The Ethics of Neuroscience (2017)

https://lens.monash.edu/@a-different-lens/2017/12/04/1268065/the-ethics-of-neuroscience

by rbanffy • 8 years ago

45 11 8 years ago

lens.monash.edu

marmaduke2• 8 years ago

I contribute to an effort to run a clinical trial for applying statistical models to drug-resistant epilepsy, for patients who will undergo surgery. The results are complex both scientifically and morally. We saw a patient undergo a "failed" surgery in the sense that seizures continued but GPA shot up to 4.0. That patient is coming back for another surgery, but clinicians aren't sure what to do. Not to mention that total cost is something like 50k+ euros: what other pressing problems could be solved with a large budget?

Outside of invasive neurosurgery, it's also difficult to draw the line between stimulation & behavioral protocols, which can rewire the brain, that are good and those which are bad (for whom? by what metric?). The questions have little to do with neuroscience imo.

rbanffy3• 8 years ago

The other day I was joking about "fixing" conservatism by frying their amygdalae. I'm pretty sure it's unethical, but, boy, it sure would solve a whole lot of problems.

Just to be clear, I wasn't serious as I am not being serious right now. Amygdalae are useful to prevent us from doing stupid dangerous things.

User232• 8 years ago

It's interesting that brain damage or impairment reliably causes "liberal" and atheistic feelings in the laboratory.

marmaduke2• 8 years ago

Mandatory meditation training would also likely have large positive effect, while being much cheaper, but this is a good illustration of why none of the discussion is specific to neuroscience: we know how to improve a situation but there's insufficient moral/politic/economic ground to do so.

dang• 8 years ago

Please don't post ideological flamewar comments to Hacker News. We need established users like you to do better than this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The Ethics of Neuroscience (2017)

Related Stories