As a conclusion to Mental Health Awareness Week, the student-run organization Active Minds held a discussion entitled "Under the Skin," which considered the science behind and ethics of anti-psychotic implants.
The discussion took place between Paul Root Wolpe, senior fellow at the Center for Bioethics, and Steven Siegel, an assistant professor in the Psychiatry Department. Siegel is also the director of the Stanley Foundation Center, an advocacy group for families of individuals afflicted with schizophrenia.
Siegel has contributed to the development of an implantable device that delivers anti-psychotic medication for six months.
He claims that this new type of drug delivery system will help patients who cannot remember to take oral medicine on a regular basis.
Siegel went on to speak, however, about the challenges he has faced -- such as the lack of public support for an implant he developed for the drug Haldol, which is often prescribed to patients with schizophrenia.
He hopes that the implant he has developed for Risperidone -- another anti-psychotic medication -- will garner more support due to the extensive public research he is doing by sending surveys out to agencies all over the world and to every chapter of the National Institutes of Health.
Siegel stated that he has received e-mails both praising his research and likening him to Hitler.
Soliciting early feedback is all part of Siegel's efforts to not develop his drug in isolation from the public, which Wolpe highlighted as crucial to ethical drug development.
"We have a way of combining understanding, rationale and decision," Siegel said in reference to the ethical considerations surrounding both public sentiment and patient care.
Wolpe suggested that the public may have ethical concerns about the equitable distribution of the implants and may fear that family members or the courts would coerce patients to use the implants.
"It's a human question. Do you want to doctor humanely?" Wolpe said, emphasizing that he is not against the technology, but believes that ethical concerns need to be raised and addressed.
College sophomore Adam Kamlet found the discussion interesting, saying that "Siegel was able to take a step back and look at his opponent's point of view with an open and objective mind."
Active Minds President Becca Chodroff said that the purpose of MHAW is to "educate the Penn community about resources on campus and about mental health in general."
