Hot Off the Presses: The Neuroethics Blog Reader and Issue 8.4



It is our pleasure to present you with two newly released publications: the second edition of The Neuroethics Blog reader and the 8.4 issue of the American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience.








Image courtesy of Flickr user Leo Reynolds.



The second edition of The Neuroethics Blog reader features the most popular posts on the site, with topics ranging from human knowledge and its enhancement to mental illness to gut feminism. The reader includes posts from luminaries in neuroethics, scientific pioneers, undergraduates, graduate students, and established scholars from both within and outside the field of neuroethics. The Neuroethics Blog, now in its 6th year of creating weekly publications, is pleased to present this reader to you and would like to thank our amazing blog editorial team: Sunidhi Ramesh (Volume Editor of this reader and Assistant Managing Editor), Carlie Hoffman (Managing Editor), Nathan Ahlgrim, Kristie Garza, and Jonah Queen (Supporting Editors and blog contributors). Please find the reader below.





We are also pleased to announce the publication of issue 8.4 of AJOBN, which is a special issue focused on head transplantation. This issue contains two target articles, “HEAVEN IN THE MAKING BETWEEN THE ROCK (the Academe) AND A HARD CASE (a Head Transplant)” by Ren Xiaoping and Sergio Canavero and “Ahead of Our Time: Why Head Transplantation is Ethically Unsupportable” by Paul Root Wolpe. In the editorial for the issue, Karen Rommelfanger and Paul F. Boshears comment,


“The prospect of a near future wherein a head transplant has become a therapeutic procedure available to people suffering from the effects of failing bodies has been surrounded by pageantry, vitriolic responses, and a sense melodrama that has made a caricature of what discussions of neuroethics can and should be . . . It is our position that averting our gaze from the development of technologies and techniques that we find morally repugnant or technically incredible does not free us from the results of those techniques and technologies. Indeed, if we fail to examine and carefully consider this technique and the technologies attendant to Canavero’s work, we risk something greater than the value of our self-satisfaction at the moment of declaring our disinterest.



Whether or not we find them to be morally unsupportable, or we anticipate that head transplants will not be viable procedures in the future, the fact of the matter is that head transplant technology is being developed and practiced right now. And this body of research is happening in China.”


Issue 8.4 also contains numerous open peer commentaries that generate a rousing discussion of the ethics of head transplantation. We would like to thank Karen Rommelfanger for coordinating this special issue and Paul F. Boshears for his contribution to the issue. Keep an eye out for the official publication of Issue 8.4 in the coming weeks.





Please enjoy the latest blog reader and issue 8.4 of AJOBN!











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why use Brain Cells in Art?

Image
“Bioart” refers to the manipulation of living cells, tissues, or organisms (or their derivatives) for artistic purposes. While artists and biologists have collaborated for centuries to illustrate biological phenomena (you can see some fantastic modern examples of this tradition  here ), “Bioart” refers to the practice started in the early 1990’s of artists training in and performing techniques from the biological sciences, such as cell culture, genetic engineering , and surgery .  Artists have used these technologies to create novel living entities (such as a leather jacket grown in vitro ) or modify existing living entities (such as Stelarc’s third ear ).  These tools provided new options for aesthetic statements (the ability to radically sculpt living tissue to suit particular tastes), ethical statements (if we are growing a small, edible steak in a vat , should we continue to kill cattle for food?) as well as a novel flavor of irony (that “victimless” PETA-endorsed cultured steak re
Read more

Misophonia: Personality Quirk, Symptom, or Neurological Disorder?

Image
When I first learned about misophonia , it was described as a severe annoyance by certain specific sounds, most commonly bodily sounds such as chewing, breathing and slurping, or repetitive sounds such as ceiling fans, beeping, etc.  A quick Wikipedia search described it as, “a form of decreased sound tolerance… believed to be a neurological disorder characterized by negative experiences resulting only from specific sounds, whether loud or soft.” Immediately, I had a number of questions: if misophonia is just a hatred of certain sounds that leads to annoyance or anger, how is this classified as a neurological disorder?  Wouldn’t everyone have this disorder to some degree?  Everyone has their pet peeves as far as sound goes; I cannot stand the sound of people chewing, and while it is sometimes very irritating, I would by no means say that I have a neurological disorder. The Wikipedia entry stated, “Intense anxiety and avoidant behavior may develop, which can lead to decreased socializa
Read more

The Man Who Voled the World

Image
Last Monday, Dr.Hasse Walum gave a talk titled "Genetic and Hormonal Influences on Pair Bonding Related Behavior in Humans" at the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience at Emory . I hadn't heard of Walum's work before I saw the e-mail announcement for his talk, but a little googling got me interested. Here's the most titillating version of his findings: Walum found the gene that makes men cheat. Okay, that is most definitely  not  what he found, and I got the sense from talking with him briefly that he would be the first one to tell you that. So why am I misrepresenting his results? Dr. Hasse Walum: hard-hitting Wired reporter  David Ewing Duncan compares him to Kurt Cobain, but my science and rock star senses detect a David Bowie influence I want to make some points about how science interacts with the media. Like I said, it was reading news reports that made me want to go hear Walum talk. As a graduate student, in his first published study, Walum reported
Read more