DBS Combined With Optogenetics—Fine-Tuning the Mind?

摘要

Like Johansson and her colleagues (2014), we are convinced that ethicists should think ahead instead of just reacting to technological developments. We have recently ethically analyzed one of the possibly upcoming developments of DBS, namely, its combination with optogenetics (Walter and Müller 2013). In this contribution, we outline the idea behind this combination and discuss its potential benefits and risks for treating neurological or psychiatric disorders; we investigate ethical issues of optogenetics-based DBS; and using this example, we argue that Johansson and her coauthors' dichotomization into inherent and noninherent bioethical concerns is not useful for evaluating developing technologies.