BRAIN Matters: New Directions in Neuroethics
September 24 - 26, 2009
Lord Nelson Hotel
Halifax • Nova Scotia • Canada
This conference will bring together new and established researchers from around the world with a complementary range of expertise in ethics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, medicine, history, social studies, law and policy, to critically examine a wide range of issues in neuroethics.The Conference Abstract Committee invites proposals for oral presentations, panel presentations, and posters that reflect the diversity of philosophies, disciplines, and methodologies relating to new directions in the field of neuroethics.
The Brain Matters conference will bring together new and established researchers from around the world with a complementary range of expertise in ethics, philosophy of mind, medicine, science, history, social studies, law and policy, to critically examine a wide range of issues in neuroethics. The conference presents a valuable opportunity to strengthen current research relationships between health and ethics researchers, and to foster new collaborations.
Trainee Award Abstract Competition - Up to 15 monetary awards will be given to trainees whose abstracts for an Oral Presentation or Poster Presentation have been accepted by the Abstracts Committee. Awards will be made on the basis of merit.
The deadline is March 1, 2009 and more details including the submission forms are available on the conference website: http://www.noveltechethics.ca/site_brainmatters.php
Selected conference papers will be published in The American Journal of Bioethics, Neuroethics and the Journal of Ethics and Mental Health.
Please visit the conference website for more information: http://www.noveltechethics.ca/site_brainmatters.php
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Call for Abstracts - Brain Matters: New Directions in Neuroethics
Sunday, September 14, 2008
New Journal of Medical Ethics Blog
The Journal of Medical Ethics has decided to join the blogosphere with a new Journal of Medical Ethics Blog which can be found here: Journal of Medical Ethics BlogMedical ethics is a fast moving field where there is always some new scientific or political development to analyse and discuss.
It is difficult for a journal like the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) to keep up with these day to day developments in its print version, but we hope to do it in this blog.
In the future we will bring you a range of posts:
1. Our own musings on all things ethical
2. Quick reviews of the most important new books as they appear and some old books before they disappear
3. Reports from interesting and not so interesting conferences
4. News about what the JME is doing and about interesting ethics papers in the JME’s sister journals
The contributors will be myself, Iain Brassington from Manchester University and Soren Holm from Cardiff University. Hope to see you over there at some point, as well as over here.
Friday, July 18, 2008
A difficulty for proponents of genetic enhancement
Is that traits are multi-factorial and genes may have both positive and negative effects depending on the context and environment.
A good example of this is illustrated in this BBC article: Malaria gene 'increases HIV risk' People of African descent have a variation of the "DARC" gene which may interfere with their ability to fight HIV in its early stages.
The Cell Host and Microbe study says the gene accounts for millions of extra HIV cases in sub-Saharan Africa.
The gene influences the levels of chemicals called chemokines, which play a role in the body's defences against viruses, and a variation is held by approximately 90% of Africans.
The origins of the variation are unclear, but it is thought to have evolved in response to widespread malaria outbreaks by offering protection against that disease.
In other words a trait that is protective in some circumstances is now, in a changed environment, very harmful. The implications of this are twofold, namely that the effects of "enhancement" are potentially harmful to other traits, and more importantly are difficult to predict.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Female as a human enhancement?
A rather nice argument by Robert Sparrow (A Melbourne based bioethicist) suggests that the transhumanist arguments that human enhancement is a moral imperative imply that we ought to use reproductive technology to ensure that our children are female rather than male.
The core of the argument is that women have a significant number of advantages over men in terms of longevity etc and given that we could do without men (using IVF etc) then the pro-enhancement argument implies we ought to do so. Full article here:
Men on a slippery slide in future hermaphrodite world
Thursday, May 15, 2008
PETA paying for animal testing?
This seems a very unusual move from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) they are offering to pay $1000000 to the first group to develop commercially viable vat-grown meat.
While it is understandable why PETA would champion this (since vat meat would remove in principle many (weak) justifications for meat eating.
However it seems in contrast with many of their previous stands, the most obvious issue being that this will almost certainly involve animal testing... Especially since they want it to taste the same as existing meat...
