Ethical issues in clinical application of neuroprosthetics
10.3760/cma.j.cn115354-20191106-00653
- VernacularTitle:神经义肢技术临床应用的伦理问题初探
- Author:
Huihui YOU
1
;
Yonghui MA
Author Information
1. 厦门大学医学院生命伦理学研究中心，厦门 361111
- Keywords:
Neuroprosthetics;
Informed consent;
Risk/benefit;
Personal identity;
Autonomy;
Social fairness
- From:
Chinese Journal of Neuromedicine
2020;19(6):632-638
- CountryChina
- Language:Chinese
-
Abstract:
Neuroprosthetics is to cure an existing motor or sensory neural dysfunction. It can electrically stimulate myogenic regions, peripheral and central nervous systems to restore or replace damaged nervous systems, sensory organs or limb loss that helps patients who fail to respond to other treatments to cure diseases and improve quality of life. However, the uncertainty of this new technology and difficulty of risk/benefit assessment result in many ethical issues in the effectiveness of informed consent, safety, personal identity, responsibility confirmation and social fairness. In order to ensure the best interests of patients, approaches to solve these ethical issues must be proposed. The vulnerability of patients in informed consent should be considered, and substantive information should be paid attention and ability to consent of the patients needs to be evaluated; an acceptable risk-benefit ratio should be obtained to evaluate the long-term security of the technology and protect the patient's privacy; changes in personality identity should be assessed and patient's autonomy should be respected and responsibility of behavior should be assumed; the development of technology should be strictly supervised and standardized to avoid abuse in the aspect of social fairness.
