![]() | Mary Walker Lecturer - La Trobe University Bioéthique, éthique, Philosophie |
-
07.02.2019-29.03.2019
Ethics of artificial organs, advanced prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces
Mary Jean Walker received her PhD from Maquarie University in Sydney in 2010. She is currently a Research Fellow in the Ethics Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, and the Philosophy Department at Monash University. Previously she held a postdoctoral fellowship in the Philosophy Department at Macquarie University. Mary has research interests in bioethics, philosophy of medicine, health policy, and personal identity. Research in her current role falls into two main areas. First, she is examining ethical issues related to emerging medical devices, such as advanced prosthetic limbs, artificial organs, and neural prostheses. Second, ethical and regulatory issues related to personalised medicine, particularly relating to devices. During the Brocher residency Mary is working on a project on phenomenology of artificial organs. Recent empirical work suggests that receipt of some artificial organs can alter people's interoceptive processes (that is, bodily signals from the viscera and somatic tissues) in ways that impact on their emotional and cognitive lives. The project will use resources from the phenomenology of the body to examine the ethical implications of this impact.