Protocol on Psychosurgery
Category: Health | Area of Effect: Bioethics | Proposed by: Caspian Settlement
Observing that psychosurgery is a currently used procedure across many member states, and the opportunities it has provided for mentally ill individuals who were cured via psychosurgery;
Understanding that psychosurgery usually involves removing a carefully selected portion of the brain to correct mental illness, which has the potential for varying adverse effects on functionality, identity, & personality on an individual and should be guarded against in case of misuse;
Wishing to clarify specific situations when psychosurgery should be utilized to ensure those who receive it are deriving the maximum possible benefit from its use and to prevent unethical or unnecessary usages of the procedure;
Intending to help improve artificial reproduction methods and prevent additional usage of psychosurgery by analyses of artificially produced individuals who undergo the procedure, especially due to the potential preventability of mental illness towards those individuals if derived from said methods;
Alarmed at psychosurgery lacking legal basis within World Assembly legislation, which could pose a severe hazard towards individuals whose surgeons may not adequately regulated in their usage of psychosurgery;
The World Assembly hereby:
- Defines psychosurgery as any surgical procedure conducted on the brain for the purpose of relieving mental illness;
- Forbids psychosurgery from being conducted on individuals suffering from mental illness on the basis of “repeated political disobedience” and similar maladies diagnosed based on political opposition, excluding pregnant women who require fetal neurosurgery for the benefit of their unborn child unless the surgery is being conducted without fulfillment of Clause 5;
- Requires that for psychosurgery to be only considered, an individual’s mental illness must have been untreatable by all available forms of medication and therapy potentially helpful for said illness, and at least one year has elapsed without any improvement of symptoms, exempting illnesses where there is a clear, rapid progression of disabling symptoms that poses a high risk of mortality;
- Requires that an individual’s mental illness must also be a major impediment to his/her daily routines, happiness, and/or relationships before psychosurgery is conducted;
- Allows for psychosurgery to be conducted on fetuses who have been observed, with near-certainty, to have brain malformations that have a high chance of causing future mental illness without fulfilling Clause 3 and 4;
- Reserves lobotomies and partial forms of this procedure as a last resort treatment only after all other forms of psychosurgery for the afflicted area of the brain have been exhausted with no major improvement whatsoever;
- Encourages nations to research and share developments in both psychosurgery as a last resort and alternative procedures other than psychosurgery to help create a less risk-prone medical approach towards curing mental illnesses.