Chile passes the ‘neuro rights’ law in the face of neurotechnological advances
- ByStartupStory | October 2, 2021
Chilean lawmakers approved a law establishing the rights to personal identity, mental privacy and free will, becoming the first country in the world to legislate on neurotechnology that can manipulate one’s mind. The bill will now have to be signed into law by the president.
This bill got passed in the Senate last year and could form the basis of future lawmaking in the field of human rights in other countries in the face of advances in technology applied to the mind and the brain.
“The aim of this law is to protect “the last frontier” of the human being: the human psyche,” said Senator Guido Girardi, one of the most vocal promoters of the law, during debates preceding the vote. “We are happy that this is the start of a global assessment on how technology should be used for the good of humanity,” Girardi said on Twitter.
With this legislation, Chile is striving to be at the forefront of advances in neurotechnology. Rafael Yuste, a biology professor at Columbia University and one of the world’s top experts in the field, told AFP that researchers have already succeeded in implanting in the brain of mice images of things that they hadn’t actually seen which affected their behaviour. This causes concern among some that such neurotechnology may be used to record people’s mental data as well as to modify it. That is why Chile’s law “establishes that scientific and technological development must be at the service of people and that it will be carried out with respect for life and physical and mental integrity”, the Chamber of Deputies said in a statement. It intends to safeguard people’s “neuro data” and establish limits on how the contents of a person’s brain can be analyzed and modified.
Follow Startup Story
Related Posts
