Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
results will be interesting and useful in some way” (Easterbrook 2012). Not
only does such a field require a very high level of interdisciplinary integra-
tion, but the products often result from a commercial market niche rather
than sound scientific understanding.
In such system thinking, “Questions about whether certain kinds of
research are ethical, or who might yield the benefits from this research lie
outside the boundary of this system, and so are not considered” (ibid) or at
least not as heavily as they should. What is more is that this scientific dis-
course, despite only covering certain aspects of the problem, effectively con-
tributes in reassuring the public. The possibility of critical distance between
a researcher and his object is then lessened. Worst in such system, “science
is seen as a neutral pursuit of knowledge, and therefore, attempts to disrupt
experiments must be 'anti-knowledge', or 'anti-science'” (ibid). However, in
application sectors like nanotechnologies, pressing marketing requirements
precede the bulk of the work that needs to be done in order to understand the
nature and potential impacts of the product. Although obviously, “People
who operate within this system tend to frame the discussion in terms of an
attack” (ibid), it is widely recognized that not one scientist can claim to be
able to establish on his own, the appropriate usage that should be reserved
for a specific technology according to their environmental, social, health, and
economic externalities. This is the case for silver nanoparticles used in socks,
underwear, and washing machines (Benn and Westerhoff 2008), despite the
fact that these types of nanoparticles are already found in fish environments
and some effects are beginning to be measured. The nanosilver antiseptic
bandages for burn victims are not put into question here, but rather the mas-
sive distribution and usage of such products, their ubiquity, and when the
effects of contamination are already observed in the environment.
Aside from the importance of questioning the scientific paradigms at work
in the development of nanotechnologies, notably in the nanofood sector, it is
important to bring to light the increased industrial concentration effects gen-
erated by these sociotechnical innovations and their multiple socioeconomic,
political, and cultural impacts (employment, working conditions, consump-
tion patterns associated with their diffusion, land and food control, etc.) on
the agrifood systems at a global scale; this constitutes a blind spot in many
published texts concerning the nanofood sector.
In centering solely on the analysis of potential impacts on health and the envi-
ronment, as if they represented the Alpha and Omega of social acceptability,
it is clear that the evaluation premises and the insufficient budget allowance,
which oscillate between 2% and 6% of the investments in the field, condemns us
to decades of marginal and obsolete research in comparison with these speedy
developments fuelled by the market and the states (Papilloud 2010; Laurent
2010). If it took, since the end of the 1960s, more than 50 years of research to
begin shedding light on the importance of endocrine-disrupting effects associ-
ated with a number of pesticides and chemical synthetic products and which
contribute substantially to the chronic disease epidemic, such as cancer, how
