From Seizures to Transcendence: The Promise and Perils of Emerging Medical Tech

A couple months ago, friends texted us photos of their 16-year-old son, Sam. Not typical photos of a kid playing sports or hanging out with friends. Instead, these were X-rays of Sam’s skull — where a neurostimulator had been implanted to alleviate Sam’s epileptic seizures.

For sixteen years, efforts to control his seizures, including a rigid diet and increasingly stronger medications, had failed. However, the neurostimulator, now sitting inside his skull, monitors Sam’s brain activity and sends electrical impulses to stop the seizures before they start. So far, the prognosis is good and holds out the promise of transforming Sam’s life.

In situations like Sam’s, the use of a brain implant seems like, well, a no-brainer. But other kinds of therapies using medical technology in the brain pose difficult ethical issues.

Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) are also implanted devices, which allow people to control computers and prosthetic limbs with their brains. Neuralink is perhaps the best-known, but not the only, pioneer of BCI technology. Noland Arbaugh, paralyzed from the neck down, is the first recipient of the Neuralink device. This device decodes signals in the brain and turns them into computer commands. Now, Arbaugh can control a computer, which gives him a much-desired degree of independence. Like Sam, Arbaugh’s life has been transformed.

The technology is life-changing, transformative, even miraculous. But questions loom. Should the technology simply exist as therapy? Or should it aim to alter humans? Or extend life expectancy indefinitely? Can and should the technology be used, for example, to improve human efficiency in war? 

For all these matters: Who decides? Who controls the processes and the devices?

These questions span disciplinary boundaries.  Ethicists, theologians, and others from the humanities must be included in conversations with scientists and physicians. 

The IACS Generations in Dialogue cohort is committed to just such conversations.

Watch our blog for news and updates on their work on “Transhumanism and Medical Ethics.”