StemCell Therapy

A British ethics group has started a consultation on the morality of messing about in the human brain in ways that could result in thought-controlled weaponry and super-human capabilities.

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics wants to get boffins, policy-makers, regulators and anyone working with or hoping to use futuristic technologies such as brain-computer interfaces, deep brain stimulation and neural stem cell therapy to send in their views on whether poking around in our grey matter is the right thing to do.

These technologies are mostly being developed to try to help people with severe brain injuries or neurological diseases like Parkinson's disease and stroke, but they are also being picked up for military applications and to enhance normal brain functions for commercial gain.

Intervening in the brain has always raised both hopes and fears in equal measure, said Thomas Baldwin, chair of the study and Professor of Philosophy at the University of York.

Hopes of curing terrible diseases, and fears about the consequences of trying to enhance human capability beyond what is normally possible. These challenge us to think carefully about fundamental questions to do with the brain: what makes us human, what makes us an individual, and how and why do we think and behave in the way we do.

Hi-tech warfare applications creating super-soldiers who can control missiles with their minds are a particular concern for the council.

For example if brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are used to control military aircraft or weapons from far away, who takes ultimate responsibility for the actions? Could this be blurring the line between man and machine? Baldwin asked.

BCIs, where a person's brain signals are measured and then converted into output, have already worked in a few reported cases. Medical benefits include a paralysed person being able to control their wheelchair with their mind or a computer being able to talk for people who are mute or have difficulty with speech by processing signals from their brains.

Military applications for BCIs for example, remotely controlling weapons and machines with the mind are already being researched and tested. BCIs are also being looked for their commercial value, for example, they could be used for playing video games via brain signals.

Brain stimulation, zapping the brain with electricity or magnetism in order to change brain activity, is already being used in some forms.

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Ethics profs fret over cyborg brains, mind-controlled missiles

This entry was posted on March 2, 2012 at 9:29 pm and is filed under Stem Cell Complications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |