Since 1995, the American Academy of Neurology has provided guidelines for brain death determination, but nationwide adherence to these guidelines has been incomplete.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(12):E1027-1032. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.1027.
Dr Ariane Lewis discusses how we can navigate uncertainty and ambiguity about brain death by understanding clinical criteria for brain death determination and how our approaches to death are culturally and socially situated.
Pablo A. Ormachea, JD, Sasha Davenport, Gabe Haarsma, PhD, Anna Jarman, Howard Henderson, PhD, and David M. Eagleman, PhD
A new neuropsychological, game-based test battery to measure traits predictive of recidivism holds promise for individually tailoring criminal sentences.
AMA J Ethics. 2016;18(3):243-251. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2016.18.3.stas1-1603.
Adhering too strictly to biomedical thinking about diagnosis can prevent clinicians from empathically engaging with patients and helping them navigate their illness experiences.
AMA J Ethics. 2021;23(7):E537-541. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2021.537.
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.
Jayant Menon, MD, MEng and Daniel J. Riskin, MD, MBA
The authors describe a historical pattern in which a set of enabling technologies facilitates rapid advances in medical practice, resulting in recognition of new ethical challenges and a decades-long struggle to resolve them.
The 2013 BRAIN Research Initiative calls for the integration of ethics into medical education and all levels of research, from hypothesis generation to evaluation, which promises to provide an ethical foundation for all future biomedical research.