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Professionalism in public health medicine and policy
Published in Sabine Salloch, Verena Sandow, Jan Schildmann, Jochen Vollmann, Ethics and Professionalism in Healthcare, 2016
However, this still leaves open the question of what technologies or interventions should be used to achieve it. It may be, as Bostrom (2004) and More and Vita-More (2013) have argued, that cutting-edge biotechnological solutions, such as genetic neuroenhancement (Savulescu, 2005; Sandberg, 2011) and biogerontology (De Grey, 2005, 2007), can best deliver the goals of improved cognition and extended healthy lifespan required.
Moral Neuroenhancement
Published in L. Syd M Johnson, Karen S. Rommelfanger, The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics, 2017
Brian D. Earp, Thomas Douglas, Julian Savulescu
In her wide-ranging essay “Moral Enhancement: What Is It and Do We Want It?” Anna Pacholczyk (2011) outlines three major ways of understanding the term “moral enhancement,” two of which we will consider here. According to the first way of understanding the term, a moral enhancement is a change in some aspect of a person’s morality that results in a morally better person (251, paraphrased). This is broadly the sense we have in mind for this chapter, but it is not quite precise, nor is it sufficiently focused, for our purposes, on enhancements that work “directly” on the brain—that is, moral neuroenhancements in particular. We therefore propose an alternative definition: Moral neuroenhancement: Any change in a moral agent, A, effected or facilitated in some significant way by the application of a neurotechnology, that results, or is reasonably expected to result, in A’s being a morally better agent. Let us call this the agential conception of moral neuroenhancement. Note that the moral “betterness” of an agent could be understood in various ways. For example, it could be taken to be the increased moral worth or praiseworthiness of the agent, the increased moral excellence of the agent, or the increased moral desirability of the agent’s character traits, taken together (see Douglas, 2015, for further discussion). But however it is plausibly understood, as Pacholczyk notes, being moral (let alone more moral) is “a complex ability and there is a wide range of potentially enhancing interventions. Making morally better people could include making people more likely to act on their moral beliefs, improving their reflective and reasoning abilities as applied to moral issues, increasing their ability to be compassionate, and so on” (2011, 253). Of course, there are likely to be serious and substantive disagreements about what should or should not be included on this list, as well as what should or should not be counted as “morally better” in the first place. This is an important issue to which we will return throughout this chapter.
The Socio-Political Roles of Neuroethics and the Case of Klotho
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2022
Veljko Dubljević, Katharina Trettenbach, Robert Ranisch
As for the relevant policy options, neuroethicists should bear in mind that the two most widely represented perspectives that have shaped the neuroethical debates so far, i.e. total prohibition or laissez-faire regulation, are polarizing and less than useful if they are treated as an unavoidable dichotomy. In fact, five general approaches need to be seriously considered: mandatory use, encouraged use, laissez faire, discouraged use and prohibition of pharmacological agents that may influence klotho protein availability (cf. Blank 2013). Arguably, many critics of neuroethics as a distinct field (Vidal 2019) rightly point to false dichotomies which sometimes take center stage and “squander ethical resources” (Nordmann 2007). In fact, one of the authors of this paper has argued at length for a “discourage use” approach to neuroenhancement (Dubljević 2019). Here, we do not want to prejudge the debate over klotho, but merely to emphasize the need to ground the debate with a full recognition of all of the reasonable policy options. By now, however, it is safe to conclude that one option may be disqualified right at the outset: mandatory use. It is very hard to envision ethical justification that would be strong enough to force each and every member of the public to use neurotechnologies such as klotho for that matter. History has taught us that even with justifiable medical interventions based on guarding public health (e.g., vaccines for measles), there will be some members of the public that object to the government making the decision to use for them or their family members.
Eugenic Technologies Are Developed in Eugenic Eras: Why We Must Include Historical Circumstances in Socio-Political Perspectives for Neuroethics
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2022
Historical examination can not only illuminate the neurotechnologies of the past, but it can also help inform us about how the socio-political contexts of the present-day shape the ongoing development and use of neurotechnologies. Neurodiscourses are both historically and culturally contingent, and technologies are quite often developed to satisfy the needs deemed important in a particular time and place. Debating the acceptability of neuroenhancement should also include a consideration of what counts as enhancement within the relevant context, and why. In the US right now, enhancement tends to mean increased economic productivity and achievement of social status. This is often sought through pharmacological stimulants such as amphetamines. Conversely, for a different society with a strong connection to Buddhist or other religious traditions, enhancement might mean a heightened ability to quiet the mind to meditate more successfully.
The Quantified Scientist: Citizen Neuroscience and Neurotechnology
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2022
Humans have always strived for self-improvement, and a rapidly increasing variety of behavioral, biological, and physical strategies for neuroenhancement exists (Dresler et al. 2019). While purely passive QS practices using neurotechnologies for self-knowledge and personalized health care/science (Heyen 2020) are arguably less risky than many pharmacological or invasive self-improvement strategies, there are concerns about the personal and societal effects of excessive self-tracking (Baron et al. 2017; Baker 2020) that have to be taken seriously. Beyond the consumer market and basic research, wearable neurotechnology has a strong potential in clinical settings; however, improvements in data quality are needed for many existing wearables (Pardamean et al. 2020; Rentz et al. 2021). Citizen neuroscience can play a valuable role in respective feasibility and validation studies: if performed carefully, citizen science can generate high-quality data (Parrish et al. 2019), and large sample sizes through crowdsourcing studies using wearable technologies outside the laboratory have also been demonstrated successfully for the neuroscience field (Dikker et al. 2021).