La nanosanté : perspective et enjeux sociologiques de l'application des nanotechnologies à la médecine
Nanomedicine – the application of nanotechnology to medical practice – is seen as the medicine of the future. Thus, nanomedicine is not just a new biomedical field. It carries a new biomedical paradigm promoting a technoscientific conception of healthcare. This new paradigm grows from and brings together the three current tendencies of healthcare research: predictive medicine, personalized medicine and regenerative medicine. Its focus is on the technical control of the molecular mechanisms underlying the biological development of the body. The growing of this new biomedical paradigm is largely the result of government supports and economic potential. It is both a scientific and a politico-economic construction. In that sense, analysing nanomedicine means analysing the form and the conditions of the current biomedical progress. In other words, nanomedicine helps us to grasp and understand the issues and implications of the ‘‘technoscientifization’’ of healthcare. This thesis aims to highlight the socio-cultural nature of the technoscientific model of healthcare promoted by nanomedicine. To do so, I propose the construction of an ideal-type of this technoscientific model, which I call nanohealth. If nanomedicine refers to the different technological applications of nanotechnology to medicine, nanohealth refers to the different sociological dimensions and impacts of nanotechnological applications on health and society. The nanohealth ideal-type is constructed around three dimensions: transversality, enhancement and globalization. The synthetic nature of this tridimensional ideal-type helps us to tackle the crucial issues surrounding the development of the nanomedicine. It helps us to understand the meaning and impacts of the scientific, political and economic engagement in nanomedicine; to highlight the centrality of technoscience in the cultural conception of medical and social progress; to grasp the new forms of power upon life and identity, and the new forms of inequality and exploitation, which are characteristics of a society focusing on the technical adaptability of human being and the economization of health and body.
technoscience nanohealth nanomedicine nanotechnology technoscience medicalization bioeconomy transhumanism biocitizenship bioinequality biocolonialism