[Ip-health] ETC Group: New report-Nanotech Rx: Medical Applications of Nano-scale Technologies: What Impact on Marginalized Communities?]

[robert weissman]

ETC Group
12 September 2006
www.etcgroup.org

ETC Group announces the release of a new report, Nanotech Rx: Medical
Applications of Nano-scale Technologies: What Impact on Marginalized
Communities?

The 58-page report examines current trends in nanomedicine with a
special focus on nano-enabled drugs and devices being developed for
the global South. According to Nanotech Rx, nanomedicine may
ultimately have its greatest impact in the realm of "human
performance enhancement" (HyPE). The report includes a list of HyPEs
that are currently available or under development. In the near
future, nano-enabled HyPE technologies could change the definition of
what it means to be healthy or human.

A summary is provided below. The full report is available for
downloading as a PDF document on ETC Group's new website.

Please visit ETC Group's new website: http://www.etcgroup.org


Nanotech Rx: Medical Applications of Nano-Scale Technologies: What
Impact on Marginalized Communities

Issue: Medical applications of nano-scale technologies have the
potential to revolutionize healthcare by delivering powerful tools
for diagnosing and treating disease at the molecular level. But the
current zeal for nano-enabled medicines could divert scarce medical
R&D funds away from essential health services and direct resources
away from non-medical aspects of community health and wellbeing.
Although nanomedicine is being touted as a solution to pressing
health needs in the global South, it is being driven from the North
and is designed primarily for wealthy markets. Using nano-scale
technologies, the pharmaceutical industry's ultimate goal is to make
every person a patient and every patient a paying customer by
"medicating" social ills with human performance enhancement (HyPE)
drugs and devices. Nano-enabled HyPEs could usher in an era of two-
tiered humans - Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens 2.0.

Market: As of mid-2006, 130 nanotech-based drugs and delivery systems
and 125 devices or diagnostic tests are in preclinical, clinical or
commercial development. The combined market for nano-enabled medicine
(drug delivery, therapeutics and diagnostics) will jump from just
over $1 billion in 2005 to almost $10 billion in 2010 and the US
National Science Foundation predicts that nanotechnology will produce
half of the pharmaceutical industry product line by 2015.
Nanomedicine will help big pharma extend its exclusive monopoly
patents on existing drug compounds and on older, under-performing
drugs. Analysts suggest that nanotech-enabled medicine will increase
profitability and discourage competition.

Impact: Nanomedicine may have its greatest impact in the realm of
"human performance enhancement" (HyPE). Nanomedicine in combination
with other new technologies will make it theoretically possible to
alter the structure, function and capabilities of human bodies and
brains. In the near future, nano-enabled HyPE technologies will erase
distinctions between "therapy" and "enhancement" and could change,
quite literally, the definition of what it means to be healthy or human.

Reality check: Ironically, crucial questions remain about the health
and environmental impacts of nanomaterials that are being used to
develop nanomedicines. The nascent field of "nanotoxicology" is awash
with uncertainty. Despite the fact that nano-scale products have
already been commercialized (including nanomedicines), no government
in the world has developed regulations that address basic nano-scale
safety issues.

Policy: Can OECD donors who have failed to deliver promised mosquito
netting to malaria-stricken countries and who have managed to provide
only one condom per adult male per annum to combat HIV/AIDS in the
global South really claim that hefty investment in new nanomedicines
will pay off for poor countries? Governments urgently need broad,
participatory societal and scientific, ethical, cultural,
socioeconomic and environmental risk assessment to evaluate
nanomedicine. Policies must be guided by the concerns of civil
society and social movements, including disability rights and women's
organizations. To keep pace with technological change, an
intergovernmental framework is needed to monitor and assess the
introduction of new technologies. At its next meeting in 2007, the
World Health Assembly should undertake a full analysis of
nanomedicine within this wider social health context.

The full report is available for downloading as a PDF document on ETC
Group's new website.  http://www.etcgroup.org