Neurointerventions and Physician Participation

Abstract

This chapter takes up an issue that more narrowly relates to the question who should administer the use of neurointerventions if such treatment were to be put into practice. That such treatment would usually require at least some degree of involvement by personnel with medical skills is beyond doubt. However, this raises the question whether physicians should be involved in the treatment of offenders. The purpose of this chapter is to consider whether the combination of the fact that the treatment presupposes medical involvement, and the view that physicians should not be involved in such treatment, is sufficient to block the whole discussion of the morally legitimate use of neurointerventions in crime prevention. It is examined whether any of the arguments that have been advanced in the discussion of physician involvement in the use of lethal injection in relation to capital punishment manage to establish that physicians have a moral duty to abstain from criminal justice use of treatment by neurointerventions.