The Neuroethics of Pleasure and Addiction in Public Health Strategies Moving Beyond Harm Reduction: Funding the Creation of Non-Addictive Drugs and Taxonomies of Pleasure

A comparative review on neuroethical issues in neuroscientific and neuroethical journals

This study is a pilot literature review that compares the interest of neuroethicists and neuroscientists. It aims to determine whether there is a significant gap between the neuroethical issues addressed in philosophical neuroethics journals and neuroscience journals. We retrieved 614 articles from two specialist neuroethics journals (Neuroethics and AJOB Neuroscience) and 82 neuroethics-focused articles from three specialist neuroscience journals (Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience). We classified these articles in light of the neuroethical issue in question before we compared the neuroethical issues addressed in philosophical neuroethics with those addressed by neuroscientists. A notable result is a parallelism between them as a general tendency. Neuroscientific articles cover most neuroethical issues discussed by philosophical ethicists and vice versa. Subsequently, there are notable discrepancies between the two bodies of neuroethics literature. For instance, theoretical questions, such as the ethics of moral enhancement and the philosophical implications of neuroscientific findings on our conception of personhood, are more intensely discussed in philosophical-neuroethical articles. Conversely, neuroscientific articles tend to emphasize practical questions, such as how to successfully integrate ethical perspectives into scientific research projects and justifiable practices of animal-involving neuroscientific research. These observations will help us settle the common starting point of the attempt at "ethics integration" in emerging neuroscience, contributing to better governance design and neuroethical practice.

Toward a Philosophy of Harm Reduction

In this paper, I offer a prolegomenon to the philosophy of harm reduction. I begin with an overview of the philosophical literature on both harm and harm reduction, and a brief summary of harm reduction scholarship outside of philosophy in order to make the case that philosophers have something to contribute to understanding harm reduction, and moreover that engagement with harm reduction would improve philosophical scholarship. I then proceed to survey and assess the nascent and still modest philosophy of harm reduction literature that has begun to emerge. I pay particular attention to two Canadian philosophers who have called for the expansion of harm reduction beyond the realm of so-called "vice" (that is, addiction, intoxicants and sex work). Finally, I sketch some of the most interesting and important philosophical issues that I think the philosophy of harm reduction must grapple with going forward.

Human rights, public health and medicinal cannabis use

This paper explores the interplay between the human rights and drug control frameworks and critiques case law on medicinal cannabis use to demonstrate that a bona fide human rights perspective allows for a broader conception of 'health'. This broad conception, encompassing both medicalised and social constructionist definitions, can inform public health policies relating to medicinal cannabis use. The paper also demonstrates how a human rights lens can alleviate a core tension between the State and the individual within the drug policy field. The leading medicinal cannabis case in the UK highlights the judiciary's failure to engage with an individual's human right to health as they adopt an arbitrary, externalist view, focussing on the legality of cannabis to the exclusion of other concerns. Drawing on some international comparisons, the paper considers how a human rights perspective can lead to an approach to medicinal cannabis use which facilitates a holistic understanding of public health.

The neuroethics and neurolaw of brain injury

Neuroethics and neurolaw are fields of study that involve the interface of neuroscience with clinical and legal decision-making. The past two decades have seen increasing attention being paid to both fields, in large part because of the advances in neuroimaging techniques and improved ability to visualize and measure brain structure and function. Traumatic brain injury (TBI), along with its acute and chronic sequelae, has emerged as a focus of neuroethical issues, such as informed consent for treatment and research, diagnostic and prognostic uncertainties, and the subjectivity of interpretation of data. The law has also more frequently considered TBI in criminal settings for exculpation, mitigation and sentencing purposes and in tort and administrative law for personal injury, disability and worker's compensation cases. This article provides an overview of these topics with an emphasis on the current challenges that the neuroscience of TBI faces in the medicolegal arena.