Designing an Implantable Therapeutic Device for US Soldiers

Designing an Implantable Therapeutic Device for US Soldiers: Insights from an ELSI Panelist in DARPA’s ADAPTER Program

Abstract:

The ADvanced Acclimation and Protection Tool for Environmental Readiness (ADAPTER) aims to develop a travel adapter for the human body, an implantable or ingestible bioelectronic carrier. The therapeutic device aims to achieve the goal of better sleep cycles and the diminishment of traveler’s diarrhea in US soldiers. As an ELSI panelist in this Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s (DARPA) Program, I will discuss the importance of anticipating ethics, law and social implications toward the design and development of a complex socio-technical system. The ELSI panelist acts as an interventionist, in order to raise guiding questions as opposed to providing concrete answers, that stakeholders at large should consider or address at critical stages of the development cycle. While an ELSI panelist cannot pre-judge ethics for cutting-edge technologies for which there are limited histories or experiences to rely on, they certainly can anticipate challenges through thought experiments and scenario planning.

Biography: Katina Michael BIT, MTransCrimPrev, PhD is a professor at Arizona State University, a Senior Global Futures Scientist in the Global Futures Laboratory and has a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence. She is the director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective (SPEC) and the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society.

Citation: Katina Michael, 28 July 2022, “Designing an Implantable Therapeutic Device for US Soldiers: Insights from an ELSI Panelist in DARPA’s ADAPTER Program” in Ehsan Tavakoli-Nabavi, Responsible Innovation-Lab, https://ri-lab.weblogs.anu.edu.au/