Neuroethics & Law Blog

Neuroethics & Law Blog Turns Two

The Neuroethics & Law Blog turns two years old today.  I send my thanks to all the guest bloggers, commenters, and readers who have enriched its digital pages.  In case you're curious, here's a link to the blog's full archive.

"Why Women Should Care About Neuroethics"

The Women's Bioethics Blog has details here about an event entitled, "Why Women Should Care About Neuroethics," on March 16th in Seattle.  The event is part of the Dana Foundation's Brain Awareness Week.

Sandel on Enhancement

Michael Sandel (Government, Harvard) has a new book scheduled for release in May on human enhancement.  The book is called The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.  Here's the description on the book's Amazon page:

Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature--to enhance our genetic traits and those of our children. Although most people find at least some forms of genetic engineering disquieting, it is not easy to articulate why. What is wrong with re-engineering our nature?

The Case against Perfection explores these and other moral quandaries connected with the quest to perfect ourselves and our children. Michael Sandel argues that the pursuit of perfection is flawed for reasons that go beyond safety and fairness. The drive to enhance human nature through genetic technologies is objectionable because it represents a bid for mastery and dominion that fails to appreciate the gifted character of human powers and achievements. Carrying us beyond familiar terms of political discourse, this book contends that the genetic revolution will change the way philosophers discuss ethics and will force spiritual questions back onto the political agenda.

In order to grapple with the ethics of enhancement, we need to confront questions largely lost from view in the modern world. Since these questions verge on theology, modern philosophers and political theorists tend to shrink from them. But our new powers of biotechnology make these questions unavoidable. Addressing them is the task of this book, by one of America's preeminent moral and political thinkers.   

Brain Injury and the NFL

Daniel Goldberg of the Medical Humanities Blog has posted "Traumatic Brain Injury and the National Football League: A Growing Problem" to the Internet.  Here's the opening paragraph (footnote omitted):

The National Football League ("NFL") has a burgeoning problem on its hands with regards to traumatic brain injury ("TBI"). While NFL players have been complaining for years that the NFL does not have its retired players’ best interests in mind, the growing controversy over TBI became public news upon the sad story of Mike Webster, a former center for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s and 1980s, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and a key player in each of the Steelers’ four Super Bowl wins during the 1970s.

"Brain Imaging and Behavior" Journal

A new journal of interest to neuroethicists will publish its first issue this year.  The quarterly journal is called "Brain Imaging and Behavior."  From Springer's announcement:

Springer will launch Brain Imaging and Behavior in 2007.  The journal will be of broad interest to researchers and clinicians in fields concerned with brain/behavior relationships such as neuropsychology, psychiatry, neurology, neurosurgery, radiology, rehabilitation and cognitive neuroscience.

Brain Imaging and Behavior will provide a forum for the discussion of discoveries, advances, and controversies in the field of functional brain imaging.  It will publish innovative, clinically relevant research using neuroimaging approaches and emphasize studies that reveal the mechanisms underlying the disorders of higher brain function relevant to diagnosis, treatment monitoring and disease prevention.  The quarterly, peer-reviewed journal will contain original research, critical reviews, short communications, news sections and letters to the editor.

Evolution and the Incest Taboo

Reuters reports on a recent study concerning disgust and the incest taboo.

Cosmides and her colleagues tested 600 volunteers, asking them all sorts of questions jumbled together so they would not know what was being studied.

"We asked them how many favors did you do for this particular sibling in a month. We asked if this sibling needed a kidney, how likely would you be to donate this sibling a kidney." . . . And they asked about all sorts of ethical dilemmas, including questions about sexual relationships with siblings.

Among the volunteers were people who had never shared a home with their siblings -- for instance, full- or half-siblings born 10 or even 20 years apart.

What determined incest disgust and altruism was the same -- how much time an older sibling spent watching his or her mother care for a younger one, or how much time the two spent together in the same household.

"If you co-resided with them for a long time as a child, you'd treat them as you'd treat any full sibling. This seems to operate non-consciously," Cosmides said.

I found particularly interesting this tidbit at the end:

The study contradicts the teachings of Sigmund Freud, who described Oedipal urges and conflicts, Cosmides said.

"He thought you are attracted to your relatives and your siblings and parents and it takes the force of culture and society to keep you from committing the incest that is in your heart," she said.

Cosmides said Freud had a possible reason for his own feelings -- he had a wet nurse who cuddled and breastfed him: "Who their brain thinks is mom is different from who they consciously believe is mom. For them it is quite reasonable that they have an attraction to their mothers."

HBO on Addiction (and the Brain)

HBO has a 14-part documentary series coming out in March about addiction, and I'm told that it will heavily emphasize neuroscience research that informs our understanding of addiction and has provided new methods of treating it.  It seems that the series will be available for free to cable subscribers from March 15-18, according to this press release, which tells a whole lot more about the project.

Paltering and Deception Detection

As you probably know, an issue that gets lots of attention in neuroethics concerns the potential use of neuroimaging to detect deception.  See here, for example.  One reason people are so skeptical of the technology is that deception is a complicated phenomenon. 

While it has no neuroethics ambitions, the following piece by Frederick Schauer and Richard J. Zeckhauser (both Harvard, JFK School of Government) certainly brings out some of the difficulties that any technique will have if it purports to identify deception.  Here's the abstract of the piece, entitled "Paltering," from SSRN:

A lie involves three elements: deceptive intent, an inaccurate message, and a harmful effect. When only one or two of these elements is present we do not call the activity lying, even when the practice is no less morally questionable or socially detrimental. This essay explores this area of “less-than-lying,” in particular intentionally deceptive practices such as fudging, twisting, shading, bending, stretching, slanting, exaggerating, distorting, whitewashing, and selective reporting. Such deceptive practices are occasionally called “paltering,” which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as acting insincerely or misleadingly.

The analysis assesses the motivations for, effective modes of, and possible remedies against paltering. It considers the strategic interaction between those who palter and those who interpret messages, with both sides adjusting their strategies to account for the general frequency of misleading messages. The moral standing of paltering is discussed. So too are reputational mechanisms – such as gossip – that might discourage its use.

Paltering frequently produces consequences as harmful to others as lying. But while lying has been studied throughout the ages, with penalties prescribed by authorities ranging from parents to philosophers, paltering – despite being widespread - has received little systematic study, and penalties for it even less. Given the subtleties of paltering, it is often difficult to detect or troubling to punish, implying that it is also hard to deter. This suggests that when harmful paltering is established, the sanctions against it should be at least as stiff as those against lying.

Atypical Approaches to Distributive Justice

Neuroethics raises its share of distributive justice questions.  Here's one atypical solution to an issue of distributive justice:  In the German town of Loebau, new welfare regulations mean that some residents need to move to smaller homes in order to maintain eligibility.  As Reuters reports, however:

Because there is a shortage of smaller dwellings, the tenants are being allowed to stay, so long as the space they use does not exceed the new limit.

"The recipients are only allowed apartments of a certain size, but there aren't enough smaller apartments available," said Matthias Urbansky, head of the local housing authority.

Not everyone sees the sense of living in an apartment with off-limits areas.

"It feels stupid not being able to go into all the rooms of your apartment any more," one 49-year-old woman was quoted as saying in the Dresdner Morgenpost newspaper.

Also, while not so clearly an issue of distributive justice, a coffee shop in Washington state has decided that all payments will be voluntary:

You read that right: No prices. Customers pay what and when they like, or not at all — it makes no difference to the cafe employees, who are instructed not to peek when people put money in the metal lock box.

"Does it really matter to any of our patrons ... whether they pay a dollar or three dollars or five dollars?" said Terra Bite founder Ervin Peretz, a 37-year-old Google programmer.

He doesn't think so, at least not in the comfortable lakeside enclave that is downtown Kirkland.

Through his "voluntary payment" cafe, Peretz is poised to become the Robin Hood of the Starbucks set. Using an efficient, low-overhead business model and narrow profit margin, he figures he can finesse the largesse of well-off latte lovers to cover the tabs of the less fortunate. [Hat Tip: Freakonomics Blog]

In a case of life-imitating-sitcom, the business venture is oddly reminiscent of an episode of Dharma and Greg (and perhaps some episode of I Love Lucy before it).  For more on the coffee shop, see Kirkland Weblog.

Exercise and the Placebo Effect

A study by Alia Crum and Ellen Langer (Psychology, Harvard) provides evidence of significant placebo effects associated with exercise.  Here's a link to their paper, and here is the abstract:

In a study testing whether the relationship between exercise and health is moderated by one's mind-set, 84 female room attendants working in seven different hotels were measured on physiological health variables affected by exercise. Those in the informed condition were told that the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General's recommendations for an active lifestyle. Examples of how their work was exercise were provided. Subjects in the control group were not given this information. Although actual behavior did not change, 4 weeks after the intervention, the informed group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before. As a result, compared with the control group, they showed a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. These results support the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or in whole via the placebo effect.

In loosely-related news, the FDA has approved the marketing of an over-the-counter weight-loss medication called Alli, a different dosage of the drug marketed by prescription as Xenical.

Neuroethics Discussion for Poor Academics (Connors)

Those of you in the DC area might want to check out this upcoming neuroethics conference hosted by the Chicago-Kent College of Law: "The Spotless Mind? Policy, Ethics & the Future of Human Intelligence."  The event looks to be fairly enhancement-focused:

Emerging technologies in the areas of neuro-enhancement and artificial intelligence promise to drastically alter: our ability to augment human intellectual and sensory capacity; the role of machines; and how we connect, communicate, and share information. But, will such changes bring about the panacea promised by their proponents, or will they be akin to opening Pandora¹s Box?

The conference runs all day on February 16th, 2007 at the National Press Club.  Good news for all of the more shallow-pocketed academics out there: the event carries no registration free.  (RSVP is requested.)