Tag: psychology

Bioethics Blogs

Neuroethics as Outreach

By Adina Roskies

Adina Roskies is The Helman Family Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Cognitive Science Program at Dartmouth College. She received a Ph.D from the University of California, San Diego in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science in 1995, a Ph.D. from MIT in philosophy in 2004, and an M.S.L. from Yale Law School in 2014. Prior to her work in philosophy she held a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroimaging at Washington University with Steven Petersen and Marcus Raichle from 1995-1997, and from 1997-1999 was Senior Editor of the neuroscience journal Neuron. Dr. Roskies’ philosophical research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience, and include philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics. She has coauthored a book with Stephen Morse, A Primer on Criminal Law and Neuroscience.

As I write this, I am thinking more broadly about ethics and neuroscience than I usually do, pushed by political necessity. The topic of my concern is science education, construed generally. In this era in which “alternative facts” are allowed to bear that name, rather than their true name — which is “lies and misinformation” — and in which science is ignored, deemed irrelevant, or actively suppressed, I see a growing need for people in all the sciences and in ethics to speak out and to educate, wherever possible.

Neuroscientists and neuroethicists may actually have an easier time doing this than many scientists whose work has either been so politicized that they have no voice, such as people working on climate change or other environmental issues, or whose research is taken to be so esoteric that it is hard to get ordinary people to care (though much of it, like gravity waves, is really cool!).

Read more at www.theneuroethicsblog.com

The views, opinions and positions expressed by these authors and blogs are theirs and do not necessarily represent that of the Bioethics Research Library and Kennedy Institute of Ethics or Georgetown University.

Bioethics Blogs

The Neuroethics Blog Series on Black Mirror: White Bear

By Kristie Garza

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Humans in the 21st century have an intimate relationship with technology. Much of our lives are spent being informed and entertained by screens. Technological advancements in science and medicine have helped and healed in ways we previously couldn’t dream of. But what unanticipated consequences of the rapid expansion into new technological territory? This question is continually being explored in the British sci-fi TV series Black Mirror, which provides a glimpse into the not-so-distant future and warns us to be mindful of how we treat our technology and how it can affect us in return. This piece is part of a series of posts that discuss ethical issues surrounding neuro-technologies featured in the show and will compare how similar technologies are impacting us in the real world.

*SPOILER ALERT* – The following contains plot spoilers for the Netflix television series Black Mirror.

Plot Summary

“White Bear” begins with Victoria, the episode’s main character, awakening in an unfamiliar room in front of a TV displaying an unfamiliar symbol. She has no memory of who she is or how she wound up in the room.

Afraid, Victoria begins to explore her outside surroundings, where she finds “onlookers,” individuals in a trance-like state, filming her with their phones. A masked man then appears and begins chasing Victoria. While fleeing, she meets Jem, a fellow individual not under the trance. Jem explains to Victoria that the onlookers were put in their trance due to the strange symbol on the screens and that the masked man is a “hunter,” part of an evil people not affected by the strange symbol.

Read more at www.theneuroethicsblog.com

Bioethics Blogs

Are you a person or an animal?

The question in the title may sound like an insult. That is, not as a question, but as something one might say in anger to reprimand someone who misbehaves.

In philosophy, the question is asked seriously, without intention of insulting. A philosopher who misbehaves at a party and is reprimanded by another guest – “Are you a person or an animal?” – could answer, shamelessly: Eh, I really don’t know, philosophers have contemplated that question for hundreds of years.

What then is the philosophical question? It is usually described as the problem of personal identity. What are we, essentially? What constitutes “me”? What holds the self together? When does it arise and when does it disappear?

According to proponents of a psychological view, we (human beings) are persons with certain psychological capacities, such as self-awareness. That psychology holds the self together. If an unusual disease made my body deteriorate, but doctors managed to transplant my mental contents (self-awareness, memories, etc.) into another body, then I would survive in the other body. According to proponents of the rival, animalist view, however, we are animals with a certain biology. An animalist would probably deny that I could survive in a foreign body.

The difference between the two views can be illustrated by their consequences for a bioethical question: Is it permissible to harvest organs from brain-dead bodies to use as transplants? If we are essentially persons with self-awareness, then we cease to exist when the brain dies. Then it should be permissible to harvest organs; it would not violate personal autonomy.

Bioethics Blogs

Fordham University’s Dr. Celia Fisher Awarded APA Ethics Educator Award for Outstanding Contributions to Ethics Education

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Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education Director Dr. Celia Fisher, PhD is the 2017 recipient of the ninth annual American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Committee Ethics Educator Award for her outstanding contributions to ethics education at the national level! Dr. Fisher was presented with the award earlier this month by APA Ethics Committee Chair Patricia L. Watson, PhD, at the 125^th APA Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.

Psychologists are awarded the Ethics Educator Award for demonstrating outstanding and innovative contributions to the profession of psychology through ethics education activities. These ethics education activities include presentations, workshops, publications and more.

Dr. Fisher is the Mary Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics at Fordham University, a professor of Psychology and the director of Fordham University HIV and Drug Abuse Prevention Research Ethics Training Institute. In addition to chairing the 2002 revision of the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code, Fisher’s Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologists is now in its fourth edition from Sage Publications. Dr. Fisher’s federally funded research programs focus on ethical issues and well-being of vulnerable populations, including ethnic minority youth and families, active drug users, college students at risk for drinking problems, LGBT youth and adults with impaired consent capacity.

Please visit Dr. Celia Fisher’s webpage for more information about her work, as well as the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education Research page.

Bioethics Blogs

Fordham University’s Dr. Celia Fisher Awarded APA Ethics Educator Award for Outstanding Contributions to Ethics Education

Click to view slideshow.

Fordham University’s Center for Ethics Education Director Dr. Celia Fisher is the 2017 recipient of the ninth annual American Psychological Association (APA) Ethics Committee Ethics Educator Award for her outstanding contributions to ethics education at the national level! Dr. Fisher was presented with the award earlier this month by APA Ethics Committee Chair Patricia L. Watson, PhD, at the 125^th APA Annual Convention in Washington, D.C.

Psychologists are awarded the APA Ethics Committee Ethics Educator Award for demonstrating outstanding and innovative contributions to the profession of psychology through ethics education activities. These ethics education activities include presentations, workshops, publications and more.

Please visit Dr. Celia Fisher’s webpage for more information about her work, as well as the Fordham University Center for Ethics Education Research page.

Bioethics News

Childhood Torment, Social Isolation Can Turn Minds Toward Hate

August 24, 2017

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Cries of “Nazis, go home!” and “Shame! Shame!” filled the air as Angela King and Tony McAleer stood with other counterprotesters at the “free speech” rally in Boston last weekend.

They didn’t join the shouting. Their sign spoke for them: “There is life after hate.”

They know because McAleer and King were once young extremists themselves, before they co-founded the nonprofit Life After Hate to help former white supremacists restart their lives. To hear them talk about their pasts hints at what may be in the minds of those inside the far-right fringe groups whose actions have ignited raw, angry passions across the country. What are people thinking when they spew hate? Are they all true believers? What’s more, how does someone get that way?

Image via Flickr Some rights reserved by Bob Jagendorf

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KHN

Tags: bioethics, causes, etiology, hate, medicalization, psychology, treatment

Bioethics Blogs

Teaching Disability Studies in the Era of Trump by Pamela Block

In spring semester of 2017 we (Pam Block and Michele Friedner) co-taught the graduate course “Conceptual Foundations of Disability Studies.” Though the readings were the same as in previous iterations of the course, the emphasis and tone of the class shifted, not just because of the co-teaching but because we were now teaching in a context in which the rights and lives of disabled people are at increased risk. This essay will focus on one class session devoted to a discussion of how disability studies and eugenics are strikingly intertwined in some ways, and why it is salient and important to think about eugenics in the present moment, especially in relation to the current United States presidency.

Eugenics opens up a way to talk about immigration; traits and qualities of and in people; desirability; deservedness; “good” and “bad” science; and the making of facts. Eugenics comes to mind when we think of silencing and containing nasty women and ejecting bad hombres. While we are not arguing that Trump himself advocates eugenics, we argue that a study of the history of eugenics offers an entry point to considering the emergence of past and present norms and normals, especially in relation to perspectives on bodily variation. We also think that a discussion of eugenics affords different ways of conceptualizing what disability studies scholars Snyder and Mitchell (2010) call “able-nationalism,” (riffing off of Puar’s (2007) work on homonationalism). That is, a discussion of eugenics allows for consideration of how disability—and the values attached to it– is mobilized in different time periods, in the service to the nation.

Bioethics Blogs

A Feminist Neuroethics of Mental Health

By Ann E. Fink

Ann Fink is currently the Wittig Fellow in Feminist Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with an appointment in Gender and Women’s Studies and concurrent affiliations with Psychology and the Center for Healthy Minds. Her research in cellular and behavioral neuroscience has appeared in the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, PNAS and other journals. Ann’s interdisciplinary work addresses the ethics of neuroscience in relation to gender, mental health and social justice.

Emotionality and gender are tied together in the popular imagination in ways that permeate mental health research. At first glance, gender, emotion, and mental health seem like a simple equation: when populations are divided in two, women show roughly double the incidence of depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders^1-3. Innate biological explanations are easy to produce in the form of genes or hormones. It could be tempting to conclude that being born with XX chromosomes is simply the first step into a life of troubled mood. Yet, buried in the most simplistic formulations of mental illness as chemical imbalance or mis-wiring is the knowledge that human well-being is a shifting, psychosocial phenomenon. Learning and memory research offers a treasure trove of knowledge about how the physical and social environment changes the brain. Feminist scholarship adds to this understanding through critical inquiry into gender as a mode of interaction with the world. This essay explores how a feminist neuroethics framework enriches biological research into mental health.

Problems with “Biology-from-birth” stories

What if understanding gender and health isn’t a tale of two gonads (or genitalia, or chromosomes)?

Read more at www.theneuroethicsblog.com

Bioethics Blogs

The Opioid Epidemic is an Epidemic of Stigma

Kristie Serota and Daniel Z. Buchman argue that eradicating the stigma associated with opioid use is an ethical necessity and is critical for population health.

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The Government of Canada reports that over 2458 Canadians died of apparent opioid-related deaths in 2016 (excluding Quebec). Last November, an average of 4 people died from overdoses every day in British Columbia. Recent U.S. estimates project opioid-related deaths at over half-a-million people over the next decade. Interventions have been implemented in many jurisdictions to minimize opioid-related mortality, but each year the death toll continues to rise and shows no signs of relenting.

While people dying from opioids in large numbers is not new, the present epidemic arose due to several complex factors. For example, OxyContin was aggressively marketed and prescribed for chronic non-cancer pain. Doctors and the public were misled about OxyContin’s addiction risks. In addition, health professionals receive limited training on pain and addiction. There are also inequities due to the social determinants of health and the harmful effects of substance use-related stigmas.

Stigma, operating at individual, institutional, and social levels, has led to punitive legal, policy, and clinical responses toward people who use drugs. Stigma has also led to chronic underfunding of addiction research and treatment services relative to the burden of disease. Although the current epidemic does not discriminate across the social gradient, stigma disproportionately burdens people from less privileged social groups more frequently and harmfully than others. People with no history of a substance use disorder risk the pejorative label of ‘addicts’ when they are prescribed opioids for pain management.

Bioethics Blogs

Criminal Law and Neuroscience: Hope or Hype?

By Stephen J. Morse

Stephen J. Morse, J.D., Ph.D., is a lawyer and a psychologist. He is Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law, Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry, and Associate Director of the Center for Neuroscience & Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Morse is also a Diplomate in Forensic Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology. He has been working on the relation of neuroscience to law, ethics and social policy for over two decades, has written numerous articles and book chapters on these topics and has edited A Primer on Neuroscience and Criminal Law (Oxford University Press, 2013, with Adina Roskies). He was previously Co-Director of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Project and was a member of the MacArthur Foundation Law and Neuroscience Research Network. Professor Morse is a recipient of the American Academy of Forensic Psychology’s Distinguished Contribution Award, and a recipient of the American Psychiatric Association’s Isaac Ray Award for distinguished contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of jurisprudence.

The discovery of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 1991, which permits non-invasive imaging of brain function, and the wide availability of scanners for research starting in about 2000 fueled claims that what we would learn about the brain and behavior would transform and perhaps revolutionize criminal law. Most commonly, many thought that traditional notions of criminal responsibility would be undermined for various reasons, such as demonstrating that people really cannot control themselves as well as we believe, or as indicating that more action was automatic, thoughtless and non-rational than we think.

Read more at www.theneuroethicsblog.com