Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Reading the brain: Clinical evidence and implications for ethical decisions

Professor Joanna Wardlaw

Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences

University of Edinburgh

Report
by Carole Smith

Professor Wardlaw was unable to deliver her lecture, and Professor Green stepped in at short notice to great effect.

It is possible to use a magnetic resonance scanner to demonstrate anomalies and abnormalities in, and shrinkage of the brain; it can detect tumours, and also activity in an otherwise non-functioning injured brain. It provides the potential for predicting, and therefore conceivably preventing such undesirable outcomes as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and psychosis. But what is normal? When is it too late to start treatment? Is psychosis entirely bad?

Ethical questions are raised where there is no cure, or the research is unproven, or where there is temptation to treat symptom-less, but potential, psychotics. In research, what should be said to the volunteer when an incidental finding may indicate disease? Should an unconscious patient be scanned? Where there is pressure on intensive-care beds, what are the ethical criteria for continuing to keep alive patients in a persistent vegetative state when some have been known to recover? These ethical questions provided a challenging close to this group of lectures.