The pace at which neurotechnological developments are being translated into clinical applications calls for a preparatory neuroethical model that can plot the benefits, burdens, and risks of neurosurgery as a step toward minimizing risks and maximizing benefits.
Introduction of an intervention that reduces the perceived risk of a given behavior may cause a person to increase risky behavior—this is called “risk compensation.”
Aside from its use to rule out potential physical causes of a patient’s condition, for example a brain tumor, neuroimaging is not used in the process of psychiatric diagnosis.
Recommendation for induced lactation in nonbiological mothers is widespread in the medical literature. To resist offering the service for nongestating lesbian mothers bespeaks potential discrimination.
Developing technologies for personalized medicine may be misused to popularize the idea that one can infer a person’s genetic makeup from observer-defined or self-reported assignment to a race or ethnic group.
Anne Drapkin Lyerly, MD, MA and Ruth R. Faden, PhD, MPH
Participation in a research study—in which there are rigorous standards and close monitoring—may be a safer context for the use of medications in pregnancy than the clinical setting, where the evidence base is lacking.