Development Ethical and Societal Issues Satyen Baindur PhD

Stewardship in Nanotechnology Development:
Ethical and Societal Issues
SATYEN BAINDUR, PHD
Ottawa Policy Research Associates, Inc.
OPRA Report 2006-4-1 Issued April 2006
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the health status of the individual in question 16 , or where it could be programmed to
monitor conditions different from those that were consented to.
This type of technology could also be used to detect and store the detailed health
state of an individual – for example, it is not too far-fetched to imagine a mobile (but
passive) nano-biosensor network that detects individuals with specific health conditions,
unbeknown to the individuals themselves. Clearly this would render the concept of
individual health privacy completely meaningless. By only a slightly greater stretch of
imagination, it is possible to envisage an active network of nano-biosensors that can
invasively interrogate the health condition of a person or even a population, again without
the individual or population becoming aware that this is happening.
Of course, this type of innovation, should it come about, can also have beneficial
public health impacts, and the violation of privacy must be balanced against the possible
public health benefit. To some extent, this type of dilemma is already faced in the public
health context today. The more significant concern is when the benefit from such a
monitoring and surveillance is appropriated for exclusive private or commercial gain. In
such a case, privacy will have been violated without a concomitant public benefit.
A related concern is already being faced in certain biotechnology contexts, where
it is now possible to detect certain heritable conditions or predispositions well in advance
of when they manifest themselves. So long as the condition is not immediately life
threatening, the detection of such tendencies is now considered subject to privacy laws,
and even the affected individual may elect not to be informed, under a supposed ‘right
not to know’. Storage of such information, when the individual has elected not to be
informed, raises ethical issues, and widely accepted norms have not yet been established.
A similar set of ethical issues underlies the development of such capabilities in the nano
and bio-nano contexts, and an acceptable set of norms needs to be evolved.
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16 For example, it has been suggested that such tagging could simplify identification of mentally
incompetent individuals, or those suffering from conditions such as epilepsy, or those who might be unable
to provide a complete health history, etc.
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