Journal 2 - By Lyric

Author: Liyuan Liu (Lyric)

Brief Summary

In the article, the author mainly discusses the benefits and controversies in the field of biomedical engineering. With the development of advanced techniques, the researching fields become increasingly deep and detailed and the ethical and moral problems are caused as well which should be considered from different angles and do not have a certain conclusion.

Do people who have prosthetics in their brain be responsible for all of their action (should something go wrong?) Should biomedical engineers try to develop brains that superior to the normal human brain?

In my consideration, the emerging technology bringing with the moral and ethical issues is the development of the superior brain by biomedical methods. Due to the development of brain-computer interfaces described in the article and other advanced techniques, human can use the prosthetics in their brain to control their bodies, and even implant the knowledge into their brains, which make human learn abilities much quicker than before. Truly, there would be some benefits for mankind, including the improvement of sporting abilities, the treatment of some brain diseases and the up level for whole human being. However, this new situation of gaining new abilities would contribute to the moral and ethical problems in the whole society. The elites are not determined by the talent or hard-working any more. Just like many science fictions describing, which type of knowledge or memories you choosing to implant into your brain would become the most significant criterion. In this situation, the rich is easier to achieve the best abilities by using their money to buy the most useful skills. Meanwhile, the poor cannot get more beneficial prosthetics to improve their abilities, so that there would be less and less opportunities for the poor. It makes the whole society increasingly unbalancing and unstable. That the reason why I believe the development of superior brain is along with the moral and ethical issues.

Thank you for reading.