Colloque “Evaluations morales des technologies controversées dans les conférences
citoyennes” – Lisbonne, 14-15 mai 2009
Ontologies of deliberation embodied in participatory procedures: the place
for moral dilemmas
Authors:
José Maria Castro Caldas (CES – University of Coimbra): josecaldas@ces.uc.pt
Laura Centemeri (CES – University of Coimbra): centemeri@ces.uc.pt
Ana Costa (DINÂMIA-ISCTE): ana.costa@iscte.pt
Joao Arriscado Nunes (CES – University of Coimbra): jan@ces.uc.pt
I
The authors of the present paper had recently the opportunity of participating as
organizers and observers in a “deliberative forum” on nanotechnology held in Coimbra
(Portugal) the 7th of March 2009, in the frame of the research project “Deepening Ethical
Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies” (DEEPEN), funded by
European Commission (6th Framework Program).
The DEEPEN project is a leading research partnership for integrated understanding of the
ethical challenges posed by emerging nanotechnologies in real world circumstances, and
their implications for civil society, for governance, and for scientific practice 1. As part of
the tasks of the project, questions surrounding the design and implementation of
experimental approaches for deliberative fora, focusing on ethical issues associated with
nano-sciences and nano-technologies, are explored.
One of the main features of experimental forms of public participation is the possibility
of articulating a heterogeneous range of actors and modes of knowledge production, and
aligning a diversity of publics, scientists and social scientists for the debate of ethical and
social implications of new technologies. Still, engaging with new and emerging sciences
and technologies (NEST), such as nanotechnology, raises a number of questions which
1
The project is coordinated by the Institute for Hazard and Risk Research (IHRR) at Durham University.
The project team includes researchers based at Darmstadt University of Technology (Germany), the Centre
for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), and the University of Twente (Netherlands).
1
have not been adequately dealt with in current or past designs of deliberative procedures.
In particular, participants in debates over NEST are faced with technologies in the
making, which cannot be assessed on the basis of their actual consequences for society,
environment or health or for their effects on specific groups or collectives.
One of the key questions faced by the Coimbra DEEPEN team was therefore how to
select the participants in the deliberative workshop. The criterion of involving “affected
people” needed to be re-interpreted, since most of the effects of nanotechnologies are
located in the future: already constituted public “matters of concern” (Latour, 2005) are
in this case missing and what can be discussed are potential future implications marked
by “radical uncertainties” (Callon et al., 2001). Under these conditions, the Coimbra
team’s option was to select potential “carriers of concerns” which were likely to be
broadly shared by “common citizens”. “Engaged citizens” were identified, in particular
activists involved in groups, organizations and movements already constituted and active
on a range of public concerns (from environmental issues to human rights). People
already involved in discussions associated with new and emerging technologies (not
necessarily nanotechnologies), like movements of popularization of science, groups
working with alternative views of knowledge, therapeutic and body-oriented practice,
were as well asked to participate. Two scientists working in nanotechnology were as well
invited to take part in the deliberative experiment.
The deliberative forum started with a plenary session in the morning2. A brief
presentation of the DEEPEN project team and the deliberative forum, its organization,
rules and aims was made by one of the team members. A plenary session followed,
starting with participants (16 in total, plus the DEEPEN team and three observers)
introducing themselves. The morning plenary session continued with the presentation of
the two topics selected by the research team as matters of concern of the deliberative
forum: 1) control, regulation, public policies and nanotechnology; 2) political economy
2
We draw the description and part of the analysis of the forum dynamic from the following DEEPEN
working papers: Nunes J.A., Matias M., Felipe A. “Deliberative Forum in nanothechonologies. Public
Report” and Nunes J.A., Matias M., Felipe A. “Deliberative fora across European nations”, Contributing
Report from Coimbra team.
2
of nanotechnology. These topics were identified as relevant “matter of concerns” in a
previous phase of the project, characterized by the organization of specific focus groups
with different categories of potentially concerned citizens3. The presentation was divided
into four parts, featuring respectively two “concerned citizens” selected among
participants of the focus groups carried out previously, and two scientists working on
nanotechnology, who offered their views as researchers, with a focus on the area of
nanotechnology application in health.
These four presentations identified a number of themes, among them: nanotechnologies
in military applications, surveillance, health and environmental risks of nanotechnologies,
disparities in regulation and accountability between the health domain (genetic and viral
therapies for Parkinson’s disease) and the industrial domain (engineering applications and
materials), ethics and social responsibilities of science and scientific research, science
communication, regulation, accountability and citizen participation, positive effects of
nano research and nano technologies on economy and on the health domain.
Participants were then divided in two groups, maintaining as much diversity as possible
in their composition. For each group, a facilitator and observers were assigned. These
group sessions were organized in two parts: in the morning, participants were asked to
draw a list of problems and concerns around nanotechnologies. After the lunch break,
participants were requested to discuss possible responses to the problems and concerns
previously identified. Both groups elaborated a list of contributions to the final session,
where the recommendations proposed by the two groups were discussed in order to draw
a “position document” meant as the output of the deliberative forum (see Annex).
II
Those of us less familiar with deliberative fora acting in the circumstance as observers
were initially struck by the relaxed tone of the exchange. Having in mind the
3
Focus groups were designed to include only actors who had no commitment, professional or academic, to
nanotechnologies, but who would be able to constitute themselves through participation in collective
discussion as citizens concerned with the implications of nanotechnologies.
3
controversies on nanotechnologies this was indeed surprising. Seemingly the participants
in the forum were engaged in a conversation with the attitude of people playing a game
(jeu de salon) with no stakes involved. What might have been the comment of a game
theorist occurred to some of us: this was just “cheap talk”.
However, as the organizers reminded that there would be a final statement of conclusions
to be underwritten by the participants wishing to do so, the tone of the exchange was
somewhat modified. Now it was becoming apparent that for some of the participants
there was indeed something at stake. For the scientists and science communicators in the
room, the reputation of science in general, and of research in nanotechnologies in
particular, was at stake. However for others in the room the stakes were much less salient.
It became apparent that this, and not only the differences in capabilities of argumentation
and speaking in public –still present and easily detectable as elements of facilitation or
obstacle to participation- might account for the more active and engaged role of scientists
observed in the discussion process. In fact, in the DEEPEN experimental deliberative
forum ,“lay” citizens, scientists in the field of nanotechnology and science
communicators all shared the same space of discussion, but only scientists and science
communicators could really be described as “stakeholders”, being in fact the only ones
who had an identifiable stake in the exercise.
But what does it mean to have a stake in the exercise of deliberation? It involves first of
all to have the resources, of knowledge and experience, to imagine effects of activities
that can originate as products of deliberation and potentially affecting the person
deliberating. It implies, as we are going to discuss in the following paragraphs, an actionoriented approach to deliberation, connected with the existence of attachments to the
object discussed: changes in the object can affect the person in ways that the person can
imagine.
The debate proceeded with meaningful silences and utterances. The former included: (a)
the “ends” of society in pursuing research and development of nanotechnologies and the
existence or non-existence of alternative means to achieve the same ends; (b) scientific
4
uncertainties in respect to nanotechnologies and possible hazardous consequences. As for
the first point, what we observed in the debate was that people participating in the
discussion were considering “social ends” or “social goals” linked to the development of
nanotechnology (basically the answer to the question “why we need nanotechnology?”)
as taken for granted, external to the discussion. The result was that these ends/goals were
never clearly stated during the deliberative process and they were never the case for an
open discussion. A general idea of nanotechnology potentially contributing to the “good”
for society, even if with possible negative side effects, was the taken for granted frame of
the debate. This frame was in part induced by the “matter of concerns” the research team
suggested as starting point for the debate: regulation and control were explicitly presented
as main topics for discussion, thus contributing to increase the legitimacy of the frame.
Scientists were as well actively engaged in stressing the central role of regulation and
control as consubstantial to sound scientific development and practical applications of
nanotechnologies. This went with their emphasis on possible negative side-effects of
nano-technologies presented in terms of risks (with no reference to conditions of radical
uncertainties), and the need to control them (through regulation). In fact, as we already
said, radical uncertainties were never evoked in the debate. The issue of the “effective
regulation” became rapidly the central issue in a debate dominated by the search for the
“best means” available to assure a scientific and technological development of
nanotechnology contributing to the (unexplored and underspecified) common good.
Discussing the experience of the DEEPEN deliberative forum, organizers and observers
concluded that the design of the forum in fact contributed to determine the final outcome.
This outcome was defined in terms of a type of “hybrid forum” not living up to current
definitions of what a deliberative forum should be.
III
Determining what is wrong with the architecture of this forum calls for a reflection on
what is meant by deliberation (the ontology of deliberation) and what we want to achieve
through participatory processes of debate and decision making.
5
In spite of their variance, notions of deliberation are constructed, in general, in opposition
to what may be labeled ‘individualistic conceptions of collective decision-making’
(aggregation of preferences or bargaining). The main point of contention is on the nature
of preferences, but there are other relevant dimensions that contribute to differentiate
these two positions, namely, means-ends separation, commensurability, communication4.
The main feature of the individualistic conceptions is in fact that preferences are taken as
‘given’, or even ‘fixed’. This is often considered as meaning that preferences, like
Humean passions, are beyond the scope of reason. The given preference approach entails
a whole conception of decision-making. Given preferences imply that, in decisionmaking processes, either individual or collective, the ends of action are fixed at the outset
and clearly separated from means. As a consequence, what is to be decided in the process
is the best means to achieve the given ends. Additionally the individualistic conceptions
tend also to assume commensurability. For the individual, this means that all values
present in choice can be reduced to a unique scale (usually ‘utility’) and traded-off ones
against the other. For the collective, it implies that individual ‘utilities’ may also be
aggregated and that in the event of a shift in a social state from A to B individual losses of
utility of supporters of A may be compensated by those supporting B. Collective decision
making, in this perspective, radically differs from individual decision making in that the
ends of action, although fixed for individuals, may vary and clash across individuals,
adding complication to decision-making processes.
The deliberative perspective is opposed to the former in that ‘preferences’ (wants, values,
ends) may be shaped and reshaped in the deliberative process. Deliberating in this
perspective is as much about ‘deciding what we really want’ as about ‘what we should do
to get what we want’. This is as relevant for individual deliberation as it is for collective
deliberation. Deliberation is therefore not a mere selection of the best means.
Furthermore, means and ends are not clearly separable.
4
“Communication” points to the fact that in deliberation people are supposed to be able to speak with each
other, whilst in the preferences model people are not meant to exchange views on the decision to be taken.
When communication is involved, people are able to see themselves as part of a collectivity, that is, there is
a dimension of “we” which is present to actors.
6
According to Dewey (1922, p. 215), there is a narrow use of reason which “holds a fixed
end-in-view and deliberates only upon means of reaching it”, and a wide use which
“regards the end-in-view in deliberation as tentative and permits, nay encourages the
coming into view of consequences which will transform it and create a new purpose and
plan”. The ends-in-view emerging in deliberation are not previously fixed. Or, as clearly
stated by Joas (1996, p. 154), not only “the goals of action are usually relatively
undefined, [but] only become more specific as a consequence of the decision to use
particular means”. Nor are they detached from the context in which action is situated. In
deliberation there is reciprocity of goals and means, signifying “the interaction of the
choice of means and the definition of goals”. The consideration of means not only allows
for the specification of ends, but also for the possible emergence of new ends: “Only
when we recognize that certain means are available to us do we discover goals which had
not occurred to us before. Thus, means not only specify goals, but they also expand the
scope for possible goal-setting” (Joas, 1996, p. 154).
Besides rejecting the idea of given ends and means-ends separation, Dewey, and many
after him, also denied the presupposition of a final end or a commensurant of the various
and conflicting tendencies operating in action. Dewey’s view of deliberation does not
impose the commensurability of values as a precondition for rationality. Choice is
rational when it is the outcome of a process in which the various reasons justifying choice
are brought together, but not necessarily amalgamated in a single dimension. Justifying
choice is meant to correspond to the way values are coordinated highlighting an
alternative of choice that should be selected. This does not require that any specific
combination of values has to offer a commensurant value or reason larger or better than
others, determining choice (Dewey, 1922).
Deliberation, as represented in figure 1, may therefore be conceived in opposition to
individualistic conceptions of collective decision-making along four dimensions: the
fixity of preferences, means-ends separation, commensurability and communication.
7
Fig.1
Deliberation:
Open preferences
Reciprocal means-ends
Incommensurability
Communication
Individualistic collective decision making:
Given preferences
Means-ends separation
Commensurability
Silence
There is however a fifth dimension of deliberation – action orientation – which if taken
into account gives rise to a richer picture of collective decision-making and of
deliberation.
Action orientation refers to the practical import of the outcome of the process. At one
extreme there are exercises were the individual participating is brought into a situation
where her opinion or valuation will have little or no consequence in terms of a final
choice or decision (we will refer to this as detachment). At the other extreme there are
situations in which the individuals are contributing to an actual (collective) choice with
consequences for themselves and others (we will refer to this as attachment).
By inserting an action orientation axis in figure 1 (see figure 2) a frame for classification
emerges.
Fig 2
8
Open preferences
Reciprocal means-ends
Incommensurability
Comunication
IV
Deliberation
detachment
attachment
III
II
Given preferences
Means-ends separation
Commensurability
Silence
The place of deliberation in such a frame is clear-cut. Besides open preferences,
reciprocal means-ends, incommensurability and communication, deliberation, as
understood, for instance, by Dewey, also presupposes attachment. Deliberation takes
place in the action context. It is triggered by surprise – an unexpected event or
opportunity – interrupting settled ways or habits. And it also makes it possible to resume
action, once a choice is reached, the mind is unified (made up). Deliberation is “a
dramatic rehearsal (in imagination) of various competing possible lines of action”
(Dewey, 1922, p. 190). This means that the consequences of each line of action occurring
in future can only be experienced in imagination. However, there are consequences to be
experienced by the decision maker and others. The agent knows that her choices and
actions give rise to consequences upon the world in which she acts and upon her own
character. As put by Dewey, deliberation involves a reflection about questions such as:
“what kind of a world is in the making”, “what kind of person one is to become, what
sort of self is in the making,” (Dewey, 1922, p. 217). For this reason, “[p]otentially (…)
every and any act is within the scope of morals, being a candidate for possible judgment
9
with respect to its better-or-worse quality” (Dewey, 1922, p. 279). Placed in the action
context, deliberation inescapably involves moral dilemmas.
Having located deliberation in the classificatory frame of figure 2, three positions were
left empty.
Starting with the second quadrant we find social choice as understood in neoclassic
economics, namely by Arrow: “In a capitalist democracy there are essentially two
methods by which social choices can be made: voting, typically used to make ‘political’
decisions, and the market mechanism, typically used to make ‘economic’ decisions”
(Arrow, 1951).
Fig. 3
Open preferences
Reciprocal means-ends
Incommensurability
Communication
detachment
Mise-en-scene
Contingent
valuation
Deliberation
attachment
Bargaining,
Preference
agregation
Given preferences
Means-ends separation
Commensurability
Silence
Voting for Arrow is simply “a method of amalgamating the tastes of many individuals in
the making of social choices” (Arrow, 1951, p. 2). As he shows, in a framework were
individual preferences are taken as fixed, there is simply no voting procedure that will
10
always yield consistent preference orderings. Since consistence, in Arrow’s view, is a
feature of rationality, his verdict for the rationality of democracy is harsh: “the only
methods of passing from individual tastes to [consistent] social preferences (…) are either
imposed or dictatorial” (Arrow, 1951: 59). The approach of the amalgamation of tastes or
preference aggregation thus leads to a deadlock for democracy.
The market mechanism as a method of making collective choices, or rather replacing
them by contracts, has been fully explored by Ronald Coase (1960). Coase argued that if
there were no ‘transactions costs’, shifts from A to B in society could be achieved by
contracts were those benefiting from the shift would compensate the losers. Social choice
in this perspective is equated with bargaining.
The second quadrant where preference aggregation and bargaining are located is
therefore populated with agents who have stakes in the collective decision making
process. They are attached. However they are silent, quietly placing their ballots in
anonymity or, at best, bargaining pair wise with each other.
Other mechanisms for public decision making are more detached. We find them in the
third quadrant.
Cost-benefit analyses which has been advanced by some as the rational criteria for taking
decisions in the public sphere is often confronted with the problem of imputing value to
goods which are not marketable. It then resorts to methods of valuation – contingent
valuation – which enact hypothetical markets. Typically, in contingent valuation surveys
people are asked to state the price they would be ready to pay to preserve some
environmental good or public facility, or would accept to receive in exchange for those
goods. People are not ‘revealing a preference’ by offering money for a good they will
actually consume or intend to, they are just put in imagination in a hypothetical market by
asking to ascribe value to non-marketable goods.
11
They are as silent as their counterparts in quadrant II, moreover they are detached, i.e.
they are asked to make decisions concerning situations that have not clear impact on
actions that will be undertaken.
In the fourth quadrant, people are as well detached, that is, they are asked to do an
exercise in taking decisions, with these decisions having no direct impact on actions that
will be eventually undertaken. However, in this case people are involved in a deliberative
“mise en scène”, resulting in the definition of a common position with regard to the
object of discussion/decision but with no clear stake. An example of deliberative “mise
en scène” is represented by the four experimental focus groups organized by the
DEEPEN team, as a preparation to the deliberative forum. These focus groups involved
just “lay” citizens in discussing nanotechnology: they were thought as homogeneous (and
not hybrid) forum, with basically nothing at stake. Each focus group started with a
session of information about nanotechnology, followed by a debate. The participants in
the focus group were then asked to do an exercise of scenario-building concerning
nanotechnology and to “perform” it. The use of these techniques allowed a variety of
formats of knowledge and communication to be expressed and to foster the debate.
Besides, the exercise contributed to create an emotional involvement, a form of concern
about nanotechnology, in particular thanks to the scenario building activity which
engaged the participants in imagining a common future involving nanotechnology. The
presence of an emotional involvement results in the moral dilemmas that were explicitly
brought to the fore in discussions inside the groups. Still, as the dynamic observed in the
DEEPEN deliberative forum shows (where citizens having participated in focus groups
were involved), the fictional nature of this deliberative exercise makes it difficult to
transfer these moral concerns elaborated in the “mise-en scène” as legitimate arguments
inside more structured, more pluralistic, action-oriented and power-related settings, like
the deliberative forum.
IV
12
The DEEPEN deliberative forum was meant as deliberative but it results in something
different. The analysis of what deliberation is (of its ontology, by opposition to the
ontology of other processes of collective decision) makes now clear that the forum was
not designed so to properly addressed the different forms of hibridity emerging in the
plurality of actors gathered together. In fact, participants were split in respect to
attachment along the “lay”- expert divide that, in its turn, introduced a splitting in terms
of legitimacy and competencies to speak in public. The design of the DEEPEN
deliberative forum directly tried to address the divide in terms of legitimacy and
competencies, notably through having two “lay” citizens introducing the debate in the
opening session. Nevertheless, where participants are diverse not only in respect to
competences and legitimacy but also in the degree of attachment, still imbalance in the
debate and the conclusions may occur.
The case of the DEEPEN forum shows how this hybridity linked to attachment, if left
alone, can prevent the plurality of the forum to turn into not just an aggregation of views
in an unquestioned common frame, but a true composition, in terms of the making up of a
‘collective mind’. In this process of making up a ‘collective mind’, the role played by
addressing moral dilemmas is crucial. The ends turn to be fixed, see page 5 – the answer
to the question “why we need nanotechnology?” is taken for granted, external to the
discussion. Along this vein, the deliberative “mise-en-scene” tends to be similar to
contingent valuation, for the nature of preferences at least. Also for (in)commensurability
– the relevance of nanotechnologies for the common good is meant to represent a
commensurant, the point to be discussed is just related to matters of regulation.
When ends and purposes are left unquestioned and consequences, namely hazardous
consequences remain hypothetical for detached participants, the lack of salience of moral
dilemmas comes as no surprise. The lack of exploration in the space of social goals and
ends of nanotechnologies development contributed in the deliberative forum to conceal
the existence of potential moral dilemmas, since the discussion never addressed possible
conflicts between societal ends and the pros and cons of nanotechnology. Moreover, the
collective search in the space of ends, but as well of means, involves an imaginative
experience of consequences that are to take place in the future, which involves sentiment
and emotion as much as it may involve computation and logics. Emotions are like red and
13
green alerts in the search process, signaling the emergence of moral difficulties. The
detachment from nanotechnology –or, to say it differently, the absence of clear stake- of
“lay” citizens participating in the forum, contributed as well to make invisible moral
dilemmas.
References
Arrow, Kenneth (1951), Social Choice and Individual Values, New York: John Wiley.
Callon, Michel, Pierre Lascoumes, Yannick Barthe (2001), Agir dans un monde
uncertain. Essai sur la démocratie technique, Seuil: Paris.
Coase, Ronald (1960), “The Problem of Social Cost”, Journal of Law and Economics, 1.
Dewey, John 1930 (1922). Human Nature and Conduct. An Introduction to Social
Psychology, The Modern Library: New York.
Dewey, John 1991 (1927). The Public and its Problems, Ohio University Press.
Joas, Hans (1996), The Creativity of Action, Polity Press: Cambridge.
Latour, Bruno (2005), Reassembling the Social: an Introduction to actor-network theory,
Oxford University Press: New York.
Annex 1
Documento final do fórum deliberativo DEEPEN
Preâmbulo
No dia 7 de Março de 2009 decorreu um fórum no âmbito do projecto DEEPEN - Deepening Ethical
Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies, no Centro de Estudos Sociais (CES) da
Universidade de Coimbra, onde se reuniram os cidadãos Ana Noronha, Ana Raquel Matos, Anabela
Santos, António Fortes, Helena Freitas, João Nuno Moreira, José João Lucas, Lanussinga Moisés, Leonel
14
Silva, Luís Pereira de Almeida, Maria Emília Almeida, Miriam Monteiro, Paula Morgado, Paulo Gama
Mota, Polybio Silva, Rita Serra, Rui Seabra, Tiago Catela, Vasco Pinto.
Recomendações
Associados às nanotecnologias existem riscos transversais que acompanham qualquer tecnologia emergente
e riscos que podem ser específicos de acordo com as várias áreas de intervenção, por exemplo: saúde, área
alimentar, agrícola, construção civil e área militar. Alguns deles contam com dimensões positivas que
podem ser enumeradas: Descoberta; Conhecimento; Melhoria da qualidade de vida; Desenvolvimento
sustentável (poupança energética e redução do consumo). Tendo em conta as preocupações e problemas
levantados pelo debate em torno das nanotecnologias e tecnologias emergentes e as suas implicações [ver
anexo], o grupo de cidadãos reunidos neste fórum deliberou as recomendações que se seguem:
Gerais
- Gerar mecanismos necessários para a comunicação, divulgação de conhecimento, interacção, facilitação e
troca de experiências entre as diferentes áreas científicas e a sociedade civil.
- O envolvimento de não-especialistas deve estar contemplado nas várias etapas de investigação,
informação e regulação.
Investigação
- Investir na investigação tendo em conta o desenvolvimento sustentável.
- A informação neste sentido deve estar patente na investigação e projectos europeus em torno das
nanotecnologias e pode ser desenvolvida através de websites onde são actualizados progressos e resultados,
com formas de consulta pública.
Informação
- A informação deve incluir o esclarecimento sobre o que são nanotecnologias e a sua diversidade, de tal
forma que os cidadãos não criem resistências.
- Devem criar-se incentivos para que a comunicação social alargue a sua acção às questões relacionadas
com ciência, tecnologia e sociedade; onde a formação e informação específica dos jornalistas neste campo
deve ser reforçada
-Educação
- Ao nível da educação, no seguimento do papel da informação, devem criar-se acções de divulgação nas
escolas assim como pela introdução do tema nos currículos escolares (básico e secundário).
- Devem desenvolver-se novas ferramentas para a escola abrindo-a à comunidade.
- Devem empregar-se diferentes estratégias de educação e cidadania cujos organismos facilitadores podem
ser ao nível nacional o programa “Ciência Viva” e os centros e museus de ciência.
- Regulação e certificação
- Acompanhamento, envolvimento da sociedade civil e regulação devem estar presentes ao longo das várias
etapas das nanociências e nanotecnologias, possivelmente através do envolvimento dos laboratórios e um
observatório europeu das nanotecnologias reforçado, cujo modelo poderia ser replicado ao nível nacional.
- Possibilidade de aplicar a outros domínios os procedimentos de avaliação e regulação na área da saúde, o
que deve sempre ter em conta a diversidade das nanotecnologias e o seu ciclo de vida, como por exemplo,
alargar ao domínio militar os mecanismos utilizados nestes outros campos.
- A certificação dos produtos e materiais deve ser prosseguida visto que as pessoas tenderão a excluir os
que não são certificados, assim deve criar-se um mecanismo e grupo de certificação que estaria intersectado
com os dispositivos de regulação e cujos termos seriam definidos pelas entidades competentes
reconhecendo que diferentes níveis de risco em diversas áreas implicam diferentes níveis de certificação.
- Os actores que poderiam articular os dispositivos e processos de regulação e certificação seriam as redes
de laboratórios (associados e de Estado, inclusivamente); os observatórios sobre tecnologias emergentes e
nanotecnologias; as comissões de ética existentes ou reformuladas para incluir a diversidade destes temas e
todas as plataformas de debate que possam ser constituídas e onde devem estar sempre incluídos os
representantes da sociedade civil .
Anexo: Preocupações e problemas suscitados pelo debate em torno das nanotecnologias
Grupo I
1. Riscos para o ambiente e saúde humana.
15
2. Diversidade das Nano tecnologias e das suas implicações
3. Controlo e regulação. Como? Quem? Limites e efeitos perversos.
4. Público e o seu envolvimento. Envolvimento a montante dos processos.
5. Informação. O que é? Quem a produz?
6. Repartição dos benefícios e efeitos negativos. Efeitos de ordem político-económica.
7. Definição das prioridades de investigação. Quem as define e quem tem legitimidade para isso?
8. A marca “Nano”. Efeitos positivos ou negativos.
9. Quem ganha e quem perde com a Nano (marketing, lobbies e pressão)?
Grupo II
1. Conhecimento, informação e envolvimento da sociedade
Envolvimento da sociedade na formação ética dos cidadãos.
Como informar as pessoas (em dois níveis: educação e exercício da cidadania).
Como tornar mais transparente junto da sociedade a investigação científica?
Os problemas de linguagem: deve ser clara para as pessoas.
Problema da partilha de informação geradora de conhecimento e da formação dos curricula formais e
informais para estudantes e escolas.
Gerar mecanismos necessários para a comunicação, divulgação de conhecimento, interacção, facilitação e
troca de experiências entre as diferentes áreas científicas e a sociedade civil.
2. Problemas transversais
Olhar para a nanotecnologia não só pelas suas especificidades mas também pelos problemas transversais
que se colocam em outras tecnologias.
Cruzamento da nanotecnologia com outras áreas e outros actores.
3. Controlo e regulação das nanotecnologias
Necessidade de regulação global e a diferentes escalas, incluindo as diferenças de regulação entre países
desenvolvidos e em desenvolvimento.
Qual o impacto da falta de controlo nessas áreas para a saúde?
Controlo e regulação de áreas como agricultura a indústria à semelhança do que é a prática no domínio da
saúde
Ter em conta interesses económicos instalados (lobbies…)
Usos militares, secretismo: avanços no armamento estão fora do controlo e podem ser imprevisíveis.
Problemas associados à deposição de resíduos; problemas da reciclagem.
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