate nanotechnology applications based on the extent to which they perceive them to be beneficial, useful, necessary and important. The benefits may be offset by perceived risks focusing on fear and ethical concerns. Compared to an earlier expert study on societal acceptance of nanotechnology, consumers emphasised ethical issues compared to experts but had less concern regarding potential physical contact with the product and time to market introduction. Consumers envisaged fewer issues with several applications compared to experts, in particular food applications.

Abstract: I argue in this paper that animal biotechnology constitutes a dangerous ontological collapse between animals and the technical-economic apparatus. By ontological collapse, I mean the elimination of fundamental ontological tensions between embodied subjects and the principles of scientific, technological, and economic rationalization. Biotechnology imposes this collapse in various ways: by genetically “reprogramming” animals to serve as uniform commodities, by abstracting them into data and code, and, in some cases, by literally manipulating their movements with computer technologies. These and other forms of ontological violence not only lead to profound physical suffering for the animals involved, but also distort the phenomenological basis of their existence, especially their perceptual experience and expression of subjective time and space. In subordinating nonhuman animals to the logic of “technological rationality” or “technique,” to borrow Herbert Marcuse and Jacques Ellul’s respective terms, biotechnology perpetuates the productive extermination of animals. Biotech animals are exterminated in the sense of being “drive[n] beyond the boundaries” of meaningful existence and “destroyed completely” or “completely wiped out” as subjects. But they are also exterminated in the sense of being “overproduced” and “overgenerated,” both quantitatively and qualitatively. I go on to argue that the collapse of the ontological is accompanied by a collapse of the ethical. This ethical collapse is characterized by the internalization of the logic of technique and the corresponding failure both within technoscientific culture itself and within some scholarly discourses about biotechnology to evaluate from a genuinely critical vantage point the fundamental ethical issues that animal biotechnology raises. The aim of this paper is to offer an alternative analysis of the ontological and ethical implications of biotechnology from the standpoint of Marcuse and Ellul’s critical theory of technology. To explore other ramifications of animal biotechnology, I draw on Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s insights into ideologies of extermination and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment.

Abstract: Nanotechnology (NT) presents significant challenges in terms of developing a regulatory framework. This is due to a lack of scientific knowledge about the behaviour of the technology in its interactions with biological and ecological processes, the environment and other technologies. Crucially, there is a great deal of uncertainty surrounding the potential environmental and human health and safety impacts of NT. Consequently, the development of NT is a potential test case for framing new models of ‘soft law’ voluntary governance as a substitute for traditional command and control type regulation. Driven by ‘new science governance,’ an approach based on a combination of ideas in anticipatory ethics, future-oriented responsibility, upstream public engagement and deliberation and theories of justice may offer a solution. The uniqueness of the approach can be found in the incorporation of anticipatory approaches via public participation and deliberation as the input into procedural justice approaches with distributional justice as the output. The overarching objective of this work is to contribute to the discussion in relation to the internalisation of responsibility and the building of intellectual and societal capacity to anticipate negative consequences before they arise in the hope that such an approach could be the antithesis of the retrospective imposition of responsibility and liability after the harm is done, which is the outcome of traditional regulatory and ethical approaches. Ultimately, the purpose is to contribute to the long-term sustainability of NT.

Abstract: Risk assessment is an evidence-based analytical framework used to evaluate research findings related to environmental and public health decision-making. Different routines have been adopted for assessing the potential risks posed by substances and products to human health. In general, the traditional paradigm is a hazard-driven approach, based on a monocausal toxicological perspective. Questions have been raised about the applicability of the general chemical risk assessment approach in the specific case of nanomaterials. Most scientists and stakeholders assume that the current standard methods are in principle suitable, but point out that experimental aspects and practical guidelines need specific adaptations. Beyond this laboratory level, risk assessment of nanomaterials also faces a number of substantive and procedural limitations, which are intrinsically attributed to the general orthodoxy of the risk assessment concept. Moreover, the developed formalism used to organize scientific knowledge is closely interlinked with the underlying governance design and the mode of interaction between the two spheres of ‘science’ and ‘decisions’. This contribution will provide a closer look at the evolution of different institutional settings for risk assessment in the context of decision-making. Improved risk governance frameworks with different narratives, process designs and procedural elements will be compared. The question of a general principle of enhanced organization of risk assessment will be discussed taking account of the barriers of substantive and procedural limitations in the special case of nanomaterials.

Abstract: First concerns about the use of nanosilver were raised almost a decade ago, but assessing the risks has been extremely challenging scientifically, and regulation to protect environmental and human health remains controversial. In order to understand the known risks and issues associated with the use of nanosilver, we carried out a DPSIR analysis and analysed drivers, pressures, state, impacts and potential policy responses. We found that most concerns relate to the potential development of multi-resistant bacteria and the environmental impacts of nanosilver. From the DPSIR analysis, we found that new (separate) legislation for nanomaterials in general and nanosilver-specific changes in the current European chemical, biocide and medical legislation were the optimal policy responses, along with limiting the overall use of nanosilver. In order to qualify the identified potential policy responses, we carried out a stakeholder analysis, in order to explore possibilities for reaching consensus amongst stakeholders. Through the stakeholder analysis, the interests, views, power and influence of the identified stakeholders were mapped. Overall, the policy options identified in the DPSIR analysis were deemed not to be implementable, as industry and NGOs seem to have fundamentally conflicting views and interests. The use of the combination of DPSIR and stakeholder analysis proved valuable for use in cases of complexity, as they compensate for each other’s limitations and open up for a discussion what can be done to reduce risks.

Abstract: The essays in the section “Animals in technoscientific developments” have been collected from the submissions to the 3rd European Conference of Critical Animal Studies that I organized in Karlsruhe on 28–30 November 2013. The aim of the conference was to stimulate critical scholars to engage on the multifaceted relationships between animals and technosciences, an underresearched topic. Technoscience has become an important concept in the current debate on the epistemic and normative changes taking place in how scientific and technological research is currently being conducted. Although there are different modes of describing technoscience (and thus different interpretations of whether it is a “new” mode of knowledge production and when it started), generally speaking the term refers to a means of developing knowledge in which it is not possible to separate the scientific from the technological (cf., among others [20, 38]). In contrast to the “traditional mode of doing science,” in which scientific objects are relevant because there are facts about them, technoscience looks at the deep entanglements between theoretical representations (science) and technical interventions. Technoscience is, therefore, interested in things as configurations of different interests [2]. The animal turn in humanities, realized through the establishment of human–animal studies (HAS) and critical animal studies (CAS) over the past two decades aims at integrating animals in scholarly and (social-) scientific inquiry and liberating them from the ontological status of objects [14, 52]. Animals should be no longer perceived as mere metaphors or symbols but individuals in flesh and blood and involved in different mechanisms of knowledge productions and practices [41]. Critical perspectives on animals are shifting the focus of the inquiry from the insistence in looking for the capacities of animals to the complexity of interspecies relationships, critically challenging the idea of human domination and human exceptionalism (among others [63, 49, 52]). Since the inquiry on technoscience shows the hybrid nature of knowledge and its producers, and thus fundamentally challenges differences between nature and culture, it works implicitly for the reconsideration of the idea of human exceptionalism, which is defined as “the premise that humanity alone is not a spatial and temporal web of interspecies dependencies” ([43]:11). As technoscience points out the interdependence and inseparability of science and technology and society, its inquiry cannot but embrace a rejection of the transcendental human subject who is external to socionatural entanglements and thus stresses the need to develop relational ontologies. The animal turn works toward revealing the profoundly interrelated nature of humans and animals. Therefore, the fact that technoscience indicates a different Nanoethics (2015) 9:5–10 DOI 10.1007/s11569-015-0224-3

Abstract: Technoscientific progress brings into question both anthropocentric epistemology and anthropocentric/humanistic ontology, which considers the human being as a self-constructing and self-sufficient entity. Even though, Darwinism recomposes the humanistic disjunction between reality and representation: by defining the human being as the result of an adaptive reflection, it reveals the idealistic character of post-Cartesian thought, which is the backbone of philosophical anthropocentrism. The non-human can be a dialogic entity if and only if it is considered not as “animal-by” but “animal-with”, that is, free to express its authenticity in terms of subjectivity, diversity and uniqueness. Whilst the post-human laboratory celebrates the power of human beings, the post-humanistic perspective emphasizes the conjugation with the non-human.

Abstract: This paper examines human-nonhuman splices from a multidisciplinary approach, involving bioengineering and literary studies. Splices are hybrid beings, created through gene-splicing—a process which combines the DNA of the two species, resulting in a hybrid or chimeric being. A current trend in biotechnological research is the use of spliced pigs for xenotransplantation. Hiromitsu Nakauchi’s pancreas study that splices pigs with human iPS [induced pluripotent stem] cells in order to grow human organs inside pigs is being compared to a highly similar case of porcine hybrids: the pigoon from Margaret Atwood’s fictional MaddAddam trilogy. Atwood’s pigoons are pigs, genetically modified with human stem cells to facilitate the growth of various human organs for use in organ transplants with no risk of rejection. The case studies from science and science fiction overlap significantly and thus allow for a critical reading of the two highly different sources with a focus on ethical and moral questions regarding the use and abuse of nonhuman animals for human purposes. Furthermore, the context of the fictional works adds new layers of knowledge and new perspectives to the problematic issue of animal “enhancement.” Through the dynamic agency that can be detected within Atwood’s novels and that encompasses human, animal, and hybrid agency, the reader can develop empathy for other-than-human experiences and use this new perspective for a critical reflection of actual technoscientific developments that affect both human and nonhuman animal life. The combination of the two discourses reveals a value of science fiction for both the scientific community and society at large, demonstrating how its critical reception can result in enhanced ethical standards.

Abstract: Comments and reports on synthetic biology often focus on the idea that this field may lead to synthetic life or life forms. Such claims attract general attention because “life” is a basic concept that is understood, interpreted and explained in multiple ways. While these different understandings of life may influence the ethical assessment of synthetic biology by experts and the public, this field might, in turn, influence how academics or the public view life. We suggest in this paper that synthetic biology provides an opportunity to discuss and compare different views and explanations of the world, starting from the concept of life. We argue that a narrow focus on just one interpretation of this concept may be harmful and that people will benefit from being aware of a diversity of understandings of life because they provide answers to different questions. Moreover, the confrontation among views is important for the development of reasoning abilities, and a nuanced view on our world will be useful for integrating scientific findings and their implications into a wider context. At the same time, we should not only consider other understandings of life for our own benefit but also because a moral attitude of respect for and toleration toward others implies permission to express and maintain their views. For these reasons, we suggest that a diversity of views on life should be included in public education and in public engagement events on synthetic biology. Moreover, they should be on the research agenda of technology assessment studies within the ELSA or RRI frameworks.

Abstract: Scientific knowledge and technological expertise continue to evolve rapidly. Such innovation gives rise to new benefits as well as risks, at an ever-increasing pace. Within this context, regulatory regimes must function in order to address policymakers’ objectives. Innovation, though, can challenge the functioning and effectiveness of regulatory regimes. Questions over fit, effectiveness, and capacity of these regimes to ensure the safe entry of such technologies, and their products, onto the market will be asked in parallel to their development. With this in mind, this article examines the strengths and weaknesses of current regulatory frameworks, including those designed for biotechnology, cosmetics, novel organisms, and foods, in order to inform and help shape Australia’s regulatory landscape around innovation. By focusing on Australia, the article illustrates the need to assess future changes to regulatory frameworks using a careful balancing of key factors. These include, for example, horizon scanning and monitoring, availability of appropriate data, existing health, safety, environmental, ethical, and social risks and impacts, and regulatory capacity. The article argues that rather than using one of these factors in isolation, a careful assessment of where each factor stands can lead regulators to an approach that properly manages the potential risks of emerging technologies.

Abstract: In this article, I draw on ethnographic research to show how a particular ethos and worldview get produced in the context of “technical” education in a department of nanoengineering Building on feminist science studies and communication theory, I argue that the curriculum introducing undergraduate students to scale implicitly teaches them an abstract and universal notion that smaller is better I suggest that rather than smaller is better, a perspective that embraces context and specificity—such as the question “when, how, and for whom is smaller better?”—would ground nanoengineering in a more reflexive, pluralistic, and democratically oriented mode of world-building

Abstract: We are at the crux of a return of animals to the battlefield. Framed as an improvement over current limitations of biomimetic devices, couplings of microelectrical mechanical systems (MEMS) with insect bodies are currently being designed and created in laboratories, with funding from military agencies. Moving beyond the external attachment of computerized ‘backpacks’, MEMS are being implanted into larval stages to allow for living tissue to envelop otherwise fragile circuitry and electronics: the creation of bioelectronic interfaces. The weaponization of animals, with insect cyborgs as a first step—a foundation for the remaking of more complex species—is an anthropocentric solution to an anthropocentric problem. Speciesism is the normative context in which technoscientific discourse and such approaches to nanoscience and nanotechnology are situated. This is a network of actors and relationships within and across science and society. Animals are framed as mechanical devices that can be dis/enhanced for human ends. This paper engages with the remaking of species, the blurring of boundaries between mechanism and organism, and the implications of the effective disappearance of the animal as key sociotechnological challenges.

Abstract: A common feature of scientific and ethical debates is that clones are generally described and understood as “copies” or, more specifically defined, as “genetic copies.” The attempt of this paper is to question this widespread definition. It first argues that the terminology of “clone as copy” can only be understood as a metaphor, and therefore, a clone is not a “genetic copy” in a strict literal sense, but in a figurative one. Second, the copy metaphor has a normative component that is problematic in the context of descriptive science and may support or indicate the ethically relevant phenomenon of objectification of animals. In order to support the argument against the common conception of a clone as a copy, the biotechnological principles of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) cloning will be examined. On this basis, it will be shown that the metaphor is valid because of similarities between the phenotype, the genotype, or the nuclear DNA sequence of the clone and its progenitor by using three prominent levels of comparison (clone as phenotypical, genotypical, and nuclear copy). Focusing on the process of SCNT, it will be shown that cloning as copying or doubling has to be redefined for scientific purposes because it is neither necessary nor does it fit to the biotechnological principles of cloning. It is more accurate to understand SCNT cloning as a process of splitting rather than of doubling or copying. In the second part, a deconstructivist analysis based on Jacques Derrida’s description in Positions (1981) will reveal the normative potential of the original–copy dichotomy. I will be showing that it includes an asymmetrical power structure between the original (progenitor) and the copy (clone) and that this structure can be reversed or at least considered unstable. Therefore, arguments that build on that metaphor must be reconsidered. Moreover, the analysis reveals that applying a terminology to humans and animals that is commonly used for things becomes the language of objectification. Two selected examples, fungibility and violability, based on Martha Nussbaum’s notion of objectification will support the thesis of objectification, display its normative consequences, and put the clone as a copy metaphor in a broader range of ethically questionable research tendencies.

Abstract: Discussions about the appropriate way of assessing and managing new or emerging technologies—like nanomaterials—expose the problematic relationship between scientific knowledge production and regulatory decision-making. On one hand, there is a strong demand for scientific expertise to support decisions, especially by analyzing risks and hazards when uncertainties are prevalent and society’s stakes are high. On the other hand, science is criticized for its authoritative claim to objectivity and for keeping the inherent uncertainty, ambiguity, and selectivity of scientific observation latent. Requests for more transparency in science can lead to revealing, to risk managers and the public, the indeterminacy in knowledge production processes. This has consequences for the prevalence of scientific knowledge in decision-making, because it increases uncertainty on both sides of the breach between science and decisions: scientists lose confidence regarding the scientifically tested knowledge which they pass on, and risk managers lose confidence regarding their decisions based on this knowledge. Nonetheless, the concept of “probabilistic risk assessment” remains an important heuristic for dealing with potential future events. This paper addresses questions of the function of scientific risk assessment in organized risk management. The main argument in this paper is that knowledge alone no longer functions as a mechanism for absorbing uncertainty. Accordingly, the interaction between science and decisions must enable a temporarily stable commitment to manage new threats like products and applications coming from the field of nanoscience and nanomaterials.

Abstract: The current issue of our journal features a special section on technoscientific developments and animals, an extremely sensitive and highly politicized issue. There is widespread unease and even outrage, at least in many Western societies, over the use and treatment of animals in various sectors, particularly in food production, in technoscience, and in entertainment. The spectrum of opponents to certain uses and treatments of animals extends from those who wish to see better protection of animals to proponents of far-reaching animal rights. On a political level, recent decades have for example seen animal protection included in theGerman constitution [1] and the use of great apes in animal testing banned in several countries. Such activities are often based on animals being perceived as fellow beings and categorically different from objects. If we look at German history in particular, however, we are reminded that such appreciation of animals often goes hand in handwith a depreciation of some of our fellow human beings, or at least—and not only in Germany—with animals being seen as innocent creatures requiring protection against the maliciousness of humankind. The relationships between technoscience and animal rights proponents are fraught with problems. Some radical animal rights activists engage in illegal Bdirect action^ to combat the use of animals in technoscience; small parts of the animal rights movement even resort to means dangerous to human life, prompting charges of terrorism, followed by counter-accusations of disproportionate sentencing for property damage. On the other hand, and this is something I have witnessed on a number of occasions duringmyworking life, researchers often tend to harden their hearts against the widespread concerns prevalent in many Western societies, perhaps psychologically rationalizing their own discomfort with some of the practices in the labs. Pointing out that there are relatively strict regulations in place concerning ethical aspects of the use of animals in technoscience—as compared to their treatment in other sectors (such as food production)—some scientists seem to shy away from engaging in discourse on our relationships with our closest natural relatives. Against this backdrop, the journal NanoEthics—for quite some time now a forum for animal ethics, and more broadly for animal studies [2–8]—has opened its pages to contributions from members of the critical animal studies (CAS) community. CAS features all the usual characteristics of an academic field that is closely related to activism, including strengths as well as weaknesses. I believe it is important that both natural scientists and scholars studying new and emerging science and technology should engage with the views of CAS scholars. Some or even all of the contributions to this special section on technoscientific developments and animals may be deemed provocative by certain readers of NanoEthics. I would specifically like to invite these readers in particular to respond to the views expressed in this special section, or to present their own views on the topic. Why is it important to engage with this topic? The use of animals in technoscience has of course many Nanoethics (2015) 9:1–4 DOI 10.1007/s11569-015-0225-2

Abstract: This editorial has been written on the way back from the 7th annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET), which was once again a truly inspiring and instructive event. The conference was held in Montreal in October under the title BFrom Nanotechnologies to Emerging Technologies: Towards a Global Responsibility^ and was mainly organised by the knowledge network Ne3LS, a very noteworthy long-term initiative set up by the Government of Quebec to examine the ethical, environmental, economic, legal and social issues raised by the development of nanotechnology. S.NET and this journal can be described as a pair of siblings.NanoEthics is a little older, its first issue having been published back in 2007, while the first S.NET meeting annual meeting took place in 2009. Both are children of the first wave of research and discussions on nanotechnology, but also established themselves early on as important forums for reflection on new and emerging science and technology more generally, including other fields of technology and a wide variety of aspects of current technoscience. Recently, NanoEthics has changed its subtitle to Studies of New and Emerging Technologies, and S.NET is about to change its full name to the Society for Studies of New and Emerging Technologies. Both siblings are open to impulses that come from beyond academia, such as contributions by civil society activists, industry representatives, policy makers, early technology adopters and artists. There are large overlaps, not only thematically but also in terms of the people involved.While the journal’s readers and contributors come from a wide variety of academic communities and NanoEthics is certainly not S.NET’s house journal, there is clearly a special relationship between the two at many levels. The present issue is a particular testament to this, since the authors of its first two articles gave talks in Montreal, and an entire special section is based on a session at last year’s S.NET annual meeting. In the first article, Vanessa Chenel, Patrick Boissy, Jean-Pierre Cloarec and Johane Patenaude analyse acceptability judgments concerning the use of nanocarrierbased targeted drug delivery. After sending out a questionnaire to a large number of Francophone scientists and scholars in Canada and Europe, they conducted interviews with a subset of the respondents, half of whom were French and half Canadian, while half were natural scientists or engineers and half social scientists or humanities scholars. The authors highlight contextual factors that bring about variability in acceptability judgments, arguing that effective consideration of these contextual factors could add a supplementary layer of information to assessment procedures and improve stakeholder discourse on technological innovation. In the second article, Daniele Ruggiu contrasts two versions of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), the important new European approach to science, Nanoethics (2015) 9:197–198 DOI 10.1007/s11569-015-0246-x

Abstract: The discussion in this special section has been stimulated by the National Research Council report: “Science and Decisions. Advancing Risk Assessment” [1]. In this title, two different domains are simultaneously linked and held apart by the word “and”. This word reveals the problem addressed in this special section. Science is comfortable in its own self-referential domain of theory-driven observation, methodical data generation, and hypothetical, i.e. provisional, knowledge production. Science’s world cannot be sustained without proper alimentation; hence, there is a lot of pressure to deliver “useful knowledge,” which is defined as the kind of knowledge that stimulates economic growth. Natural sciences and engineering sciences claim their advantage by providing results with practical functions, or at least results that may lead to functioning technological realities in the near future. Nowadays, even philosophical research is expected to prove its societal impact and usefulness by contributing to more customer-oriented, sustainable, and ethically defendable technological systems [2]. The crossing from “science” to “decisions” is unavoidable and mandatory, so it appears, but the interaction between science and decision-making is not straightforward. The regulator faces a “dilemma” [3]: On the one hand, decision-makers seem to be asking questions that science cannot give clear answers to (e.g., what are the environmental implications of nanotechnology?) under increasing public pressure. On the other hand, scientists provide answers, in ever greater detail, to questions that decision-makers did not ask or are not interested in (e.g., by what mechanisms do carbon nanotubes cause asbestos-like pathogenicity). Science does not deliver certainty, as the discussions about ignorance or non-knowledge illustrate: “Sometimes, to learn more is to discover hidden complexities that make us realize that the mastery we thought we had over phenomena was in part illusory” [4]. The realization of indeterminacies as a universal fact is like an unmovable object which collides with the irresistible force, i.e. the postulate to make decisions: “Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide” [5]. While we must decide on matters Nanoethics (2015) 9:255–260 DOI 10.1007/s11569-015-0244-z

Abstract: Among the various experiments in ‘new governance’, the model of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is emerging in the European landscape as quite promising. Up to now, there have been two versions of RRI: a socio-empirical version which tends to underline the role of democratic processes aimed at identifying values on which governance needs to be anchored and a normative version which stresses the role of EU goals (among which fundamental rights) as ‘normative anchor points’ of both governance strategies and policy making. Both versions are unsatisfactory. The first since it suggests movable anchorage which could clash with prefixed values, such as individual rights. The second since it does not safeguard fundamental rights in the process of balancing ‘anchor points’. This result is counterintuitive because it exposes governance to the risk of facing adverse court decisions in the defense of individual rights, thus losing its anticipative attitude. In order to avoid this outcome, the paper argues that it is only through better integration between the system of human rights and that of EU fundamental rights that the anticipative feature of RRI can be preserved.

Abstract: The regulation of innovation reflects a specific imaginary of the role of governance that makes it external to the field it governs. It is argued that this decision and rule-based view of regulation is insufficient to deal with the inescapable uncertainties that are produced by innovation. In particular, using risk-based knowledge as the basis of regulation fails to deal sufficiently both with the problem that innovation ensures the future will not resemble the past, and with the problem that the social priorities that underlie innovation often remain unquestioned. Recently, rights-based frameworks have been defended as principle-based approaches to innovation governance that address the gaps which trouble an understanding of regulation as based on risk-based decision procedures. An alternative, care-based view of governance is defended, in which institutional and practice change, aimed at the creation of specific institutional ‘virtues’ and rooted in the broad and deep participation of publics in shaping innovation is seen as an appropriate way of making governance internal to innovation.

Abstract: The assessment of nanotechnology applications such as nanocarrier-based targeted drug delivery (TDD) has historically been based mostly on toxicological and safety aspects. The use of nanocarriers for TDD, a leading-edge nanomedical application, has received little study from the angle of experts’ perceptions and acceptability, which may be reflected in how TDD applications are developed. In recent years, numerous authors have maintained that TDD assessment should also take into account impacts on ethical, environmental, economic, legal, and social (E3LS) issues in order to lead to socially responsible innovation. Semi-structured interviews (n = 22) were conducted with French and Canadian researchers and research trainees with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and involved in research related to emerging technologies. The interviews focussed on scenarios presenting two types of TDD nanocarriers (carbon, synthetic DNA) in two contexts of use (lung cancer, seasonal flu). Content and inductive analyses of interviews showed how facets of perceived impacts such as health, environment, social cohabitation, economy, life and death, representations of the human being and nature, and technoscience were weighed in acceptability judgments. The analyses also revealed that contextual factors related to device (nature of the treatment), to use (gravity of the disease), and to user (culture) influenced the weighting assigned to perceived impacts and thus contributed to variability in interviewees’ judgments of acceptability. Giving consideration to researchers’ perspective could accompany first steps of implementation and development of nanomedicine by producing a first, but wide, picture of the acceptability of nanocarrier-based TDD.

Abstract: All stakeholders agree publicly that innovation and governance of emerging technologies should be done responsibly. However, the international debate on who should do what to contribute to this lofty goal is nowhere near a solution. The starting point of this paper is the issue of how and for which reason to engage stakeholders in addition to governments in the international governance of nanotechnology. This article examines the mainly North-American communitarian criticism of political liberalism and the related (mainly European) concept of subsidiarity in order to shed new light on this discussion. The central research question is: Can a communitarian-subsidiarity perspective on the roles of governments, companies and civil society actors that hold a stake in emerging technologies clarify the grounds on which each actor should be expected to contribute to responsible research and innovation at the international level? After selecting some relevant aspects of a communitarian-subsidiarity model for a dialogue society, an analytical framework is proposed. This framework is then applied to the recent international dialogue on responsible governance of nanotechnology. The outcomes of the analysis are compared to the OECD planning guide on public engagement and outreach in nanotechnology, and indicators for monitoring progress in responsible global innovation are suggested. The main contribution of the selected communitarian-subsidiarity perspective is that it offers philosophical grounds for a return of citizens to the driving seat in cooperative international responsible innovation.

Abstract: The paper focuses on processes of normalization through which dis/ability is simultaneously produced in specific collectives, networks, and socio-technological systems that enable the construction of such demarcations. Our point of departure is the cochlear implant (CI), a neuroprosthetic device intended to replace and/or augment the function of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sounds, the CI does the work of damaged hair cells in the inner ear by providing sound signals to the brain. We examine the processes of the CI’s genesis as well as its specific uses by and interrelations to the different and divergent actors that the CI assembles. We argue that the technological device and the implicated normalization process mobilize complex effects in varying socio-technical arrangements. The CI is conceived as a “boundary object” [89] or a “quasi-object” [49, 83], i.e., a metastabilized medium of translation that coordinates social, cultural, and technological (inter)action. Although intended to transform non-hearing or hard of hearing people into competent and “normal” hearing subjects, the CI system reproduces the asymmetrical structures of the disability discourse [14] through its function of “developing and maintaining coherence between intersecting social worlds” [89, 393]. Additionally, it initiates controversial discourses that have resulted in new forms of biosocial collectivities ranging from cochlear implantees with (restored) normal human hearing to (trans)human configurations who have passed through (post)human enhancement. Our approach is thus situated at the intersection of disability and media studies and tackles the particular conditions technological media configurations impose upon the (re-)production of dis/ability.

Abstract: How do we react to uncomfortable futures? By developing the notion of chronopolitics, this article presents two ways that we typically react to future challenges in the present. At the core of the chronopolitics of prevention, we find a striving for normalization and conservation of the present vis-a-vis dangerous futures. In contrast, the chronopolitics of preemption are geared towards a reformation, if not even a revolution of the present. Two case studies in the field of science and technology policy illustrate the difference between prevention and preemption. The debate on human embryonic stem cells illuminates prevention. The debate on nanotechnology clarifies preemption.