Nanotechechnology is an interdiscplinary enterprise. As such is different sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, information technologies - and their subjects - which had formerly bee separated. Furthermore nanotechnology is a so called "enabling" technology, i.e. in combination with other technologies it opens up hitherto inaccessible applications and products. Both of these features turn nanotechnology into a technology that will without any doubt have a large impact on scientific, economic and social development. Therfore nanotechnology is often said to be one of the most important technologies of 21st century.

Will existing frameworks and regulations meet the ethical, juridical and social challenges posed by nanotechnology? What values do or rather should drive nanotechnology? And how can the nanodebate connect the far reaching and more or less utopian expectations to the more realistic ones?

Most of the chapters of this booklet cover the papers which were presented and discussed at a "horizon scanning" workshop Making the human-machine-interface specific: Ehtical, legat and social aspects ofimplants and neurobionics, organised in by the centre of Bioethics, Muenster University and bioanalytik-muenster in Muenster in January 2006.

Johann S. Ach, Beate Lüttenberg (Eds.)
Nanobiotechnology, Nanomedicine and Human Enhancement
Reihe: Münsteraner Bioethik-Studien Bd. 7, 2009, 208 S., ISBN 978-3-8258-0806-8