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By Kaitlyn B. Lee Kaitlyn “Kai” Lee is a Project Coordinator in the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine. She helps to investigate the ethical, legal, and social issues of integrating whole genome sequencing into clinical care as part of MedSeq , a project funded by the NIH’s Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research ( CSER ) program. Kai earned her BA in Neuroscience from Middlebury College and hopes to continue her education through a joint JD/MPH program . In her op-ed published in the Houston Chronicle, “ Presidential candidates should be tested for Alzheimer’s ,” radio and television personality turned author and keynote speaker Dayna Steele advocates testing presidential candidates for Alzheimer’s disease and releasing their results to the voting public. Steele believes voters have a right to know their future president’s Alzheimer’s test results, as she maintains, “I want to know that the candidate I choose not only supports my priorities bu...

By Jennifer Laura Lee Jenn Laura Lee recently received her undergraduate in neuroscience from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and hopes to pursue a PhD in neurobiology this fall. Her current interests include the advancement of women in STEM and the ethics of animal experimentation. The “ Bell Let’s Talk ” initiative swept through Canada on January 27, hoping to end the stigma associated with mental illness, one text and one share at a time. Michael Landsberg shares his thoughts in a short  video  on the Facebook page. “The stigma exists because fundamentally there’s a feeling in this country still that depression is more of a weakness than a sickness,” he explains. “People use the word depression all the time to describe a bad time in their life, a down time. But that’s very different than the illness itself.” Perhaps such a bold statement merits closer examination. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists find themselves rallying behind two starkly...

By Stephen J. Morse, JD, PhD Stephen J. Morse 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. He is also a board-certified forensic psychologist. His areas of expertise are criminal law, mental health law, and law and neuroscience. He is the recipient of the American Psychiatric Association’s 2014 Isaac Ray Award for distinguished contributions to forensic psychiatry and the psychiatric aspects of neuroscience. He is also a member of the AJOB Neuroscience editorial board. What is the relevance to the law’s behavioral criteria of the “new” cognitive, affective and social neuroscience that has been fueled by non-invasive techniques for studying the brain? By behavioral criteria, I mean those that require evaluation of the subject’s acts and mental states. For example, did a defendant charged with homicide kill the victim intentionall...

By Henry T. Greely, J.D. Henry T. (Hank) Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the new Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society   SPINS).  He is also a member of the  AJOB Neuroscience  Editorial Board. Would you want to know the date and time of your death? Life-Line , the first published fiction by Robert A. Heinlein, one of the giants of 20 th century science fiction, explored that question. The story’s protagonist, Hugo Pinero, had invented a machine that could tell precisely when individuals would die, but, as Pinero found to his distress, he could not intervene to change their fates. Would you want to know whether you would be diagnosed with Alzheimer disease (AD)? This question is rapidly leaving the realm of science fiction; indeed, it already has for some unlucky people. Our ability to pred...

By Jalayne J. Arias, JD, MA Jalayne J. Arias is the Associate Director of the NeuroEthics Program and Assistant Professional Staff in the Department of Bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic. Ms. Arias’ work incorporates empirical and conceptual projects addressing critical legal and ethical issues inherent in diagnosing, treating, and researching Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. Most recently, she served as the principal investigator for the study Stakeholders’ Perspectives on Preclinical Alzheimer’s Diagnosis: Patients, Families and Care Givers . Her recent publication, Confidentiality in preclinical Alzheimer disease studies (Neurology), addresses confidentiality concerns relevant to biomarker testing in Alzheimer’s. In 2007, Dr. Dubois and co-authors introduced the concept of prodromal Alzheimer’s disease in their Lancet article revising diagnostic criteria. In 2011, the National Institutes of Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association supported a series of...