Late in the Spring 2015 semester, three Mechanical Engineering Undergraduates attended the 8th International Conference on Ethics in Biology, Engineering & Medicine, hosted by St. Francis College of Brooklyn NY on behalf of SUNY Downstate Medical Center.  Niara Comrie (right), Lailynn Reyes (left), and Emily Canapp (not shown) presented their posters and reported back to us that an ethical and informative time was had by all. The conference had a wide range of topics for attendees to debate and discuss from the ethics of bulletproof skin and dental implants to the privacy concerns surrounding personal mobile devices and drones.

The UMBC/ME students’ poster was entitled Anticipating Future Ethical Issues in Prosthetic Devices.  Ms. Comrie, Ms. Reyes, and Ms. Canapp presented their anticipatory ethical analysis using trends in advancement and application (specific to prosthetics) to look toward potential ethical conundrums. Some of the scenarios explored touched on misuse of advanced personal medical devices or prosthetics and anticipating or preventing bad acts perpetuated using these technologies: how do we keep people from using medical tech to harm others, is it possible to do so ethically?  Another ethical concern explored was toward the other end of the access spectrum: how does society make prosthetics available to those with need but not means?

Engineers affect access to every kind of medical device: their work allows devices to be created more efficiently, more cheaply, and to evolve and change with our knowledge of materials. Engineers allow medical innovation to progress with the imaginations of the medical researchers they collaborate with, it is only appropriate to allow our imaginations to explore not only the possibilities but the dangers. It is only appropriate for us to prevent and prepare for the consequences we can foresee with analyses like that done by Ms. Comrie, Ms. Reyes, and Ms. Canapp.