The Human Centred Approach to Bionanotechnology in Telemedicine: Ethical Considerations

Introduction

Innovation by tradition was viewed as a linear process: from basic research to technology progress, test/evaluation, demonstration, deployment, commercialization, and ultimately, market penetration. And possibly, if successful, market saturation, obsolescence, and finally substitution. Human (and social) factors- needs, desires, demands, behaviour- were considered either not intuitively, anecdotally, coincidentally, mechanically, and often reactively. Innovation was firstly defined as hard science, engineering, and production, with marketing and sales trailing behind, as “army camp followers”. Therefore, the primary challenge to promulgate a more human centred and ethical approach to manage and account for innovation is:

• •

  Can we encourage innovation that adds net social value? That is, whose benefits clearly outweigh its costs?

• •

  At the same time, can we deter—or at least not encourage—innovation that serves malicious ends or that causes serious threats to humanity?

Plus, it seems obvious that healthcare innovation have huge benefits from ICT; however, such technologies have the ability to affect positively and negatively patients, and so society must investigate their impacts, namely in telemedicine. Nevertheless, the main purpose is to approach bionanotechnology as a research field. But, how can we define bionanotechnology? As we will demonstrate, such concept is still an ongoing debate, and for that we need to address two levels of arguing:

• •

  What is biotechnology? Which are its applications, particularly medical applications? What ethical and moral dilemmas arise?

• •

  What is nanotechnology? Which are its applications, particularly medical? What ethical and moral dilemmas occur?

Biotechnology can be broadly defined as the condition of using organisms or their products for commercial purposes. It has been used into food, crops or domestic animals; but, recent developments in molecular biology have given biotechnology a new meaning, prominence, and potential. It is (modern) biotechnology that has captured the attention of the public, and of course encompasses a great deal of ethical and moral dilemmas.

Nanotechnology is the creation of functional materials, devices, and systems through control of matter on the nanometer length scale, the exploitation of novel properties and phenomena developed at that scale (Bonsor, 2002). Throughout literature it is possible to find several examples of nanotechnology applications: giant magnetoresistance in nanocrystalline materials, nanolayers with selective optical barriers, nanomedicine robots, etc. (Institute of Molecular Manufacturing, 2003). Concerning the possible and moral dilemmas of such technology it is usual that philosophers, ethicists and many scientists frequently speak as if such objects will exist in a nearly future, but in fact they already exist which clearly creates a policy vacuum (Moor, 2001).

Only after such discussion is feasible to acknowledge the aim of your contribution: how can we define bionanotechnology as a research field? Which are its medical applications? What sorts of ethical and moral dilemmas are involved? And, could the level of such dilemmas be a sum of biotechnology and nanotechnology, or imposes new challenges?