Study On The Ethical Issues Of Brain Imaging Technology

The early21century is an era of brain science, in which people’s interests in and knowledge toward our own brain are increasing. Meanwhile, the research in brain is shocking people’s nerve with its unprecedented strength, leading to a series of ethic, social and legal issues which are becoming people’s concern focus gradually.The paper focuses on the ethical issues of brain imaging technology which is the front edge of neuroscience. What brain imaging concerns is the core of neuroscience, i.e. the study of the brain. Not only concerned with long pending main issues of the traditional philosophy, such as the essence of human, the essence of ethical judgment, self-identity, and free will, etc, brain imaging also leads to a series of ethical issues in its practical research and social application, which bears some similarity with traditional bioethical issues, such as informed consent, security, spontaneity and privacy, etc, and obvious differences and uniqueness such as informed consent, brain privacy or thinking privacy, and the existence of free will, etc.. Furthermore, the brain imaging study is not just concerned with a single subject or field, it is a complicated new field across many subjects including bioethics, philosophy, cognitive science, psychology, physiology, neurobiology, etc.In the Introduction part, we will directly touches the theme and the core of the study, that is the uniqueness of the ethical issues of brain imaging, the essence of ego and ethics, and whether or not the individual brain should be strengthened. Then we will expound the research method, research objective and significance, thereby we will have set the basic view and tone, and the basic structure of the paper.Chapter1introduces the basic brain imaging technologies, including their respective application area and limitations, their theoretical basis and the future development tendency. This part is the foundation of the whole paper and is necessary for the following analysis to the practical ethical issues.Chapter2Mainly refining the basic principle for the study of the ethical issues of brain imaging technology according to the basic principle of Bioethics, analyzing the effect of these principles, and combing all the ethical issues of brain imaging technology in detail, on the above basis, we identify the ethical schema of this technology, and make a detailed analysis, argumentation and reflection of the ethical schema. We mainly according to the basic principles, deontologism, consequentialism of bioethics, the research principles of analyzing the ethical issues of brain imaging technology, i.e. the principle of respect (including spontaneity, informed consent and privacy, etc.), the principle of efficacy, the principle of justice, the principle of security, and the principle of human dignity, among which the principle of human dignity is an ethical analytic principle put forward by the paper toward the specialty of the study of brain imaging. It is a wholeness principle, whose core idea is that in the human subject experiments, human being should be treated as a sacred individual with high inner value and respect. Human being is the objective of action. There should be a loving and respectful heart toward human being form the deepest heart and the spirit of human respect should be the self-action idea. The author also analyzes and expounds from a whole prospective almost all the ethical issues related to the current brain imaging technology study. These issues include not only the traditional bioethical ones, but also the unique ones of brain imaging technology itself. In the end we combine the main concerned fields in brain imaging study and the two branches of neuroethics or brain-ethics, poses a new ethical schema in the study of brain imaging ethical issues, and, based on which, further expounds the core principle of its ethical issues (human dignity principle), and reflects the new ethical schema from the philosophy level. The author thinks that science and philosophy has built a new alliance based on neuroscience.Chapter3takes the main ethical issues in brain imaging study as subject, i.e. thinking privacy or brain privacy to analyze the importance and specialty of privacy protection and its place and value in self existence significance of human being and to reflect theses from the philosophy point of view.In chapter4and5, moral duty judgment is, besides brain privacy, also one of the most important issues in brain imaging study. The brain imaging technology not only challenges seriously the basic mode of traditional moral duty judgment, makes it increasingly difficult as is not able to guarantee the justice and reasonability of its judgment, it also shows opportunity for the return of reasonability and justice of traditional moral duty judgment. Based on the contemporary achievement of neuroscience, there has been great achievement in hypothesis of defining the spontaneous choosing ability of moral individual, which will become one necessary supplement to traditional moral duty judgment, and the basis of the new moral duty judgment mode.Chapter6takes as breakthrough point the hot issues in social application of brain imaging study achievement, gives normal and inverse analysis and argumentation in whether brain information should be taken as legal proof from deontologism and consequentialism, inspects and verifies whether brain information as legal proof can get ethical defense, and furthermore raises the most urgent practical issues to be solved to guarantee the legal and moral standard in China.In chapter7, with reference from the relatively mature management suggestion, we put forward a system method for the research of the ethical issues of brain imaging, and the basic principle to study ethical issues of brain imaging, and in the end we give some suggestions on its ethical management.