The worrying clauses of the Parlatino Neurorights Model Law

Abstract

Recently, the Latin American and Caribbean Parliament (Parlatino) promulgated a Model Law on Neurorights with the purpose of creating the bases for member countries to legislate on this matter. However, the documents presented by the Parlatino could suffer from serious defects in theoretical, conceptual and scientific foundation, as well as containing, and ignoring, important neuroethical debates. In this article we seek to highlight the main objections to the document presented to serve as a Model Law, as well as the Annex “General conceptual theoretical framework”. In this sense, we make a special call for academic, scientific and political debate, without incurring in hasty and inadequate normative proposals. For such considerations, we suggest not incorporating the proposed Model Law. On the contrary, we propose that, instead of creating ambiguous, abstract and general regulations, international agreements be legislated and reached on specific matters based on the real risks of neurotechnology, in such a way that the regulations truly protect. Until then, the critical comments that have been raised from academia are a necessary critique that disputes the role of neurorights in the global political environment.