WASHINGTON: Ethics must be considered early and often as the field of modern neuroscience forges ahead, to avoid repeating a dark period in history when lobotomies were common, experts said yesterday.
President Barack Obama sought the recommendations of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, as part of his $100m Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative announced last year.
It is “absolutely critical... to integrate ethics from the get-go into neuroscience research,” and not “for the first time after something has gone wrong,” said Amy Gutmann, Bioethics Commission Chair.
However, the first of two reports due from the commission stopped short of establishing guidelines for research, saying that ethical issues “will not be extensively analysed or resolved in this report.”
Instead, it called for institutions and individuals engaged in neuroscience research, as well as government agencies and other funders, to integrate ethics early in research. It also urged innovative approaches to integrating ethics, making sure ethics is introduced at all levels of education, and explicitly including ethical perspectives on advisory and review bodies.
Gutmann said it was important to learn from the practices of the 1940s and 50s, when thousands of lobotomies were performed in the US as enthusiasm swept the media and the medical field and the dangers were largely ignored.
The surgery involved poking holes in the skull and brain in an effort to alleviate symptoms of mental illness. The procedure often left patients incapacitated, and lobotomy was eventually discredited in the 1950s.
“In the case of the history of lobotomy, there was great hype and great damage done, so it is very important that we learn from this history,” Gutmann told reporters.
Contemporary neuroscience is a relatively new field that includes research on Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injury, depression, Parkinson’s disease and more.
AFP
