What happens in the brain of my patients? Neuroimaging and neurogenetics as ethical challenges in medicine

摘要

Precise diagnosis of many neurological or psychiatric diseases has for long been one of the main problems in medicine. New diagnostic procedures like neuroimaging or neurogenetics seem now able to change thi situation but evoke new ethical questions. How should we cope with the fact that we may be able to diagnose and even predict diseases like schizophrenia or Alzheimer's Disease? How should we deal with incidental findings in neuroimaging? Can and should we use neuroimaging or neurogenetic procedures to detect certain behavioral dispositions? A new interdisciplinary research programme, called "neuroethics", can provide an ethical orientation for such questions.