PortFolio Entry 5: Mapping the BRAIN

Brain mapping is a new discovery that is now a concern to the society if it will be put to unethical usage and will it be abused? Brain mapping is indeed a wonderful technology but there are still three concerns that I would like to talk about and they are the testing of this new technology, privacy when storing of a patient’s brain data and parents comparing the brains of their children to famous inventors.
Firstly, this is a new discovery where it should be put to the test and humans are the guinea pigs. Take for example, the case where Nancy’s license gets revoked for having her brain scanned with an image of Bill Clinton’s life at risk interpreted by those who saw her results. The question here is who are the people that should be tested with this technology and what are the implications for employment scanning?
Secondly, it is about the storing of a patient’s data after scanning their brains. Back to the example on Nancy’s case, she was not given any privacy. The results of scanning her brain caused her to lose her job despite her high qualification. Storing brain scan data is unethical as who should be the ones to ensure that the brain scans are kept confidential and will not fall into the hands of the wrong group of people intruding the privacy of the people? The results of the brain scan should only be made known to the person who took the scan.
Thirdly, parents are making use of the results of brain scans on their children to decide their fate on them which sounds wrong. It may be seen now that Johnny is good at violin so he should only concentrate on violin but what he is good at may not be what he likes as children are not yet exposed to many other things.
In short, I think that there should be some rules in place so that brain mapping will be put to proper use like treating of patients and should not be used for the sake of determining one’s fate. Now it is because many people are using it unnecessarily, therefore they are issues like intrusion of privacy that we have to look into. This technology should be controlled by the hospital for treating patients and one way to prevent people from misusing it, we can set it scanning of map to be high.