Precautionary Principle and Post-Mortem Brain Resuscitation

TL;DR

This paper argues for applying the precautionary principle to postmortem brain research to avoid potential negative mental states in resuscitated brains.

Contribution

The paper proposes new ethical precautions for postmortem brain research to prevent suffering and overapplication of the precautionary principle.

Findings

Postmortem brain research may unknowingly subject brains to negative mental states.

The precautionary principle offers better guidance for ethical policy than decision theory in this context.

Practical precautions like anesthetics and cingulotomies can mitigate risks of suffering in resuscitated brains.

Abstract

Recent advancements in brain research have drastically increased the need for serious ethical consideration. Postmortem brain research has taken a significant step in the development of BrainEx. The technology can metabolically resuscitate pig brains from pigs that were “clinically dead” for hours. Ethical discourse around organoids ranges from being overly cautious and sensational to highly permissive and skeptical of even minimal consciousness emerging in such a model. Some of these criticisms are allayed in postmortem brains. As such, postmortem brain research presents philosophers and policymakers with a higher risk model of being conscious. The outcome of researchers unknowingly subjecting postmortem brains to negative mental states through research will be termed brain-in-a-vat-world. We will provide some motivation to believe this is a reasonable outcome of proceeding with postmortem brain research. As such, we propose applying the PP to all postmortem brain research. These precautions go beyond previous precautions of brain activity monitoring and the willingness to administer anesthetics to the brains should they appear awake. These precautions aim to avoid potential negative mental states. Such precautions reasonably mitigate the risk of postmortem brain research causing suffering. We recommend several practical precautions. First, anesthetics may prevent any conscious experience at all, cingulotomies prevent painful experiences, and the administration of opioids may prevent boredom or isolation. IRBs should work to determine how these precautions interact with experimental outcomes and how to balance the risk of side effects in light of the experimentation period. The upshot of the article is such PP applications avoid overapplication of the PP, which has occurred in the brain organoid literature. Further, the PP, we argue, provides better guidance to precautionary policy than decision theory, given the difficulties with applying decision theory in medical ethics.