Regulation For Whom? By Whom? With Whom? for what?
Gregor Wolbring[i]
The discourse around
the regulation of many biotechnology products, goals, processes and
applications are perceived by many as highly flawed.
Many feel that the
nanotechnology is just developing and the nanotechnology discourse might be
able to generate a decent regulation discourse preventing the pitfalls of the
biotech regulation discourse. So where are we in the nanotechnology regulation
discourse?
The objective of this paper
is to address the issues of regulation with whom’, ‘for whom’, ‘by whom’ and
‘for what’ in order to ascertain whether the Nano discourse of today is better
than the bio discourse of the past especially in regards to disadvantaged and
marginalized social groups especially disabled people.
This paper addresses
these questions among others by using keyword searches in Google, Google
Scholar and different types of academic clusters of databases (results see
table),
The paper will conclude
with an assessment of the state of the nano regulation discourse, the
feasibility of the nano regulation discourse ever becoming inclusive and
suggestions of tool development needed and attitude change needed to make the
nano regulation discourse inclusive.
An increasing amount of
people ask for the regulation of Nanotechnology. However what should be
regulated? The safety of nanomaterials, the safety of nanotechnology processes and
products? The equitable distribution of nanotechnology products and processes?
The governance of nanotechnology?
The proper selection of
R&D priorities for a balanced and equitable development of nanotechnology?
Should we regulate access issues or privacy issues?
When we chose
regulations should they first be related to the needs of the marginalized or
the needs of the already powerful social groups? Should they be locally or
globally or should the local ones have a global outline? Can the regulatory system
of today deal with the increasing speed of inventions and the decreasing time
of an invention cycle?
It is
reaonable to expect that perceptions and social values and the existing
hierachy within stakeholders shape what regulation issues are covered with what
kind of angles and even how much visibility any given issue receives. Within
the biotechnology debate, agriculture biotechnology gained much more visibility
and controversy than human ‘health’ biotechnology. Medical Health safety issues gained much more
visibility than social health safety issues such as equity and justice. The
same dynamic of medical health safety issues versus social health safety issues
appears also within nanotechnology and NBICS. The safety card was played by
Bill Joy(1)
putting nanobots and nanotech on the agenda and the field of nanotoxicology of
nanomaterials becomes increasingly visible. The social issues such as
distributive justice, enhancement medicine, transhumanism, concept of health
and others are second tier if that. In the moment the Biotechnology hierarchy
of issues replays itself within Nanotechnology. The results of the keyword combination search method in
Google, Google Scholar, Ovid, Academic Search Premier and Cambridge Scientific
Databases (for a description of the academic databases see appendix in (2)) highlight certain
characteristics and certain realities.
1) The
Term “Nanotechnology Regulation” receives less or equal hits than
Nanotechnology with my name. That is a clear indication of the lack of
discourse around Nanotechnology regulation
2) If one looks at which
social groups are mentioned within ‘Nanotechnology Regulation’ one can clearly
see a hierarchy with disabled people and indigenous people on the bottom. This
is an indication of the prevailing biases within the nanotechnology regulation
for whom discourse
3) The much higher hits
with patients versus disabled people indicates a very medical flavor of the
nanotechnology regulation discourse
4) It also allows for the
conclusion that terms such as safety and risks are interpreted in certain
medical ways
5) The keyword combination
‘Nanotechnology and safety’ has Twenty Thousand times more hits than the
combination ‘ Nanotechnology and distributive justice
6) Nanotechnology
applications like Energy water and food have only 10% or less hits if combined
with the terms law and regulation
7) Nanotechnology teamed
up with human rights has only 20% of the hits of the combination Nanotechnology
and weapons and only 1% of hits of the
combination Nanotechnology and health
8) So far the regulation
discourse seems to be much more concerned with medical health safety than
social safety
9) We have not even
started the debate around the regulation of nanotechnology and we see already
the appearance of synthetic biology which is 1) the design and construction of new
biological parts, devices, and systems, and 2) the re-design of
existing, natural biological systems for useful purposes which has many envisioned applications (appendix 1) in
need of regulation. The regulatory
system of today can not deal with the increasing speed of inventions and the
decreasing time of an invention cycle
Table 1: Word
combination/hits for Google, Google Scholar, Ovid, Academic Search Premier and
Cambridge Scientific Databases
|
SINGLE/COMBINATIONAL KEYWORD/SEARCHTERM |
Google |
Google Scholar |
Ovid |
Academic Search Premier |
|
|
Nanotechnology “Nanotechnology
regulation” “Regulation of
Nanotechnology” Nanotechnology+ Regulation Regulation of Nanotechnology |
137,000,000/ 928/767 3,370,000 1,170,000 |
85,700/ 10/45/ 5,110 3,990 |
15258/ 0/1 296/ 201 |
16040 10/11 718/718 |
14790 0/0 177/4 |
|
Nanotechnology + Wolbring |
840 |
23 |
0 |
7 |
1 |
|
“Nanotechnology regulation” + women
|
252 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ “the south” |
52 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ "indigenous people" |
3 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ disabled
people/ |
2 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ people with disabilities |
8 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ the poor |
88 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ patient |
122 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ Safety |
950 |
|
|
|
|
|
+ Risk |
1340 |
|
|
|
|
|
SINGLE/COMBINATIONAL KEYWORD/SEARCHTERM |
Google |
Google Scholar |
Ovid |
Academic Search Premier |
|
|
Nanotechnology + Law |
14,000,000 |
9,350 |
176 |
1807 |
184 |
|
Nanotechnology +Law + safety |
2,340,000 |
2,090 |
24 |
26 |