Readings

Our reading for this section is: Sunscreens with Titanium Dioxide (TiO2) Nano-Particles: A Societal Experiment by Johannes F. Jacobs, Ibo van de Poel & Patricia Osseweijer from TU Delft. 

As we have seen in this section, the risks of novel technologies cannot be fully assessed. In the last web lecture we saw the example of titanium dioxide nanoparticles in sunscreens causing cancer as an unexpected side effect! Hence, there is a strong case for careful experimentation. The article deals in detail with this example and concludes that the marketing of this type of UV protective cosmetics is ethically undesirable because it violates 4 reasonable moral conditions for societal experimentation:

1. Absence of alternatives,
2. controllability,
3. informed consent and
4. on-going evaluation.
   
   

The authors therefore suggest 5 complementary actions:

1. Closing the gap,
2. set-up monitoring tools,
3. continuous monitoring and review,
4. designing for safety and,
5. regulative improvements.