Tista Bagchi
University of Delhi, India
Title: Why ethical safeguards matter in medical nanotechnology? Prospects and problems in the delivery of nanomedicine via microsurgical interventions
Biography
Biography: Tista Bagchi
Abstract
Nanomedicine and medical nanotechnology are considered to constitute new frontiers of medicine on a number of counts. As with any such new developments in medical science and technologies, significant moral and prudential concerns, which together come under ethical concerns overall, inevitably arise as regards the regulation of the implementation and use of these developments. These concerns have been articulated with a good deal of clarity by Resnik & Tinkle (2007), who state that, among other things, “researchers, consumer advocates, and politicians have urged government agencies and private companies to proactively address the ethical, social and regulatory aspects of nanotechnology”. This need for ethical safeguards and regulations in nanomedicine gets compounded with the need for safeguards in microsurgical interventions given the prospect of combining the latter with, e.g., polymeric micelle-borne drug delivery. The mode of addressing the need for combined ethical safeguards and regulations adopted here is that of initiating reflective equilibrium with consideration of the respective prospects and problems of nanomedicine (including nanotechnological implementation) and microsurgery as known to date, with examination of certain key transnational guidelines in medical ethics, but focusing on this particular combination of the two with their considerable magnitudinal differences. While the prospects of combining protocols in nanomedicine and medical nanotechnology with those in microsurgery look highly promising, the potential problems and pitfalls are far better anticipated in advance for the formulation of reasonable ethical safeguards that benefit all.