Category: Neuroscience

Mushrooms, capsules, and dropper bottle.

Psychedelics Are Cheap. Psychedelic Treatment Is Not.

Vincent Joralemon Leave a comment

By Vincent Joralemon

Psychedelics hold immense potential to address an array of conditions that are otherwise challenging to treat, but accessing these therapies can be costly, which means that potential benefits will be stratified along the lines of socioeconomic status.

This is an acute concern, because many with conditions that psychedelics may help to treat — such as post-traumatic stress disorder, postpartum depression, treatment-resistant depression, and alcohol use disorder — lack the resources to pay for effective health treatments.

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cells with the doors closed at a historic Idaho prison.

Trying and Sentencing Youth As Adults: Key Takeaways from Recent Petrie-Flom Center Event

Minsoo Kwon Leave a comment

By Minsoo Kwon

All 50 states have transfer laws that either allow or require children to be prosecuted in adult criminal court, rather than juvenile court. There is no constitutional right to be tried in juvenile court. What has modern neuroscience shown about the differences between the developing and the adult brain, and how justifiable is trying, prosecuting, and sentencing children in the adult criminal justice system?

Panelists discussed these topics during a recent webinar hosted by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. This article highlights key points made during the conversation.

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Insurance concept. Wooden blocks with insurance icons. family, life, car, travel, health and house insurance icons on blue background.

Autonomy, Insurance, and Luck

Leslie C. Griffin Leave a comment

By Leslie C. Griffin

You will be surprised I’ve been through all the experiences described in this post, and that I’m still alive to tell you about them. Even I can’t believe it some days. It’s quite a list, so sometimes I mention it to my friends, so they will be as amazed as I am.

I am a lifelong academic, so I also think about what lessons they’ve taught me.

One is the philosophical principle of autonomy, which I regularly teach in my bioethics class. In my opinion, it means you always have to be prepared for the very worst. You have to live knowing it could happen to you. The worst doesn’t always occur. But when it does, you need to find a positive way to look at it and to make good decisions about it.

Two is the practical decision to have your legal documents in place. A durable power of attorney. Health insurance and property insurance. These practical items also help a lot in getting you through terrible situations. Lack of insurance makes everything dreadful.

Autonomy and insurance help you through a lot of crises. My crises include a blizzard, a tornado, an earthquake, a car accident, a hurricane, and two murderers.

You also need good luck.

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Brain MRI.

Neurorehabilitation and Recovery: Going Through Hell

Leslie C. Griffin Leave a comment

This article is adapted slightly from remarks the author delivered at the 2022 International Neuroethics Society annual meeting on a panel about neurorehabilitation moderated by Dr. Joseph Fins.

By Leslie C. Griffin

I’m a tenured law professor at UNLV. This semester I’m teaching Bioethics and Constitutional Law.

I am healthy, happy, working, and working out.

But I went through hell to be here.

Why? Because twice, doctors told members of my family that due to brain injury, I was about to die. Or if I lived, I would probably live in rehab the rest of my life because I would not be able to work again.

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Medical Hospital: Neurologist and Neurosurgeon Talk, Use Computer, Analyse Patient MRI Scan, Diagnose Brain. Brain Surgery Health Clinic Lab: Two Professional Physicians Look at CT Scan. Close-up.

Creating Brain-Forward Policies Amid a ‘Mass Deterioration Event’

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Emily R.D. Murphy

COVID-19 will be with us — in our society and in our brains — for the foreseeable future. Especially as death and severe illness rates have dropped since the introduction of vaccines and therapeutics, widespread and potentially lasting brain effects of COVID have become a significant source of discussion, fear, and even pernicious rumors about the privileged deliberately seeking competitive economic advantages by avoiding COVID (by continuing to work from home and use other peoples’ labor to avoid exposures) and its consequent brain damage.

This symposium contribution focuses specifically on COVID’s lasting effects in our brains, about which much is still unknown. It is critical to focus on this — notwithstanding the uncertainty about what happens, to how many, and for how long — for two reasons. First, brain problems (and mental health) are largely invisible and thus overlooked and deprioritized. And second, our current disability laws and policies that might be thought to deal with the problem are not up to the looming task. Instead, we should affirmatively consider what brain-forward policies and governance could look like, building on lessons from past pandemics and towards a future of more universal support and structural accommodation of diminishment as well as disability.

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POPLAR affiliated reseachers

Introducing Affiliated Researchers for the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment
(Clockwise from top left: Kwasi Adusei, Ismail Lourido Ali, Jonathan Perez-Reyzin, Dustin Marlan.)

We are excited to welcome our inaugural group of affiliated researchers for the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR). Through regular contributions to Bill of Health, as well as workshops and other projects, POPLAR affiliated researchers will share their expertise and perspectives on developments in psychedelics law and policy. We look forward to learning from and sharing their insights with our audiences. Keep an eye out for their bylines!

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Dried psilocybe cubensis psilocybin magic mushrooms inside a plastic prescription medicine bottle isolated on white background.

What Macrodosing Can Learn from Microdosing

Dustin Marlan Leave a comment

By Dustin Marlan

Following a recent wave of unbridled positivity culminating in a “shroom boom,” the psychedelic renaissance now finds itself under fire amidst concerns of predatory capitalism, cultural appropriation, adverse psychological effects, and sexual abuse and boundary issues by guides and therapists.

Nonetheless, the psychedelics industry is moving ahead at full speed. Oregon will begin accepting applications from businesses to run psilocybin service centers in January 2023. MDMA clinical trials are nearing completion and expected to result in FDA approval. And corporations are readying psychedelic compounds — natural and synthetic — to produce and deliver to the masses.

All of this begs the question of how psychedelics dosage should be regulated, particularly where, as journalist Shayla Love points out, “there’s reason to worry that there hasn’t been enough preparation for negative outcomes amidst the hype.”

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