The militarization of neuroscience

[Henk op xp]

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http://www.thebulletin.org/columns/hugh-gusterson/20070410.html

"The militarization of neuroscience

By Hugh Gusterson | 10 April 2007

We've seen this story before: The Pentagon takes an interest in a 
rapidly changing area of scientific knowledge, and the world is forever 
changed. And not for the better.

During World War II, the scientific field was atomic physics. Afraid 
that the Nazis were working on an atomic bomb, the U.S. government 
mounted its own crash project to get there first. The Manhattan Project 
was so secret that Congress did not know what it was funding and Vice 
President Harry S. Truman did not learn about it until FDR's death made 
him president. In this situation of extreme secrecy, there was almost no 
ethical or political debate about the Bomb before it was dropped on two 
cities by a bureaucratic apparatus on autopilot.

Despite J. Robert Oppenheimer's objections, a few Manhattan Project 
scientists organized a discussion on the implications of the "Gadget" 
for civilization shortly before the bomb was tested. Another handful 
issued the Franck Report <http://www.dannen.com/decision/franck.html>, 
advising against dropping the bomb on cities without a prior 
demonstration and warning of the dangers of an atomic arms race. Neither 
initiative had any discernible effect. We ended up in a world where the 
United States had two incinerated cities on its conscience, and its 
pursuit of nuclear dominance created a world of nuclear overkill and 
mutually assured destruction.

This time we have a chance to do better. The science in question now is 
not physics, but neuroscience, and the question is whether we can 
control its militarization.

According to Jonathan Moreno's fascinating and frightening new book, 
/Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense/ 
<http://www.dana.org/books/press/danabook/mindwars/> (Dana Press 2006), 
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research 
in the following areas:

    * Mind-machine interfaces ("neural prosthetics") that will enable
      pilots and soldiers to control high-tech weapons by thought alone.
    * "Living robots" whose movements could be controlled via brain
      implants. This technology has already been tested successfully on
      "roborats" and could lead to animals remotely directed for mine
      clearance, or even to remotely controlled soldiers.
    * "Cognitive feedback helmets" that allow remote monitoring of
      soldiers' mental state.
    * MRI technologies ("brain fingerprinting") for use in interrogation
      or airport screening for terrorists. Quite apart from questions
      about their error rate, such technologies would raise the issue of
      whether involuntary brain scans violate the Fifth Amendment right
      against self-incrimination.
    * Pulse weapons or other neurodisruptors that play havoc with enemy
      soldiers' thought processes.
    * "Neuroweapons" that use biological agents to excite the release of
      neurotoxins. (The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention bans the
      stockpiling of such weapons for offensive purposes, but not
      "defensive" research into their mechanisms of action.)
    * New drugs that would enable soldiers to go without sleep for days,
      to excise traumatic memories, to suppress fear, or to repress
      psychological inhibitions against killing.

Moreno's book is important since there has been little discussion about 
the ethical implications of such research, and the science is at an 
early enough stage that it might yet be redirected in response to public 
discussion.

If left on autopilot, however, it's not hard to see where all of this 
will lead. During the Cold War, misplaced fears of a missile gap and a 
mind control gap excited an overbuilding of nuclear weapons and 
unethical LSD experiments on involuntary human subjects. Similarly, we 
can anticipate future fears of a "neuroweapons" gap, and these fears 
will justify a headlong rush into research (quite likely to involve 
unethical human experiments) that will only stimulate our enemies to 
follow suit.

The military and scientific leaders chartering neuroweapons research 
will argue that the United States is a uniquely noble country that can 
be trusted with such technologies, while other countries (except for a 
few allies) cannot. They will also argue that these technologies will 
save lives and that U.S. ingenuity will enable the United States to 
dominate other countries in a neuroweapons race. When it is too late to 
turn back the clock, they will profess amazement that other countries 
caught up so quickly and that an initiative intended to ensure American 
dominance instead led to a world where everyone is threatened by 
chemicalized soldiers and roboterrorists straight out of /Blade Runner/.

Meanwhile, individual scientists will tell themselves that, if they 
don't do the research, someone else will. Research funding will be 
sufficiently dominated by military grant makers that it will cause some 
scientists to choose between accepting military funding or giving up 
their chosen field of research. And the very real dual-use potential of 
these new technologies (the same brain implant can create a robosoldier 
or rehabilitate a Parkinson's disease sufferer) will allow scientists to 
tell themselves that they are "really" working on health technologies to 
improve the human lot, and the funding just happens to come from the 
Pentagon.

Does it have to be this way? In spite of obvious problems controlling a 
field of research that is much less capital-intensive and susceptible to 
international verification regimes than nuclear weapons research, it is 
possible that a sustained international conversation between 
neuroscientists, ethicists, and security specialists could avert the 
dystopian future sketched out above.

Unfortunately, however, Moreno (p.163) quotes Michael Moodie, a former 
director of the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, as 
saying, "The attitudes of those working in the life sciences contrast 
sharply with the nuclear community. Physicists since the beginning of 
the nuclear age, including Albert Einstein, understood the dangers of 
atomic power, and the need to participate actively in managing these 
risks. The life sciences sectors lag in this regard. Many neglect 
thinking about the potential risks of their work."

Time to start talking!
"

Opdat je weet wat je te wachten staat .....
Maar na vermeende WMD´s kan eigenlijk niets nog echt verrassen.

Misschien dit nog?
Balkenende ontvangt eerste exemplaar 'God in Nederland'
http://www.katholieknederland.nl/actualiteit/2007/detail_objectID590303_FJaar2007.html

Henk Elegeert

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