Brain and nerve = Shinkei kenkyū no shinpo
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Neuroethics was originated in 2002 in the United States. In 2004, the Research Institute of Science and Technology for Society (RISTEX), a subsection of Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), launched a neuroethics research group as the first research group to focus on the academic study and public engagement in neuroethics in Japan. ⋯ We also introduce brief results of public survey of neuroscience research in Japan that suggest the significance of ethics and education regarding neuroscience to overview the future vision on neuroethics. We further discuss the role of neuroscientists in the future progress in neuroethics.
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There have been considerable disputes the positioning of neuroethics as a new field since its emergence in 2002. It is the novelty of the neuroethical issues and the necessity for updated moral approaches to them that leading exponents of neuroethics have emphasized; advances in neurosciences have created an entirely new field of moral inquiries that the conventional bioethics had never noticed. Futher, as neuroethics embraces the subdivision of ethics in neuroscience, it should take precedence over bioethics, which depends on the fundamental moral concepts without questioning their bases. ⋯ Moreover, bioethicists point out that the recent tendency of Balkanization in the field of bioethics could endanger the integrity of moral investigations. Subfields of bioethics, such as geneethics, neuroethics, nanoethics and so on, originate consecutively, entail wastage of valuable time and money, and increase the risk of fragmentizing moral considerations in an inconsistent way. By reviewing this controversy between neuroethics and bioethics, I argue that the relevant scientific investigations and technologies, which have appeared to promote the proliferation of bioethical sub-disciplines to date, are beginning to converge into 1 complex that demands not the division into subspecialities but the novel integration of bioethical inquiries: it is time to attempt the unification of bioethical applied ethics for moral considerations regarding nano-bio-info-cogno convergent technologies.