Neuroethics and International Biolaw

Dear friends,
                

               Some of you have contacted me saying how busy they were with other previous commitments (jobs, college, papers), leading them to face some troubles writing their assignments in time. Some haven’t also undestood that we were going to use our chat room, on P2PU website and then our chat session could not have happened. Let me share some ideas to take us on path again!
                 P2PU courses were developed as open, free courses, attended by a community of learners interested in a particular subject and willing to work with peers to enhance their knowledge. So far, we have been doing great. Your posts were very insightful and enriching, always providing different perspectives and analysis. However, being caught in the middle of the semester with more assignments to do is a challenge indeed.
                 I have organized the course, establishing modules and deadlines just to give us some direction and clear points of departure. Our intention, in P2PU, isn’t to  overwhelm our “students” ( I prefer peers) with dozen of prohibitive tasks. Our commitment, in P2PU, is with learning itself. So, I was thinking about a plan to put us on our path again, without interfering so much in your previous agenda.
                 I think we can  analyse some neuroethical issues, relating them to Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. The main goal of our course is to see if a normativist approach to neuroethics is a possible and feasible task. In order to do that, I’ve proposed some specific themes: brain enhancing; brain imaging and right to privacy and finally informed consent. In my view, it isn’t necessary to write specifically about Weeks 2 and 3(an introduction to International Law and Universal Declararion on Bioethics), but read the material and apply it directly to neuroethics field. Instead of 5 other posts, we now have 3 others.                             
                 My first idea is considering the possibility of joining themes together and writing a single post (for example, brain enhancement can be seen as a matter of privacy and free will and then you could write a single post joining those topics). Another idea is asking one of you to write a post and then the others would just post comments, reflecting about the position defended in the post. In this last case, someone needs to volunteer and pick a topic of particular interest. Both ideas can work well to me, since I’m interested in the discussion itself, rather than in the format we are using to conduct our course. 
                Adopting the first proposal, we’ll have to write 2 posts and a final comment, which seems great to me. Adopting the second idea, we’ll have 3 more posts, each one written by a volunteer, and with all others making comments about what was said, and them a final comment. 
                Since this is a free learning community, and we see ourselves as peers, not as teachers and students, I would like to hear your opinion. I prefer the first proposal, with actually would make us finish our course in two weeks!                 

Best regards,
Ana Rosa Amorim.