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  1. The Case Against Organoid Consciousness.Tim Bayne & James Croxford - 2024 - Neuroethics 17 (1):1-15.
    Neural organoids are laboratory-generated entities that replicate certain structural and functional features of the human brain. Most neural organoids are disembodied—completely decoupled from sensory input and motor output. As such, questions about their potential capacity for consciousness are exceptionally difficult to answer. While not disputing the need for caution regarding certain neural organoid types, this paper appeals to two broad constraints on any adequate theory of consciousness—the first involving the dependence of consciousness on embodiment; the second involving the dependence of (...)
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  • The Ethics of Human Brain Organoid Transplantation in Animals.Tsutomu Sawai, Julian Savulescu, Christopher Gyngell & Masanori Kataoka - 2023 - Neuroethics 16 (3):1-15.
    In this paper, we outline how one might conduct a comprehensive ethical evaluation of human brain organoid transplantation in animals. Thus far, ethical concerns regarding this type of research have been assumed to be similar to those associated with other transplants of human cells in animals, and have therefore not received significant attention. The focus has been only on the welfare, moral status, or mental capacities of the host animal. However, the transplantation of human brain organoids introduces several new ethical (...)
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  • Global Versus Local Theories of Consciousness and the Consciousness Assessment Issue in Brain Organoids.Maxence Gaillard - 2024 - Neuroethics 17 (1):1-14.
    Any attempt at consciousness assessment in organoids requires careful consideration of the theory of consciousness that researchers will rely on when performing this task. In cognitive neuroscience and the clinic, there are tools and theories used to detect and measure consciousness, typically in human beings, but none of them is neither fully consensual nor fit for the biological characteristics of organoids. I discuss the existing attempt relying on the Integrated Information Theory and its models and tools. Then, I revive the (...)
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  • Consciousness in a Rotor? Science and Ethics of Potentially Conscious Human Cerebral Organoids.Federico Zilio & Andrea Lavazza - 2023 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2):178-196.
    Human cerebral organoids are three-dimensional biological cultures grown in the laboratory to mimic as closely as possible the cellular composition, structure, and function of the corresponding organ, the brain. For now, cerebral organoids lack blood vessels and other characteristics of the human brain, but are also capable of having coordinated electrical activity. They have been usefully employed for the study of several diseases and the development of the nervous system in unprecedented ways. Research on human cerebral organoids is proceeding at (...)
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  • Has the Socio-Political Role of Neuroethics Been Neglected?Walter Veit & Heather Browning - 2022 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 13 (1):23-25.
    Alongside the rapid global advances in neuroscientific research, neuroethics has been one of the fastest growing sub-fields within bioethics. With this rapid expansion, bioethicists struggle to kee...
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  • Confidence Levels or Degrees of Sentience?Walter Veit - 2022 - Asian Bioethics Review 15 (1):93-97.
    I applaud recent improvements upon previous guidelines for the assessment of pain in non-human species and the application of their framework towards decapod crustaceans. Rather than constituting a mere intermediate solution between the scientific difficulty of settling questions of animal consciousness and the need for a framework for the purposes of animal welfare legislation, I will argue that the longer lists of criteria for animal sentience should make us realize that animal sentience is a multi-dimensional phenomenon that must be studied (...)
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  • Does birth matter?Walter Veit - 2022 - Journal of Medical Ethics 48 (3):194-195.
    This paper is a response to a recent paper by Bobier and Omelianchuk in which they argue that the critics of Giubilini and Minerva’s defence of infanticide fail to adequately justify a moral difference at birth. They argue that such arguments would lead to an intuitively less plausible position: that late-term abortions are permissible, thus creating a dilemma for those who seek to argue that birth matters. I argue that the only way to resolve this dilemma, is to bite the (...)
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  • Human Brain Organoids and Consciousness.Takuya Niikawa, Yoshiyuki Hayashi, Joshua Shepherd & Tsutomu Sawai - 2022 - Neuroethics 15 (1):1-16.
    This article proposes a methodological schema for engaging in a productive discussion of ethical issues regarding human brain organoids, which are three-dimensional cortical neural tissues created using human pluripotent stem cells. Although moral consideration of HBOs significantly involves the possibility that they have consciousness, there is no widely accepted procedure to determine whether HBOs are conscious. Given that this is the case, it has been argued that we should adopt a precautionary principle about consciousness according to which, if we are (...)
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  • Human Brain Organoids: Why There Can Be Moral Concerns If They Grow Up in the Lab and Are Transplanted or Destroyed.Andrea Lavazza & Massimo Reichlin - 2023 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32 (4):582-596.
    Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional biological entities grown in the laboratory in order to recapitulate the structure and functions of the adult human brain. They can be taken to be novel living entities for their specific features and uses. As a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the use of HBOs, the authors identify three sets of reasons for moral concern. The first set of reasons regards the potential emergence of sentience/consciousness in HBOs that would endow them with a (...)
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  • The Donation of Human Biological Material for Brain Organoid Research: The Problems of Consciousness and Consent.Masanori Kataoka, Christopher Gyngell, Julian Savulescu & Tsutomu Sawai - 2024 - Science and Engineering Ethics 30 (1):1-15.
    Human brain organoids are three-dimensional masses of tissues derived from human stem cells that partially recapitulate the characteristics of the human brain. They have promising applications in many fields, from basic research to applied medicine. However, ethical concerns have been raised regarding the use of human brain organoids. These concerns primarily relate to the possibility that brain organoids may become conscious in the future. This possibility is associated with uncertainties about whether and in what sense brain organoids could have consciousness (...)
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  • On the Legal Status of Human Cerebral Organoids: Lessons from Animal Law.Joshua Jowitt - 2023 - Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 32 (4):572-581.
    This paper will ask whether the legal status presently afforded to nonhuman animals ought to influence regulatory debates concerning human cerebral organoids. The New York Courts recently refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus to Happy the Elephant as she was property rather than a legal person while at the same time accepting that she is a moral patient deserving of rights protection. An undesirable situation has therefore arisen in which the law holds a being with moral status to (...)
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  • How to deal with risks of AI suffering.Leonard Dung - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    1. 1.1. Suffering is bad. This is why, ceteris paribus, there are strong moral reasons to prevent suffering. Moreover, typically, those moral reasons are stronger when the amount of suffering at st...
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  • Potential Consciousness of Human Cerebral Organoids: on Similarity-Based Views in Precautionary Discourse.Sarah Diner - 2023 - Neuroethics 16 (3):1-8.
    Advances in research on human cerebral organoids (HCOs) call for a critical review of current research policies. A challenge for the evaluation of necessary research regulations lies in the severe uncertainty about future trajectories the currently very rudimentary stages of neural cell cultures might take as the technology progresses. To gain insights into organotypic cultures, ethicists, legal scholars, and neuroscientists rely on resemblances to the human brain. They refer to similarities in structural or functional terms that have been established in (...)
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  • The sentience shift in animal research.Heather Browning & Walter Veit - 2022 - The New Bioethics 28 (4):299-314.
    One of the primary concerns in animal research is ensuring the welfare of laboratory animals. Modern views on animal welfare emphasize the role of animal sentience, i.e. the capacity to experience subjective states such as pleasure or suffering, as a central component of welfare. The increasing official recognition of animal sentience has had large effects on laboratory animal research. The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness (Low et al., University of Cambridge, 2012) marked an official scientific recognition of the presence of sentience (...)
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  • Regulating Possibly Sentient Human Cerebral Organoids.Heather Browning & Walter Veit - 2023 - American Journal of Bioethics Neuroscience 14 (2):197-199.
    Due to their contested ethical and legal status, human cerebral organoids (HCOs) have become the subject of one of the most rapidly expanding debates in the recent bioethics literature. There is no...
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  • The Many Moral Matters of Organoid Models: A systematic review of reasons.Andrew J. Barnhart & Kris Dierickx - 2022 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 25 (3):545-560.
    ObjectiveTo present the ethical issues, moral arguments, and reasons found in the ethical literature on organoid models.DesignIn this systematic review of reasons in ethical literature, we selected sources based on predefined criteria: The publication mentions moral reasons or arguments directly relating to the creation and/or use of organoid models in biomedical research; These moral reasons and arguments are significantly addressed, not as mere passing mentions, or comprise a large portion of the body of work; The publication is peer-reviewed and published (...)
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  • When Is a Brain Organoid a Sentience Candidate?Jonathan Birch - forthcoming - Molecular Psychology.
    It would be unwise to dismiss the possibility of human brain organoids developing sentience. However, scepticism about this idea is appropriate when considering current organoids. It is a point of consensus that a brainstem-dead human is not sentient, and current organoids lack a functioning brainstem. There are nonetheless troubling early warning signs, suggesting organoid research may create forms of sentience in the near future. To err on the side of caution, researchers with very different views about the neural basis of (...)
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