Overview
Description:
This forum explores nanotechnology-enabled medical technologies and their potential to transform health care, while considering the societal, ethical, environmental and economic impacts of this emerging technology.
This forum asks participants to consider and discuss two nanotechnology application scenarios and the possible opportunities, impacts, risks, and benefits. They will also have the opportunity to raise questions about the societal and environmental implications of nanotechnology to a panel of experts.
Forum participants will deliberate in small groups and create a group response to the overarching question, “Under what conditions should nanotechnology applications in medicine and personal care products be made available to the public? Why?”
Finally, each group will make a brief report to everyone on the group’s thoughts and recommendations
Checklist
Scientist reviewed?
Peer reviewed?
Visitor evaluation?
Permissions
Creative Commons
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike
We held this forum with 23
We held this forum with 23 high school students attending a Summer Ventures program at North Carolina Central University. We invited a speaker from the Carolina Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (http://cancer.med.unc.edu/ccne/) to give the opening 15-minute presentation. Her presentation focused on the basics of nanotechnology and what role it may have in health care. We also had graduate students from NC Central University sit at each table to act as table facilitators during the dialog and deliberation part of the forum.
A few of the demographics:
• African American (8); white (11); non-white (4)
• Rising 9th grader (1); 10th grade (0); 11th grade (11); 12th grade (10); college (1)
• Majority of the students were from rural areas (only 6 from a city)
• 8 of the students said they had heard of nanotechnology prior to the forum.
Before the forum we created a voting sheet for the students to fill out before the forum, and then after each scenario was discussed at their perspective tables. The voting sheet asked the students to rate their agreement with the following statement:
I think new nanotechnology applications in medicine should be made available for use before we understand the possible risks.
STRONGLY DISAGREE: (We definitely should not make the applications available)
DISAGREE: (We probably should not make the applications available)
AGREE: (We probably should make the applications available)
STRONGLY AGREE: (We definitely should make the applications available)
After the discussion is completed and before leaving we asked each student to take time to answer the following questions.
1. Why did you decide to vote the way you did before the discussion, after the scenarios, and after the discussion was completed?
2. How do you feel about the release of nanotechnology applications in medicine to the public now that the discussion is over? Why do you feel this way?
After the forum we met with the graduate students who were table facilitators to debrief the forum. We asked them some of the following questions.
1. How do you feel the discussion went?
2. What were the major issues discussed by the group you observed?
3. What questions/confusion arose about the discussion framework?
4. Did the group seem more interested in one of the scenarios more than others?
5. How, if at all, did the table incorporate the presentation into the discussion?
The following comment came from one of the table facilitators:
“I think the discussions were good, but it seemed to me we were having the same general conversation about all topics. The students did a good job discussing the issues, but when it came down to it, the discussions they were having were really about risk in general – their points and conversations could almost have been applied to a discussion about any emerging technology, especially one that affects the human body like medicine.”
If you have any specific questions about how this forum went with the high school students or you are interested in some of the results from the data sheets please feel free to contact me.