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The ethics of experimenting with human brain tissue

Difficult questions will be raised as models of the human brain get closer to replicating its functions, explain Nita A. Farahany, Henry T. Greely and 15 colleagues.
By
  1. Nita A. Farahany

    1. Nita A. Farahany is professor of law and philosophy at Duke University, director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

  2. Henry T. Greely

    1. Henry T. Greely is professor of law, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences, and director of the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society at Stanford University, California, USA.

  3. Steven Hyman

    1. Steven Hyman is director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University; and Harvard University distinguished service professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

  4. Christof Koch

    1. Christof Koch is the chief scientist and president at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA.

  5. Christine Grady

    1. Christine Grady is chief of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

  6. Sergiu P. Pașca

    1. Sergiu P. Pașca is assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA.

  7. Nenad Sestan

    1. Nenad Sestan is professor of neuroscience, of genetics, of psychiatry, and of comparative medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

  8. Paola Arlotta

    1. Paola Arlotta is professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

  9. James L. Bernat

    1. James L. Bernat is professor of neurology and medicine (active emeritus) at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA.

  10. Jonathan Ting

    1. Jonathan Ting is assistant investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, Washington, USA.

  11. Jeantine E. Lunshof

    1. Jeantine E. Lunshof is research scientist-ethicist at MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts; ethics consultant to the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; assistant professor in the Department of Genetics, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.

  12. Eswar P. R. Iyer

    1. Eswar P. R. Iyer is a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

  13. Insoo Hyun

    1. Insoo Hyun is associate professor of bioethics and philosophy at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

  14. Beatrice H. Capestany

    1. Beatrice H. Capestany is a postdoctoral fellow at the Science, Law, and Policy Lab at the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA.

  15. George M. Church

    1. George M. Church is professor of genetics at Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, and Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

  16. Hao Huang

    1. Hao Huang is associate professor of radiology at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.

  17. Hongjun Song

    1. Hongjun Song is Perelman professor of neuroscience at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA.

If researchers could create brain tissue in the laboratory that might appear to have conscious experiences or subjective phenomenal states, would that tissue deserve any of the protections routinely given to human or animal research subjects?

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Nature 556, 429-432 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04813-x

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