Ethical Analysis on the Application of Neurotechnology for Human Augmentation in Physicians and Surgeons
This work addresses ethical concerns for medical professionals and patients regarding human augmentation, but it is incremental as it reviews existing literature without proposing new solutions.
The paper examines the ethical implications of using neurotechnology to augment physicians and surgeons to address workforce shortages, arguing that such enhancements could lead to injustices and harm to both medical professionals and patients.
With the shortage of physicians and surgeons and increase in demand worldwide due to situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing interest in finding solutions to help address the problem. A solution to this problem would be to use neurotechnology to provide them augmented cognition, senses and action for optimal diagnosis and treatment. Consequently, doing so can negatively impact them and others. We argue that applying neurotechnology for human enhancement in physicians and surgeons can cause injustices, and harm to them and patients. In this paper, we will first describe the augmentations and neurotechnologies that can be used to achieve the relevant augmentations for physicians and surgeons. We will then review selected ethical concerns discussed within literature, discuss the neuroengineering behind using neurotechnology for augmentation purposes, then conclude with an analysis on outcomes and ethical issues of implementing human augmentation via neurotechnology in medical and surgical practice.