Article Text
Abstract
The current human rights framework can shield people from many of the risks associated with neurotechnological applications. However, it has been argued that we need either to articulate new rights or reconceptualise existing ones in order to prevent some of these risks. In this paper, we would like to address the recent discussion about whether current reconceptualisations of the right to mental integrity identify an ethical dimension that is not covered by existing moral and/or legal rights. The main challenge of these proposals is that they make mental integrity indistinguishable from autonomy. They define mental integrity in terms of the control we can have over our mental states, which seems to be part of the authenticity condition for autonomous action. Based on a fairly comprehensive notion of mental health (ie, a notion that is not limited to the mere absence of illness), we propose an alternative view according to which mental integrity can be characterised both as a positive right to (medical and non-medical) interventions that restore and sustain mental and neural function, and promote its development and a negative right protecting people from interventions that threaten or undermine these functions or their development. We will argue that this notion is dissociated from cognitive control and therefore can be adequately distinguished from autonomy.
- Mental Health
- Ethics
Data availability statement
Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Data availability statement
Data sharing not applicable as no datasets generated and/or analysed for this study.
Footnotes
X @AbelWajnerman
Contributors All authors contributed equally to the development of the manuscript. AWP is acting as a guarantor.
Funding This study was funded by Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (Fondecyt Iniciación No 11220327).
Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Read the full text or download the PDF:
Other content recommended for you
- Right to mental integrity and neurotechnologies: implications of the extended mind thesis
- Neurorights in question: rethinking the concept of mental integrity
- Mental integrity, autonomy, and fundamental interests
- Non-voluntary BCI explantation: assessing possible neurorights violations in light of contrasting mental ontologies
- Stimulating brains, altering minds
- What makes a medical intervention invasive?
- Ethical examination of deep brain stimulation’s ‘last resort’ status
- Authenticity or autonomy? When deep brain stimulation causes a dilemma
- Whither a Welfare-Funded ’Sex Doula' Programme?
- Informed consent for clinical trials of deep brain stimulation in psychiatric disease: challenges and implications for trial design