Elisabeth Hildt

This paper discusses current clinical applications and possible future uses of brain-computer interfaces as a means for communication, motor control and entertainment. After giving a brief account of the various approaches to direct brain-computer interaction, the paper will address individual, social and ethical implications of BCI technology to extract signals from the brain. These include reflections on medical and psychosocial benefits and risks, user control, informed consent, autonomy and privacy as well as ethical and social issues implicated in putative future developments with focus on human self-understanding and the idea of man. BCI use which involves direct interrelation and mutual interdependence between human brains and technical devices raises anthropological questions concerning self-perception and the technicalization of the human body

Research into human ageing is a growing field of research with two central foci: geriatric medicine works to reduce the incidence and severity of age-related diseases and disabilities by devising adequate therapeutic and preventive strategies. A second focus, this time in the emerging field of biogerontology, is to bring about a general retardation of the ageing process and by this increase the average and maximum human lifespan. This contribution looks into the second focus, i.e. the possibility of age retardation which, for the time being, is merely hypothetical. After outlining research strategies studying age retardation in animal experiments, it will ask how extending human life by technological interventions might play out on the individual, familial and social level. The central concern here will be autonomy-linked issues, seeing that in debates concerning the ethical implications of age-retarding techniques the argument from autonomy is one of the main arguments in favour of the prolongation of human life. In particular, this contribution will assess whether the argument from autonomy does, in fact, unequivocally support the recourse to age-retarding techniques

An increase in autonomy and freedom is often considered one ofthe main arguments in favour of a broad use of genetic testing.Starting from Gerald Dworkin's reflections on autonomy and choicethis article examines some of the implications which accompanythe increase in choices offered by prenatal genetic diagnosis.Although personal autonomy and individual choice are importantaspects in the legitimation of prenatal genetic diagnosis, itseems clear that an increase in choice offered by prenatalgenetic diagnosis also leads to various implications that maynegatively influence the freedom of the persons involved