Ethics and Nanopharmacy: Value Sensitive Design of New Drugs

Although applications are being developed and have reached the market, nanopharmacy to date is generally still conceived as an emerging technology. Its concept is ill-defined. Nanopharmacy can also be construed as a converging technology, which combines features of multiple technologies, ranging from nanotechnology to medicine and ICT. It is still debated whether its features give rise to new ethical issues or that issues associated with nanopharma are merely an extension of existing issues in the underlying fields. We argue here that, regardless of the alleged newness of the ethical issues involved, developments occasioned by technological advances affect the roles played by stakeholders in the field of nanopharmacy to such an extent that this calls for a different approach to responsible innovation in this field. Specific features associated with nanopharmacy itself and features introduced to the associated converging technologies- bring about a shift in the roles of stakeholders that call for a different approach to responsibility. We suggest that Value Sensitive Design is a suitable framework to involve stakeholders in addressing moral issues responsibly at an early stage of development of new nanopharmaceuticals

Observations and ideas on slurry packing of liquid chromatography columns

This paper shows that in a graph of reduced plate height against particle size for irregularly shaped and spherical octadecylated silica gel particles, there is a minimum in the curve at 10 μm for irregular and at 5 μm for spherical material. For particles smaller than 10 μm the spherical shape does better, and for particles larger than 10 μm the irregular particles are better. The investigations revealing these facts have led to the conviction that smaller particles are better packed in a low viscosity solvent and with an upward technique. Possible explanations for these assertions are discussed

Quality criteria and structure of silica gel column packing material

Silica gel and derivatised forms of silica gel are by far the most commonly used column packing materials in high-performance liquid chromatography. Quality criteria of silica gel for chromatography therefore merit attention. Most of them are discussed, and it is suggested that the apparent density is an important one

Coupling micro-LC and capillary GC as a powerful tool for the analysis of complex mixtures

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