
The Ethics of Neuroscience (2017) - rbanffy
https://lens.monash.edu/@a-different-lens/2017/12/04/1268065/the-ethics-of-neuroscience
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marmaduke
I contribute to an effort to run a clinical trial for applying statistical
models to drug-resistant epilepsy, for patients who will undergo surgery. The
results are complex both scientifically and morally. We saw a patient undergo
a "failed" surgery in the sense that seizures continued but GPA shot up to
4.0. That patient is coming back for another surgery, but clinicians aren't
sure what to do. Not to mention that total cost is something like 50k+ euros:
what other pressing problems could be solved with a large budget?

Outside of invasive neurosurgery, it's also difficult to draw the line between
stimulation & behavioral protocols, which can rewire the brain, that are good
and those which are bad (for whom? by what metric?). The questions have little
to do with neuroscience imo.

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rbanffy
The other day I was joking about "fixing" conservatism by frying their
amygdalae. I'm pretty sure it's unethical, but, boy, it sure would solve a
whole lot of problems.

Just to be clear, I wasn't serious as I am not being serious right now.
Amygdalae are useful to prevent us from doing stupid dangerous things.

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User23
It's interesting that brain damage or impairment reliably causes "liberal" and
atheistic feelings in the laboratory.

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kadenshep
>reliably causes "liberal" and atheistic feelings

I'm sorry, where are you getting this from? That seems contradictory to common
knowledge in this subject, and if you want to do a silly thing like label
certain behaviors "liberal" or "conservative" in the context of U.S. politics.

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User23
Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just relaying what the research says.
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052970).
There are other studies that electromagnetically impair amygdala function
which induced hyper empathy and atheism in the lab, but sadly I haven’t been
able to find them again on Google.

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kadenshep
That study doesn't even remotely support what you said. If that's all you can
find you're basically just making stuff up.

