The IASTED International
Conference
on
Nanotechnology and Applications
~NANA 2008~
September 29 – October 1, 2008
Crete, Greece
PANEL SESSION
Small Divides, Big Challenges?
Nanotechnologies, Access and Human Health
Abstract
The growing interest in nanomedicine, together with the increasing development of techno-scientific research in this field make radically new opportunities for medical care attainable; and at the same time, raise new concerns about ethical, social, and legal issues. This panel session will address such issues, focusing on the impact of nanotechnologies on justice and equal opportunities in healthcare.
The starting question, which emerges in many documents, can be summarised as this: who will benefit from new achievements of nanomedicine and from the resulting improvements of healthcare systems? Who will take on the burdens and costs related to experimentation and to the availability of new products?
As some studies show, this question is already urgent in the short term, considering the growing investments and funding for nanotechnology research in developed countries and in some developing countries (such as India, China, and Brazil), with a dramatic increase in what could be called 'nano-divide' not only between developed and developing countries, but also between developing countries themselves.
What is more, the problem of equal opportunities in health care also emerges within individual countries because of the gap that might arise between the asserted availability of advanced diagnosis and therapies based on nanotechnologies, and the non-availability of healthcare services in the concrete life of (some) patients.
The panel will therefore examine the problem of access, considered as an essential prerequisite in order to guarantee the effective implementation of the right to health, to the extent that it is acknowledged as a universal human right. This issue is to be developed in two distinct but nonetheless complementary aspects: the access to treatments and therapies and the access to knowledge and information, including those generated through diagnostic tools, with regard to different but interrelated dimensions, like policy making and the concrete implementation of the right to health in medical practice.
The panel perspective on these topics has two main features.
On the one hand, it is acknowledged that the problem of health is strongly influenced by different social and economic contexts, which leads to the necessity of setting up the debate starting from socio-economic peculiarities of different countries.
On the other hand, the character of enabling technologies legitimates starting with problems and established expertise about the relation between the development of technologies and the individuals' and social groups' health, pointing to new dimensions related to nanotechnological research.
Fully acknowledging these two dimensions, the panel will therefore be aimed at giving a transnational and multidisciplinary perspective on them.
The desirable outcome of the panel would be to indicate possible recommendations that might be useful in order to reduce existing and future inequalities in access to nanotechnologies for health.
Panelists
- Prof. Angelo Stefanini, Department of Medicine and Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Bologna (Italy)
- Jayashree Vivekanandan, Science and Technology Area of the Resources and Global Security Division (TERI), India
- Dr. Gian Carlo Delgado, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Humanities (CEIICH), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
- Prof. Richard Gold, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada
Several examples of questions or issues that will be addressed by the panel:
- How can nanomedicine develop new therapies and diagnostic tools, and, in general, improve the quality of healthcare, at a local, regional and international level?
- To what extent is there fairness in the exchange of drugs and medical devices?
- Which regulatory levels and mechanisms should be preferred in order to fulfill the right to health for all through nanomedicine?
Biography of the Presenter
Elena Pariotti is a full professor at the University of Padova (Italy), Faculty of Political Sciences, where she teaches Human Rights, Legal Theory, and Human Rights and International Justice. Her research interests concern human rights and international justice, philosophy of international law, regulation theory, and multiculturalism.
She is co-editor (with Joachim Schummer) of a special issue of Nanoethics (Springer 2008) dealing with legal regulation of nanotechnologies.
Among her publications there are three books respectively concerning the debate between Liberalism and Communitarianism and their approaches to fundamental rights and "cultural rights"; the notion of interpretive community in contemporary theories of legal interpretation; and the concept of international justice in the light of the increasing mutual openness of legal systems.
She is now interested in studying the relationships between international law and the emerging accountability of private economic actors for international justice principles and human rights.
