This chapter, written with my colleague and good buddy, Tim Caulfield, briefly surveys four emerging technologies that are likely to have a significant impact on Canadian health law and policy in the coming years. We start the chapter with a consideration of the Human Genome Project and how social policy might contend with the possibility of genetic discrimination. Then, we examine Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology as a means of linking an unconscious or disoriented patient to an electronic health record and the potential privacy implications of doing so. Next, we look at stem cell research and the questions it raises about the challenges associated with making policy in a morally contested area. Finally, we contemplate issues not yet articulated in a field not yet defined: nanotechnology and how to regulate against potentially catastrophic harms that are not yet understood.

Our aim in this chapter is not so much to prioritize or predict as it is to offer a new lens through which to consider various fundamental legal and ethical principles and their application to health law and policy in novel situations. Rather than providing comprehensive coverage of all known technologies or every issue that might possibly arise, we have chosen to sample a particular array of current and future technologies, presenting each alongside a core health law precept or principle.
 
After surveying these four emerging technologies and the issues they raise, the chapter ends with a brief consideration of issues associated with how science and technology are transferred from the laboratory to the community through the process of commercialization. We consider how scientific research is transformed into technological applications through the process of commercialization. When the governance of science and the proper place of technology in our health care system is considered, it is important to recognize that the technologies that science enables are not neutral and that it is therefore not always appropriate to leave science to its own devices.

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