Ethical, Legal, & Social Issues
Ethical, Legal, & Social Issues of Neural Engineering
This page will discuss various different things regarding the ethics, legality, and social impact of Neural Engineering, and various issues that Neural Engineering may pose to these categories.
Ethical Issues
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Some people think it’s not right to modify and enhance the body past it’s “normal” strengths. Many people are very religious and enhancing the body parts past it’s normal strengths are against their religious beliefs.
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Neural Engineering can impact people's privacy by injecting technology into their brain & CNS (source)
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Is it right to enhance the human body past its normal specifications?
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What impact will neuroscience have on our self-understanding and our concept of humans in general? Will that change through various neuroscience methods?
Social Issues
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Could enhancing our bodies and brain via neuroengineering potentially impact our personalities and who we define ourselves to be?
Legal Issues
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What would the legalities be concerning new brain-enhancing / brain-doping drugs?
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Copyright infringement can happen if neural engineering products brought to the market are similar to existing products.
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What would the legalities be of body-enhancing mechanisms that are developed under Neural Engineering?
Impact Technological Innovation Has on the Daily Lives of People
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Technological innovation impacts the daily lives of people because the various devices developed through Neural Engineering can help people who are suffering from all sorts of neural problems. Technological innovation in general also beings our society together as a whole and encourages cooperation on a global scale, allowing advancements to be made at paces much faster compared to if we were to work independently.
How to Weigh Potential Risks Against Known Benefits for New Products
We can weight the potential risks factors by performing experiments before products are released. First, we should experiment on animal subjects to see if there any risks. If there are no risks, then we should proceed with experimenting on humans. We can also do some research on the materials that was used before said products were manufactured to determine the potential risks that the product may have.
Sharing of Risks and Benefits for All People of Society
The risks and benefits are mostly fairly shared across all members of society, since society is the one who needs to make the decision on whether the device’s benefits outweigh the risks. Sometimes there are situations in which the risks and benefits are not fairly shared to all members of society because they do not want anyone to find that the risks outweigh the benefits or one of the members wants all of the information for himself/herself.
Deciding Issues of Intellectual Property with Biological Materials
We decide issues of intellectual property and ownership by bringing it to court. An example of this is Greenberg v Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) Research Institute. In this case, Daniel Greenberg and other donors sued Rueben Matalon and MCH because the donors were not informed that their blood was going to be used to research about Canavan Disease. According to the donors, “had they known of Matalon’s intention of exploiting the genetic material and the test developed from it commercially, they would not have donated their biological material.” In the end, the court decided that the donors had no right to their own biological material.
U.S. Agencies Regulating Neural Engineering
A US agency that is involved in regulating neural engineering is the FDA, but the WHO (World Health Organization) also regulates this. They look out to see if the products affect the nervous system in potentially adverse ways. Future agencies may come into existence as Neural Engineering becomes a bigger field of study.
Sufficiency of Ethical, Regulatory, and Legal Practices to Address Concerns in Neural Engineering
Current ethical, regulatory, and legal practices are somewhat sufficient to address social concerns in neural engineering because while there are some legal frameworks already in place for things like neuroimaging and neuroscience, newer fields of neural engineering such as neuro security, neuro interfaces, and neuromodulation don’t currently have sufficient regulations and legal frameworks implemented to be able to address the various social concerns that are currently arising (such as the security of various neural implants and implementations).
