ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the Council's ethical concerns, describing that research into memory-dampening should be encouraged, free of the fear that it is generally wrong to dampen memories. It explains legal issues of informed consent, obstruction of justice and the mitigation of emotional distress damages. The chapter discusses the questions that may arise as to the sorts of disclosures that health professionals must make in order to obtain informed consent to dampen the memories of a recently traumatized person. It also addresses the claim, raised by Council member Gilbert Meilaender and echoed by the Council in its report on memory-dampening, that it may be difficult or impossible to obtain informed consent from patients to undergo propranolol-style memory-dampening. The chapter describes how existing obstruction of justice provisions may criminalize memory-dampening in certain cases. It also discusses the mitigation of emotional damages in tort to show how the doctrine requires the authors to establish norms of behaviour in the memory-dampening context.
