10 Ethical principles and issues in nanomedicine: The role of clinical ethics

Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology in medicine with the aim to improve disease prevention, diagnosis, and therapy, thus increasing patients’ quality of life and life expectancy. As other emerging technologies, nanomedicine presents several benefits but also raises scientific, social, legal, and ethical concerns that cannot be ignored. The role of ethics in nanomedicine evaluation is twofold: to support the decision-making process policy and to support patient’s care through clinical ethics consultation. In this chapter, we introduce a collection of effective tools that ethics uses for handling ethical dilemmas in nanomedicine. Some applicable approaches in the research and development field are risk-benefit analysis and the precautionary principle(s); such approaches are mainly addressed to policymakers. In clinical practice, the most common approaches are the four principles of medical ethics and the four-box approach which aim to reach a shared decision between the medical team and the patient (and/or family), regarding the patient’s best care. The role of the clinical ethics consultation in nanomedicine is particularly relevant in light of the complexity and heterogeneity of nanotechnology-enabled products, and it can be categorized into four main areas: education, clinical consultation, non-clinical consultation, and policy development.