GOP: Neuroscience

[Gloer]

The scientists are manipulating our psyche. Is our freedom gone? The
Economist points out a real threat to humanity that the science is posing. Cloning is really nothing. Cloning actually happens naturally all the time and een then identical twins end up individuals withindividual minds.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1143317

But that is soon gone: The science of neurology has reached leels in which people and their thoughts can and will be manipulated directly with different chemicals and impulses. Persuation is not needed if you can make half of the population eat prozac. People consume a lot more when they are happy, don't they.

I personally got a waking up call when my sister-in-law suggested a year ago that some antidepressant or sleeping aid might help me. At the time I had great stress and depressie moods. I realised that an ideathat I could not myself stear my way of life towards healthier action, helthier thoughts and mind, then it would be lost already. In a way a pill - especially if it worked well - would take away ones self-confidence. But hte idea of aides and doping has clearly penetrated deeply in our society. It is mad.

To get rid of depressie thoughts you need to do things that make you happier. Do sports. Get adrenaline from your life. Release it naturally.Listen your thoughts, listen to your body. Psyche-medicine is peropably only preventing yuo from reaching a healthy life style.
But it keeps you consuming...

[ReadWryt]

I myself suffer from a form of clinical depression which is manifested whenever I become slothfull or inactive. My body produces fewer amounts of chemicals in the endochrine system, and because, unlike the Cardiovascular system, the Lymphatic system contains no neat and handy "pump" to move these chemicals about the body, they tend to stay in one place and accumulate should I fall into inactivity.

The first course of action by the doctors who discovered this about me was to suggest that I start a course of Prozac to block unusually high seratonin levels, and Synthetic Testosterone patches to repair that inballance. The latter would mean having to regularly shave a part of my body that has never felt the sting of cold steel and hopefully never will, and the former was nearly as unappealing to me. I decided to hold off on starting this treatment and thought about what I had been told, and when I came to the conclusion that my long hours of sleep (sometimes 15 hours a day) was not just a side effect of my depression but in fact was compounding it, I took a second job at a local Coffee Shop and started going for long walks and hikes in the parks and canyons in the region. My body took care of the rest...My hormonal ballance can be kept in check so long as I am able to remain active and continue getting out and doing things.

The knee jerk reaction of the Medical Community in general to prescribe drugs for every malady is compounded by the fact that many of the drugs being prescribed are FDA approved, but still have not passed "Human Trials" because they are simply an "Improvement" over a previous incarnation of themselves. Pressures on physicians in the Managed Care arena force them to take the quickest course of action to deliver what the patient will perceive as being beneficial, and if that means drugs then so be it. In some cases this works, but then the same could be said about Leeches and Bloodletting. There is, unfortunately, no money in it for the doctors to simply tell someone to get out and get exorcise, eat properly and come back for a checkup before handing out a ticket to fill them with whatever the drug companies have decided they are pushing this month and leaving it at that...

[Legolam]

I don't think it's money that's the problem here. In the UK, we don't pay for health care, and it's pretty much the same. It's just that doctors are taught to prescribe to sort out people's problems quickly. We're not taught to wait and see whether the body can cope with it by itself, or if there is an alternative to medication. I think it's a problem with the teaching of medicine, which they're trying to redress at the moment.

Of course, sometimes the drugs really do work.

[Nóm]

To touch on some things:
Screening, privacy and enhancement are all important issues, to be sure. For many critics, though, they are side-shows. The really uncomfortable questions raised by brain science are those that go to the heart of what it is to be human. Or, more specifically, what philosophers and theologians have claimed is the heart of what it is to be human.

In the West, at least, that defining quality is the concept of “free will”. Although some philosophers see free will as an illusion that helps people to interact with one another, others think it is genuine—in other words, that an individual faced with a particular set of circumstances really could take any one of a range of actions. That, however, sits uncomfortably with the idea that mental decisions are purely the consequence of electrochemical interactions in the brain, since the output of such interactions might be expected to be an inevitable consequence of the input. It also sits uncomfortably with the separate, but parallel, argument that correct moral choices are the result of a sort of biological decision-making programme, shaped by evolution, rather than being arrived at by abstract reasoning.
and...
Discoveries in neuroscience may also have profound legal implications. Most courts, for example, accept a claim of insanity as a defence in certain criminal cases. If a propensity towards aggression or violence is shown to have a biological basis in the brain, a lawyer may argue that his client could not control his violent urges. Courts may be asked to treat brain-image data as exculpatory evidence, which shows that a suspect is not really guilty of a crime he has committed.

Donald Kennedy, a neuroscientist who is also editor of Science, says it is likely that “some extension of the domain of exculpatory conditions” will be made as a result of neuroscientific advances. In any case, each jurisdiction treats insanity claims in its own way, so they may well disagree over whether brain-image data are exculpatory. In Texas, for example, all that a prosecutor needs to demonstrate is that a suspect knew “the difference between right and wrong” at the time of the crime. Even individuals who are clearly insane can be found guilty if they meet this test.

Thoughts on this?


I think that the legal implications woud ultimately be a good thing. I suspect though, that the technology is a head of society's mindframe, so there will be a period where these technologies could be problematic when used in court.

I do not agree that a discovery that "freewill" is actually just an inevitable result of chemical reactions in the brain, is a bad thing. nor do I think that that discovery would dehumanize us. I suppose we each have our own ideas of what it is to be human, whatever those ideas might be, the nature of humans will not change as a direct result of such discoveries. It is technology that follows from the new information that can do harm.

I think such discoveries - all scientific discoveries, are going to happen regardless. We are by nature curious to discover, and with each thing discovered, we are better armed to discover more.

Suppose that technology tinkers with human nature in such a way that we are no longer curious to learn - I can not see that happening to all people, but with less people who are curious to learn, the advances in science would be slowler than they otherwise would.

Erik Parens of the Hastings Centre, a think-tank in Garrison, New York, is concerned that it could, for example, “reduce the number of ways acceptable to be a person”.

To illustrate this point he says that the act of giving a normal, healthy child Ritalin, a drug used to treat so-called hyperactivity, is really “a substantive moral choice”, because it tells that child that he needs to change to be acceptable. If forgetfulness, xenophobia and a whole host of the other eccentricities that make up a person's character become optional traits rather than inevitable ones, people will be more inclined to discriminate against the bearers of those traits.

"so-called hyperactivity" ... indeed?

Just as with genetics, however, the spectre that most terrifies many of those who fear the advance of neurotechnology is that it will one day be capable of “enhancing” human beings. Some worry that this may blunt the differences between individuals, turning society into one homogeneous mass. Others see the opposite risk—a Gattacesque division between the privileged and the unenhanced.

Such things would lessen individuality. In which ways? Which of these are bad things?

Division? I think is most likely - at least for a time.

All quotes from the Science & Technology article that Gloer posted a link to in his/her opening post.