Addiction Neuroethics

Addiction Neuroethics

The ethics of addiction neuroscience research and treatment
2012, Pages 277-300
Addiction Neuroethics

Chapter 15 - Investment and Vested Interests in Neuroscience Research of Addiction: Ethical Research Requires More than Informed Consent

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This chapter discusses some powerful vested interests in the neuroscience research of addiction, describing why and how they manipulate neuroscience research. The main justification for government investment in neuroscience research on addiction is to reduce the significant economic and personal costs of drug use and gambling. Given the enormous governmental resources poured into neuroscience research, it is reasonable to ask whether there has been an appropriate return on the investment, particularly as other areas of addiction research and treatment have been under-resourced despite evidence of the benefits of such investment. Neuroscience research on addiction has yielded valuable information about the molecular and neuronal changes that occur in the brain in response to the chronic use of addictive drugs and information about how these changes relate to addictive behaviors. The history of medicine is strewn with ideas once thought promising that did not deliver when scrutinized through the lens of evidence-based medicine. Hormone replacement therapy, prostate-specific antigen screening, perimyocardial infarction lidocaine and many other seemingly good ideas, when prematurely implemented, created bubbles of expectation and investment, leaving sponsors disappointed and patients ill-served when reality did not live up to theoretical promise.

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