The Neuroethics Of Biomarkers

Neuroscientists are mining nucleic acids, blood, saliva, and brain images in hopes of uncovering biomarkers that could help estimate risk of brain disorders like psychosis and dementia; though the science of bioprediction is young, its prospects are unearthing controversy about how bioprediction should enter hospitals, courtrooms, or state houses. While medicine, law, and policy have established protocols for how presence of disorders should change what we owe each other or who we blame, they have no stock answers for the probabilities that bioprediction offers. The Neuroethics of Biomarkers observes, however, that for many disorders, what we really care about is not their presence per se, but certain risks that they carry. The current reliance of moral and legal structures on a categorical concept of disorder (sick verses well), therefore, obscures difficult questions about what types and magnitudes of probabilities matter. Baum argues that progress in the neuroethics of biomarkers requires the rejection of the binary concept of disorder in favor of a probabilistic one based on biological variation with risk of harm, which Baum names a "Probability Dysfunction." This risk-reorientation clarifies practical ethical issues surrounding the definition of mental disorder in the DSM-5 and the nosology of conditions defined by risk of psychosis and dementia. Baum also challenges the principle that the acceptability of bioprediction should depend primarily on whether it is medically useful by arguing that biomarkers can also be morally useful through enabling moral agency, better assessment of legal responsibility, and fairer distributive justice. The Neuroethics of Biomarkers should be of interest to those within neuroethics, medical ethics, and the philosophy of psychiatry.

Advances in psychiatric research and clinical psychiatry in the last 30 years have given rise to a host of new questions that lie at the intersection of psychiatry, neuroscience, philosophy and law. Such questions include: -Are psychiatric disorders diseases of the brain, caused by dysfunctional neural circuits and neurotransmitters? -What role do genes, neuro-endocrine, neuro-immune interactions and the environment play in the development of these disorders? -How do different explanations of the etiology and pathophysiology of mental illness influence diagnosis, prognosis and decisions about treatment? -Would it be rational for a person with a chronic treatment-resistant disorder to request euthanasia or assisted suicide to end their suffering? -Could psychiatric disorders be predicted and prevented? Psychiatric Neuroethics explores these questions in a comprehensive and systematic way, discussing the medical and philosophical implications of neuroscience and the Research Domain Criteria (RDoc) in the fields of psychiatry and mental health. It examines the extent to which circuit-based criteria can offer a satisfactory explanation of psychiatric disorders and how they compare with the symptom-based criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMV). This book will be of interest to a multidisciplinary audience, including psychiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, philosophers, psychologists and legal theorists.

The first philosophical monograph on the ethics of memory manipulation (MM), "Forget Me Not: The Neuroethical Case Against Memory Manipulation" contends that any attempt to directly and intentionally erase episodic memories poses a grave threat to the human condition that cannot be justified within a normative moral calculus. Grounding its thesis in four evidential effects – namely, (i) MM disintegrates autobiographical memory, (ii) the disintegration of autobiographical memory degenerates emotional rationality, (iii) the degeneration of emotional rationality decays narrative identity, and (iv) the decay of narrative identity disables one to seek, identify, and act on the good – DePergola argues that MM cannot be justified as a morally licit practice insofar as it disables one to seek, identify, and act on the good. A landmark achievement in the field of neuroethics, this book is a welcome addition to both the scholarly and professional community in philosophical and clinical bioethics.

This volume focuses on topics at the intersection between neuroethics and neurodevelopment, and brings together the perspectives of experts in both clinical assessment and intervention, and researchers in child psychology, neurosciences, medicine, health policy, law, and social work. The goal is to review emerging issues related to the ethical ramifications of how variation in human neurodevelopment is described, and the effects of these descriptions on those with lived experience, clinical and intervention services, and health and social policy. Related topics are also explored including the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ethics of invasive neurotechnology interventions, biomarkers, machine learning, precision medicine. Provides novel and original research on the emerging field of the legal regulation of neuroscience Takes an interdisciplinary approach, with chapters by global scholars from several disciplines, including law, philosophy and medicine Develops a global approach that will be useful in jurisdictions around the globe

This book addresses current issues in the neuroscience and ethics of dementia care, including philosophical as well as ethical legal, and social issues (ELSIs), issues in clinical, institutional, and private care-giving, and international perspectives on dementia and care innovations. As such, it is a must-read for anyone interested in a well-researched, thought-provoking overview of current issues in dementia diagnosis, care, and social and legal policy. All contributions reflect the latest neuroscientific research on dementia, either broadly construed or in terms of the etiologies and symptoms of particular forms of dementia. Given its interdisciplinary and international scope, its depth of research, and its qualitative emphasis, the book represents a valuable addition to the available literature on neuroethics, gerontology, and neuroscientific memory research.

Modern medicine enables us to keep many people alive after they have suffered severe brain damage and show no reliable outward signs of consciousness. Many such patients are misdiagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state when they are actually in a minimally conscious state. This mistake has far-reaching implications for treatment and prognosis. To alleviate this problem, neuroscientists have recently developed new brain-scanning methods to detect consciousness in some of these patients and even to ask them questions, including "Do you want to stay alive?" Finding Consciousness: The Neuroscience, Ethics, and Law of Severe Brain Damage addresses many questions regarding these recent neuroscientific methods: Is what these methods detect really consciousness? Do patients feel pain? Should we decide whether or not to let them die or are they competent to decide for themselves? And which kinds of treatment should governments and hospitals make available? This edited volume provides contextual information, surveys the issues and positions, and takes controversial stands from a wide variety of prominent contributors in fields ranging from neuroscience and neurology to law and policy to philosophy and ethics. Finding Consciousness should interest not only neuroscientists, clinicians, and ethicists but anyone who might suffer brain damage, which includes us all.

This book provides a current review of Medical Research Ethics on a global basis. The book contains chapters that are historically and philosophically reflective and aimed to promote a discussion about controversial and foundational aspects in the field. An elaborate group of chapters concentrates on key areas of medical research where there are core ethical issues that arise both in theory and practice: genetics, neuroscience, surgery, palliative care, diagnostics, risk and prediction, security, pandemic threats, finances, technology, and public policy.This book is suitable for use from the most basic introductory courses to the highest levels of expertise in multidisciplinary contexts. The insights and research by this group of top scholars in the field of bioethics is an indispensable read for medical students in bioethics seminars and courses as well as for philosophy of bioethics classes in departments of philosophy, nursing faculties, law schools where bioethics is linked to medical law, experts in comparative law and public health, international human rights, and is equally useful for policy planning in pharmaceutical companies.

"The development of modern diagnostic neuroimaging techniques led to discoveries about the human brain and mind that helped give rise to the field of neurolaw. This new interdisciplinary field has led to novel directions in analytic jurisprudence and philosophy of law by providing an empirically-informed platform from which scholars have reassessed topics such as mental privacy and self-determination, responsibility and its relationship to mental disorders, and the proper aims of the criminal law. Similarly, the development of neurointervention techniques that promise to deliver new ways of altering people's minds (by intervening in their brains) creates opportunities and challenges that raise important and rich conceptual, moral, jurisprudential, and scientific questions. The specific purpose of this volume is to make a contribution to the field of neurolaw by investigating the legal issues raised by the development and use of neurointerventions (actual, proposed, and potential)"--