http://www.noveltechethics.ca/site_brainmatters.php
September 24 - 26, 2009
Lord Nelson Hotel
Halifax ♦ Nova Scotia ♦ Canada
PROGRAM AND REGISTRATION INFORMATION WILL BE POSTED IN MAY 2009
PLENARY SPEAKERS
James L. Bernat
Professor of Neurology and Medicine
Dartmouth Medical School and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Centre
Lebanon, NH, USA
Are brain dead patients really dead?
Whether brain death accurately represents the biology of human death remains controversial. I review and respond to the arguments against the validity of brain death and critically review the recently published study, “Controversies in the Determination of Death” by the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics. I conclude that brain death remains the most accurate concept of human death.
Walter Glannon
Canada Research Chair in Medical Bioethics & Ethical Theory
University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada
Neuroscience, Free Will and Responsibility
Many cognitive neuroscientists have claimed that our knowledge of the brain shows that our belief in free will is an illusion. If true, this would challenge our practice of holding people morally and criminally responsible for their behavior. I argue that free will and responsibility are not threatened by, but are compatible with neuroscience.
David Healy
Professor of Psychiatry
Cardiff University, Wales, UK
Bioethical Devils and Neuroscientific Details
In the late 1990s, treatments like Prozac and research on the human genome project appeared to usher in a new human reality with associated bioethical dilemmas. Are bioethicists as likely to be co-opted into the marketing of the new neuroscience and its treatments as they were into the marketing of the SSRIs?
Contrasting current neuroimaging with quantitative electroencephalography, recent deep brain stimulation treatments with the brain stimulation treatments run in Tulane in the 1960s, the emergence biofeedback in the 1960s and neurofeedback this decade this paper will attempt pinpoint the dynamics shaping what happens. Using LSD, ECT and apotemnophilia it will also attempt to mark out the boundaries within which any debate is constrained.
Jonathan H. Marks
Associate Professor of Bioethics, Humanities and Law
Penn State University, US
A Neuroskeptic’s Guide to Neuroethics and National Security
The neuroethics literature is replete with claims about the potential for recent developments in neuroscience to transform various fields of human endeavor, not least national security. I argue that a healthy dose of neuroskepticism informed by science studies critiques is necessary if we are to understand the real ethical challenges neuroscience presents, particularly in national security contexts where there may be great pressure to achieve results and judicial oversight is minimal or absent.
Barbara Sahakian
Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology
University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry
Cambridge, UK
The Neuroethics of Pharmacological Cognitive Enhancement (PCEs) and Methods for Improving Mental Capital and Well-being
Pharmacological Cognitive Enhancements (PCEs) have considerable potential for improving the lives of people with neuropsychiatric disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Therefore PCEs are likely to be developed further and their use will likely increase. At the same time caution must be exerted, particularly as studies of long-term effects in healthy humans regarding safety and efficacy are urgently required. Moreover, the potential use in children with developing brains and the potential for abuse in certain populations must be considered together with broader societal concerns such as coercion and inequality of access. Ultimately, a rational approach to the use of PCEs is required to gain maximum benefits with minimum harms to the individual and to society as a whole.
Caroline Tait
Assistant Professor, Department of Native Studies
Assistant Director, Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre
University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Medical morality and the local worlds of Indigenous peoples: Situating the ethical gaze across the broad spectrum of health care delivery
Emerging and evolving fields of neuro-, bio- and public health ethics largely configure questions of medical morality within the context of high-priced, high-tech, high-drama biomedical settings. However, for the majority of First Nations and Métis peoples, illness episodes are experienced, interpreted, and responded to in the context of the family or community, shaped by cultural values, Indigenous identity, gender roles and socioeconomic status. I call for an “ethical space” in which local Indigenous world views, inlcuding ideas of moral responsibility are given equal consideration to that of Western ethical principles.
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