The ethical assessment of nanotechnologies for HTA

Nanotechnologies may be outlined as the expression of the human ability to manipulate atoms and to build, thanks to the properties typical of the size (nanometric scale), devices and materials with novel properties and functions. Nanotechnologies have been investigated within several fields; even though medicine, where they are known as “nanomedicine”, is the field were there is a greater interest in, moving from the prevention to the diagnosis and to the treatment. Being also a convergence of many other disciplines (e.g., from physics to medicine, engineering), nanotechnologies show several opportunities, but, at the same time, they contribute to enlarge the “the circumference of the unknown”. In fact, the same characteristics that make the use of nanotechnologies so promising from a medical point of view, make it ticklish from an ethical point of view. The contribute will reflect on the issues related to the ethical assessment of nanotechnologies within HTA processes.