Bring Ethical Thinking Back into Science and Technology Development

Under the header of Nanobioethics, ObservatoryNano aims to highlight technological and economic trends in nanotechnology for health, medical, biotechnological and agrifood applications with potential ethical and social implications. Simultaneously, current debates on relevant issues in nanobioethics among ethicists and social scientists, policy making circles and stakeholders are analysed and confronted with the issues emerging from the technical and economic trends. This way, emerging issues not discussed sufficiently can be identified and brought to the attention of policy makers in the second annual report on nanobioethics to be published online in the spring of 2010. The series of interviews with opinion leaders is intended to be a compilation of different views on the relevant issues currently in debate from the perspective of a social scientist or ethicist, a natural scientist, and stakeholders from industry and civil society.

Klaus-Michael Weltring has been managing several activities on ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) of nanobiotechnology, including the ELSA board of the European Network of Excellence Nano2Life, the working group on Ethics and Societal Issues of the European Technology Platform Nanomedicine and the NanoMed Roundtable. As managing director of the innovation network bioanalytik-muenster, he has a pragmatic approach to nanobioethical issues from a business perspective.