From: the bricoleur (blacksun@btinternet.com)
Date: Tue May 28 2002 - 13:00:57 MDT
The future of mind control
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1143583
May 23rd 2002
>From The Economist print edition
People already worry about genetics. They should worry about brain science
too
IN AN attempt to treat depression, neuroscientists once carried out a simple
experiment. Using electrodes, they stimulated the brains of women in ways
that caused pleasurable feelings. The subjects came to no harm-indeed their
symptoms appeared to evaporate, at least temporarily-but they quickly fell
in love with their experimenters.
Such a procedure (and there have been worse in the history of neuroscience)
poses far more of a threat to human dignity and autonomy than does cloning.
Cloning is the subject of fierce debate, with proposals for wholesale bans.
Yet when it comes to neuroscience, no government or treaty stops anything.
For decades, admittedly, no neuroscientist has been known to repeat the love
experiment. A scientist who used a similar technique to create
remote-controlled rats seemed not even to have entertained the possibility.
"Humans? Who said anything about humans?" he said, in genuine shock, when
questioned. "We work on rats."
Ignoring a possibility does not, however, make it go away. If asked to guess
which group of scientists is most likely to be responsible, one day, for
overturning the essential nature of humanity, most people might suggest
geneticists. In fact neurotechnology poses a greater threat-and also a more
immediate one. Moreover, it is a challenge that is largely ignored by
regulators and the public, who seem unduly obsessed by gruesome fantasies of
genetic dystopias.
A person's genetic make-up certainly has something important to do with his
subsequent behaviour. But genes exert their effects through the brain. If
you want to predict and control a person's behaviour, the brain is the place
to start. Over the course of the next decade, scientists may be able to
predict, by examining a scan of a person's brain, not only whether he will
tend to mental sickness or health, but also whether he will tend to
depression or violence. Neural implants may within a few years be able to
increase intelligence or to speed up reflexes. Drug companies are hunting
for molecules to assuage brain-related ills, from paralysis to shyness (see
article).
A public debate over the ethical limits to such neuroscience is long
overdue. It may be hard to shift public attention away from genetics, which
has so clearly shown its sinister side in the past. The spectre of eugenics,
which reached its culmination in Nazi Germany, haunts both politicians and
public. The fear that the ability to monitor and select for desirable
characteristics will lead to the subjugation of the undesirable-or the
merely unfashionable-is well-founded.
Not so long ago neuroscientists, too, were guilty of victimising the
mentally ill and the imprisoned in the name of science. Their sins are now
largely forgotten, thanks in part to the intractable controversy over the
moral status of embryos. Anti-abortion lobbyists, who find stem-cell
research and cloning repugnant, keep the ethics of genetic technology high
on the political agenda. But for all its importance, the quarrel over
abortion and embryos distorts public discussion of bioethics; it is a wonder
that people in the field can discuss anything else.
In fact, they hardly do. America's National Institutes of Health has a hefty
budget for studying the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics,
but it earmarks nothing for the specific study of the ethics of
neuroscience. The National Institute of Mental Health, one of its component
bodies, has seen fit to finance a workshop on the ethical implications of
"cyber-medicine", yet it has not done the same to examine the social impact
of drugs for "hyperactivity", which 7% of American six- to eleven-year-olds
now take. The Wellcome Trust, Britain's main source of finance for the study
of biomedical ethics, has a programme devoted to the ethics of brain
research, but the number of projects is dwarfed by its parallel programme
devoted to genetics.
Uncontrollable fears
The worriers have not spent these resources idly. Rather, they have produced
the first widespread legislative and diplomatic efforts directed at
containing scientific advance. The Council of Europe and the United Nations
have declared human reproductive cloning a violation of human rights. The
Senate is soon to vote on a bill that would send American scientists to
prison for making cloned embryonic stem cells.
Yet neuroscientists have been left largely to their own devices, restrained
only by standard codes of medical ethics and experimentation. This relative
lack of regulation and oversight has produced a curious result. When it
comes to the brain, society now regards the distinction between treatment
and enhancement as essentially meaningless. Taking a drug such as Prozac
when you are not clinically depressed used to be called cosmetic, or
non-essential, and was therefore considered an improper use of medical
technology. Now it is regarded as just about as cosmetic, and as
non-essential, as birth control or orthodontics. American legislators are
weighing the so-called parity issue-the argument that mental treatments
deserve the same coverage in health-insurance plans as any other sort of
drug. Where drugs to change personality traits were once seen as medicinal
fripperies, or enhancements, they are now seen as entitlements.
This flexible attitude towards neurotechnology-use it if it might work,
demand it if it does-is likely to extend to all sorts of other technologies
that affect health and behaviour, both genetic and otherwise. Rather than
resisting their advent, people are likely to begin clamouring for those that
make themselves and their children healthier and happier.
This might be bad or it might be good. It is a question that public
discussion ought to try to settle, perhaps with the help of a regulatory
body such as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which
oversees embryo research in Britain. History teaches that worrying overmuch
about technological change rarely stops it. Those who seek to halt genetics
in its tracks may soon learn that lesson anew, as rogue scientists perform
experiments in defiance of well-intended bans. But, if society is concerned
about the pace and ethics of scientific advance, it should at least form a
clearer picture of what is worth worrying about, and why.
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