LAUSR

Sawai and colleagues (2022) have continued the effort begun by other scholars to articulate the current and future ethical challenges of brain organoid research. They take a step beyond some prior reviews by summarizing ethically-relevant advances in the science and digging more deeply into potential ways to assess the development of consciousness or consciousnesslike properties in brain organoids. I agree with the authors that anticipating potential future ethical challenges of innovative neuroscience technology is critical, even if (as with brain organoids) the research is still in its early stages. In my view, however, their articulation inadequately addresses a key element that should be integrated into such anticipatory accounts: the perspectives of biospecimen donors and the publics they represent. Initial work assessing patient perspectives suggests that these potential donors find some research uses of brain organoids to be morally concerning or believe that brain organoids are more ethically sensitive than other organoid types (Bollinger et al. 2021; Haselager et al. 2020). This commentary focuses on three areas in which perspectives of donors stand to inform the challenges laid out by Sawai and colleagues: (1) messaging about advances in organoid science without stoking public fear, (2) creating appropriate informed consent policies, and (3) weighing ethical risks against potential clinical benefits.