Over the past few days, I've been working my way through the answers to this year's Edge Foundation World Question -- "What have you changed your mind about in 2007?" The responses are a treat. For the uninitiated, Edge is a "third culture" group which promotes interdisciplinary dialogue and thinking about science-related issues. Particularly nice is its encouragement of roundtable-style discussion of in progress thought -- a rarity in results driven scientific culture. The idea is to provide a place to brainstorm and share ideas, including meta-questions about the purpose and effects of science in society, outside of the confines of academe-sanctioned journals and publications. To my mind, the answers to the World Question provide a great snapshot of current thinking and questioning from some of the leading intellectuals in the states, and I'll be posting several during my time here.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the demographics of the responders, there's a fair number of brain-related answers in this year's batch. Some of the science folks' answers seem more like research summaries than attempts at genuine reflection, but there are some real gems. I found the response from Nature Editor in chief Philip Campbell particularly interesting:
[In 2007,] I've changed my mind about the use of enhancement drugs by healthy people. A year ago, if asked, I'd have been against the idea, whereas now I think there's much to be said for it.
The ultimate test of such a change of mind is how I'd feel if my offspring (both adults) went down that road, and my answer is that with tolerable risks of side effects and zero risk of addiction, then I'd feel OK if there was an appropriate purpose to it. 'Appropriate purposes' exclude gaining an unfair advantage or unwillingly following the demands of others, but include gaining a better return on an investment of study or of developing a skill...
New cognitive enhancing drugs are being developed, officially for therapy. And the therapeutic importance — both current and potential — of such drugs is indeed significant. But manufacturers won't turn away the significant revenues from illegal use by the healthy.
That word 'illegal' is the rub. Off-prescription use is illegal in the United States, at least. But that illegality reflects an official drugs culture that is highly questionable. It's a culture in which the Food and Drugs Administration seems reluctant generally to embrace the regulation of enhancement for the healthy, though it is empowered to do so. It is also a culture that is rightly concerned about risk but wrongly founded in the idea that drugs used by healthy people are by definition a Bad Thing. That in turn reflects instinctive attitudes to do with 'naturalness' and 'cheating on yourself' that don't stand up to rational consideration. Perhaps more to the point, they don't stand up to behavioral consideration, as Viagra has shown.
Clearly, there's a lot of issues covered in current human enhancement debates that are not covered here, but it seems to me that there's a lot going on in Campbell's response. His definition of "appropriate purposes" is a bit of a common sense alternative to the beleagured enhancement vs. therapy distinction that dominates the regulatory and ethical discussion, and which tends to sideline the discussion into a fruitless attempt to distinguish between them at all. Although it's not without its complications (Is there any ethical minimum of personal effort required for ramped up "return on investment? Do we care?) Campbell's personalized line in the sand seems a closer fit with "lay responses" to the enhancement issue: if we're just trying to make the work we already do more productive or satisfying, what's so wrong with that? This is the kind of thinking that will motivate individual decisions to take or not take pharmaceutical "enhancers," and it's nice to see it up in print and part of the discussion.
I'm also happy to see a treatment of enhancement ethics that recognizes the importance of larger social factors (how society feels about "drugs" in general; how we define "healthy; the dubious construction of "naturalness," etc) in how the debate has been framed and conducted. Enhancement won't happen (or not) in a social vaccuum in which all decisions grow out of abstracted philosophical ethics, as interesting as the philosophical implications of enhancers may be.
Obviously, most or all of this would have been excluded from the official Nature editorial treatment of the enhancement debate - as it of course ought to be, since Nature isn't intended to serve as Phil Campbell's mouthpiece. However, getting such honest responses down somewhere do much to expand that debate.
You can check out Campbell's full response here. Also of interest is a referenced Dec 20 Nature article by Sahakian and Morein-Zamir, which asks readers to honestly consider whether they would avail themselves of cheap, side effect free brain-boosters. I'll leave that question open to discussion here as well.
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