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Governance of Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials: Principles, Regulation, and Renegotiating the Social Contract

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

George A. Kimbrell
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How should we oversee new and emerging technologies and their products? What lessons can we discern from existing regulatory examples and from past mistakes? How do these lessons learned translate into informed recommendations for adequate oversight for nanotechnology to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? The investigators of this interdisciplinary project undertook this endeavor intending to answer these questions among others.

In parallel with the project team putting together this symposium, another, very different process on the oversight of nanotechnology took place. An international coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) formed to address the nanotech policy dialogue. The first goal of this NGO group was to agree upon and draft fundamental principles of oversight, which it completed in 2007-08. These principles close with a call for their adoption and/or internalization by all relevant actors and bodies. In effect, they serve a function in the policy dialogue similar to that of this project’s forthcoming recommendations.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , Winter 2009 , pp. 706 - 723
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2009

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