Louise Bernier

Framework for the Analysis of Nanotechnologies’ Impacts and Ethical Acceptability: Basis of an Interdisciplinary Approach to Assessing Novel Technologies

Abstract The genetically manipulated organism (GMO) crisis demonstrated that technological development based solely on the law of the marketplace and State protection against serious risks to health and safety is no longer a warrant of ethical acceptability. In the first part of our paper, we critique the implicitly individualist social-acceptance model for State regulation of technology and recommend an interdisciplinary approach for comprehensive analysis of the impacts and ethical acceptability of technologies. In the second part, we present a framework for the analysis of impacts and acceptability, devised—with the goal of supporting the development of specific nanotechnological applications—by a team of researchers from various disciplines. At the conceptual level, this analytic framework is intended to make explicit those various operations required in preparing a judgement about the acceptability of technologies that have been implicit in the classical analysis of toxicological risk. On a practical level, we present a reflective tool that makes it possible to take into account all the dimensions involved and understand the reasons invoked in determining impacts, assessing them, and arriving at a judgement about acceptability.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) based strain sensors for a wearable monitoring and biofeedback system for pressure ulcer prevention and rehabilitation

This paper presents an overview of the functioning principles of CNTs and their electrical and mechanical properties when used as strain sensors and describes a system embodiment for a wearable monitoring and biofeedback platform for use in pressure ulcer prevention and rehabilitation. Two type of CNTs films (multi-layered CNTs film vs purified film) were characterized electrically and mechanically for potential use as source material. The loosely woven CNTs film (multi-layered) showed substantial less sensitivity than the purified CNTs film but had an almost linear response to stress and better mechanical properties. CNTs have the potential to achieve a much higher sensitivity to strain than other piezore-sistors based on regular of conductive particles such as commercially available resistive inks and could become an innovative source material for wearable strain sensors. We are currently continuing the characterization of CNTs based strain sensors and exploring their use in a design for 3-axis strain sensors.

International socio-economic human rights: the key to global health improvement?

In this paper, the author analyses the international socio-economic human rights system to establish whether its underlying discourses, scope, structure, and functioning adequately account for the values encountered by a global distributive justice framework; the principal goal being to assess the human rights system to determine if it can be useful in the redistribution of the benefits arising from medical innovation, taking health needs into consideration. This assessment will draw the foundation for a deeper political analysis of how human rights are conceptualised in order to understand the role of market forces in realising the human right to health. The papers main conclusion is that the system, as it currently operates, is incompatible with a global distributive justice framework in health.