Mindful Incisions
PIs: Maren Grainger-Monsen, M.D. and Judy Illes, Ph.D.
PROJECT DATES: 1/1/04 - 2/28/05
SPONSOR: The Greenwall Foundation
Stunning advancements in the neurosciences today are challenging our understanding of what it means to be normal and our concept of personhood. The new field of neuroethics has emerged to focus on the bioethical implications of these advances and the manner in which they are translated to patients and society. The questions that these neuroscientific advancements provoke are of such importance that it is incumbent upon those of us in the field to educate all stakeholders - researchers, health care providers, and patients alike - and begin a dialogue of what course we as a society wish to take. A central question is: how do we most effectively educate people about these issues? In response, our goal is to create a film - a first in a series of neuroethics documentaries - that captures the passionate emerging themes at the intersection of biomedical ethics and the neurological sciences.
In this first film, Mindful Incisions, Drs. Grainger-Monsen and Illes will follow patients with intractable pain, choosing whether or not to be one of the first to undergo a new neurosurgical procedure. This MRI-guided procedure - a "cingulotomy" - has the potential to improve the patient's condition, yet may fundamentally alter personality and behavior in unpredictable and potentially catastrophic ways. The film will explore the decision-making processes and moral reasoning involved in weighing such an enormous decision, as well as how patients understand experimental treatments and procedures where clinical outcomes data do not exist.
Mindful Incisions grow out of a strong collaboration between Maren Grainger-Monsen, M.D., head of the Bioethics in Film Program at SCBE, and Judy Illes, Ph.D., head of the Program in Neuroethics at SCBE, in collaboration with Stanford Neurosurgeon Gary Heit, M.D., Ph.D. and Anaesthesiologist Sean Mackey, M.D., Ph.D..
For more information, please contact neuroethics@stanford.edu
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