Science, ethics, and the "problems" of governing nanotechnologies

Commentators continue to weigh in on whether there are ethical, social, and policy issues unique to nanotechnology, whether new regulatory schemes should be devised, and if so, how. Many of these commentaries fail to take into account the historical and political environment for nanotechnologies. That context affects regulatory and oversight systems as much as any new metrics to measure the effects of nanoscale materials, or organizational changes put in place to facilitate data analysis. What comes to count as a technical or social "problem" says much about the sociotechnical and political-historical networks in which technologies exist. This symposium's case studies provide insight into procedural successes and failures in the regulation of novel products, and ethical or social analyses that have attended to implications of novel, disruptive technologies. Yet what may be needed is a more fundamental consideration of forms of governance that may not just handle individual products or product types more effectively, but may also be flexible enough to respond to radically new technological systems. Nanotechnology presents an opportunity to think in transdisciplinary terms about both scientific and social concerns, rethink "knowns" about risk and how best to ameliorate or manage it, and consider how to incorporate ethical, social, and legal analyses in the conceptualization, planning, and execution of innovations.