Hi Clayton. Thank you for the very insightful articles you write here at synapse :)
I am familiar with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), that is used to manage some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, especially tremor. The method has been also named "brain pacemaker" and has been approved back in 1997.
There has been a lot of work done for DBS so I would assume that the safety issue for the optogenetics technique would not be such a big concern.
The ethics side of the method is something open, but given that DBS achieves much better results for patients in a sever condition than treatment with medication, I would say that implanting electronic devices in human brains for medical purposes is ethically not that problematic.
Hi Clayton. Thank you for the very insightful articles you write here at synapse :)
I am familiar with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), that is used to manage some of the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, especially tremor. The method has been also named "brain pacemaker" and has been approved back in 1997.
There has been a lot of work done for DBS so I would assume that the safety issue for the optogenetics technique would not be such a big concern.
The ethics side of the method is something open, but given that DBS achieves much better results for patients in a sever condition than treatment with medication, I would say that implanting electronic devices in human brains for medical purposes is ethically not that problematic.