NEW SCIENTIST -- As I slip Bladerunner into its sleeve for another first year film review, I thumb through New Scientist for some interesting discussion on detecting traumatic memories. Getting suspects to respond to memory events is a tactic used in the film by Harrison Ford, the police detective. The movie (and the scientific article) raise ethical questions. Do you want to block traumatic memories from scarring your mind? What if someone else did it for you? Or how about receiving marketing messages beamed directly at you in hypersonic waves? Mind control is getting smarter by the minute, says Richard Glen Boire, co-founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics in California. He told Liz Else much more.
Like propranolol, which has been tested in emergency rooms. Boire says, "In 2002, there was a study of the effect of propranolol on car accident victims in emergency rooms. It found that one month later, patients who received propranolol had fewer symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder than patients who suffered similar injuries but were given placebos rather than the drug." Take propranolol after a life-threatening event and you might lose your ability to testify about it.Then there's applied neurotechnology like "brain fingerprinting," technology being tested by the FBI. Boire explains, "It works by picking up the P300 electrical wave emitted by the brain when the subject is shown images relating to a crime. Its strength is that the P300 wave is involuntary - the suspect can't affect the outcome. It is said to be much more accurate than the polygraph."
The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics has no problem with brain fingerprinting so long as it's voluntary. The problems arise when law enforcement agents use it coercively. CCLE believes "such compelled use ought to be forbidden, because it would pierce one of the most private and intimate human spheres: our own memory."
Zack Lynch -- "Who's protecting your freedom of thought?"
Liz Else -- "We hold these freedoms to be self-evident"
CCLE -- "The Neuroethics Project"
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