Fukushi Tamami, Sakura Osamu, Koizumi Hideaki
Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), Tokyo 100-0004, Japan.
Neurosci Res. 2007 Jan;57(1):10-6. doi: 10.1016/j.neures.2006.09.004. Epub 2006 Oct 10.
Recent technologies and developments in neuroscience have contributed to remarkable scientific discoveries, and have also raised many new philosophical, ethical, legal, and social issues. Research in "neuroethics" has identified various ethical issues, which will be difficult for current biomedical ethics to resolve from both an experimental and a social perspective, such as criminal applications of brain scans, incidental findings during non-clinical brain imaging, and cognitive enhancement. Although American and European neuroscience societies have demonstrated immediate, concrete reactions to these ethical issues, including academic conferences, study programs, and publications, Japanese neuroscientists have so far produced little response. Ethics is tightly linked with one's religion, nationality, culture, and social background, whereas science is tightly linked with the demand, economics, and politics of the society to which individuals belong. Taken together, it is important and necessary for Japanese neuroscientists to consider the ethical problems in Japanese neuroscience. In this paper, we first review the history of neuroethics in the world, and then report the less-developed ethical issues in the Japanese neuroscience community, focusing on neuroimaging and manipulative neuroscience as a first step in discussing how to apply principles in neuroethics to this rapidly progressing field of research.
神经科学领域的最新技术与进展促成了卓越的科学发现，同时也引发了诸多新的哲学、伦理、法律及社会问题。“神经伦理学”研究已识别出各类伦理问题，从实验和社会角度来看，这些问题对于当前的生物医学伦理学而言都难以解决，比如脑部扫描在刑事方面的应用、非临床脑部成像时的偶然发现以及认知增强等。尽管美国和欧洲的神经科学学会已对这些伦理问题做出了即时、具体的反应，包括举办学术会议、开展研究项目以及发表相关文献，但日本神经科学家目前几乎未做出回应。伦理与一个人的宗教、国籍、文化及社会背景紧密相连，而科学则与个人所属社会的需求、经济及政治紧密相关。综上所述，日本神经科学家思考日本神经科学中的伦理问题十分重要且必要。在本文中，我们首先回顾世界神经伦理学的历史，接着报告日本神经科学界中发展较为滞后的伦理问题，重点关注神经成像和操控性神经科学，以此作为探讨如何将神经伦理学原则应用于这一快速发展的研究领域的第一步。
