Meet the people shaping the future of science
We hold these freedoms to be self-evident...

Do you want to block traumatic memories from scarring your mind?
Perhaps you do, but would you be happy 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. And, as he told Liz Else, we ain't
seen nothing yet...

Should I be worried?

Freedom of thought is the basis of a lot of our existing
constitutional rights in the US, as in many countries. With the
burgeoning of neurosciences and the neurotechnologies they give rise
to, we can see great opportunities but also great perils, because the
law on freedom of thought is so underdeveloped. It is the most
important of all legal freedoms, but the least articulated. Here at
the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE) in Davis,
California, we try to provide legal theory and principles to guide
courts, policy makers and civil liberty experts.

What kind of neurotechnologies are there?

On the near horizon are a slew of new pharmaceuticals we call memory
management drugs. Some of these aim to improve memory safely. Others
are designed to help dim or to erase the memories that haunt people
suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

But right now?

Some of these drugs are available now. Take a drug like propranolol,
a beta blocker used to control high blood pressure. It was found that
people who take this drug within six hours or so of a traumatic event
have a reduced recall of that event. People are talking about giving
propranolol to emergency response teams before they go into horrific
scenes such as plane crashes. Others have talked about giving it to
soldiers after a gruesome battle.

Is propranolol really being used in that way?

Well, it has been tested in emergency rooms. 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.

That does sound helpful.

Yes, that application may well be, so long as people are given the
choice. But we are concerned about the idea of emergency room
personnel automatically giving it to trauma victims. For instance, a
victim of violent crime may not necessarily want to remember what
happened, but may want to testify. Emergency room doctors might think
it would be great to have a drug to give victims that would blank out
horrible memories; but they might also overlook the complexities of
why somebody would want to retain the integrity of their memory. It
has to be the person's choice.

Is there anything else coming up?

In the next five to ten years, we think drugs that enhance memory are
going to raise important issues of freedom of thought. Will you have
a right to say no to these drugs if you are the only eyewitness to a
crime? Could a future government say: "It's very important that you
remember what you saw. We want you to take this drug at least until
after you have testified in court."

Are there possibilities for coercion in these neurotechnologies?

Yes, in some more than others. Take brain fingerprinting. This is a
real technology being tested by the FBI. It could become part of the
key evidence to overthrow the murder conviction of Jimmy Ray
Slaughter, who is facing the death penalty in Oklahoma for assault
and murder. 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 CCLE has no problem with brain fingerprinting so long as it's
voluntary, as in the Slaughter case. Our concern is that law
enforcement agents will seek to use it coercively. Such compelled use
ought to be forbidden, because it would pierce one of the most
private and intimate human spheres: our own memory.

Aside from memory control, what other neurotechnologies are you
looking at?

Hypersonic sound. This is a focused beam of sound used to deliver
marketing noises or other messages in a very personal way. The sound
is inaudible unless you walk into its narrow path.

It sounds entertaining.

Yes. It does have fun possibilities. But it's also invasive. It's
sudden and it acts inside your head, as if you're hearing something
through headphones. And Forbes magazine reported last September that
American Technology Corporation, the company that invented hypersonic
sound, is installing this in soda machines right now on Tokyo's
streets. As you walk past, you'll suddenly hear inside your head the
sound of the ice cubes dropping into the glass and the soda making
that "psst" can-opening noise. You are going to be startled, you
won't know where the sound came from and then you'll realise, wow, I
was just hijacked by an advertisement.

Wouldn't there be a lot of scope for abuse?

It's not an expensive technology - you can buy hypersonic sound
generating devices for about $600 - and they will get cheaper. If
anyone wanted to destabilise other people they could do it really
easily by making them think they were hearing voices in their heads.
The victims would be unable to distinguish whether those sounds or
voices had an external or internal source. Again the law is a big
black hole on cognitive liberty issues like this.

How is the CCLE financed?

We get no government funding. Most of our funding comes from people
who are involved primarily in developing the internet. They see the
internet as an amazing technology for communication, yet at the same
time they see its brightest promises being held back or co-opted by
archaic legal concepts. They are interested in making sure that these
new technologies, like neurotechnology, don't get misused, misapplied
or regulated in a way that takes the heart out of them - or which
removes the greatest possible benefit, or, even worse, directs them
into some of the darkest applications. They want to see freedom of
thought expanded rather than contracted.

Have you had any legal victories?

The most prominent case we fought was one that reached the US Supreme
Court last year. It was about a dentist from Missouri called Charles
Sell, who was arrested by the FBI and charged with fraud. While they
held in him custody they claimed he was out of his mind and began an
attempt to force him to take antipsychotic drugs. They claimed it was
necessary before putting him on trial for the fraud, because in the
US you have to understand the proceedings against you in order to
have a fair trial.

We joined in Sell's defence because what was at stake was the
government agency being at one and the same time both this man's
accuser and his advocate in court. The US government wanted to
forcibly inject Dr Sell with mind-altering drugs. They were also
telling him: "Oh, this is for your own good. You have to take this
drug in order for you to think clearly enough to defend yourself
against our actions."

Did you win?

Yes. But the Sell case was a partial victory. The Supreme Court found
that there was not enough evidence before it to allow the state to
forcibly drug Sell. It set out some principles that make it very hard
for the state to do that if the only justification is the need to
bring somebody to trial.

But the Supreme Court did not articulate what Sell's interest was
here. It simply recognised that mental integrity is an interest of
the person. It certainly didn't examine the history of freedom of
thought and how the future of freedom of thought is dependent upon
maintaining an integrity of neuroelectrochemical processes, which was
what we were hoping for. We wanted the court to recognise that we
have entered an age where freedom of thought will become meaningless
if we don't recognise and protect the individual's right to privacy,
autonomy and choice with respect to his or her own brain chemistry.

So who should have control?

It's clear that by manipulating the brain you can change thought, and
because your thoughts are central to who you are, and because freedom
of thought is necessary for all our other freedoms, it ought to be
the case that the individual, as opposed to the government, has the
ultimate control over matters of the mind. Without freedom of
thought, what freedom remains?

Should the US government use what it calls "pharmacotherapy" in its
drugs war?

We have a big report coming out soon on pharmacotherapy. The focus is
on how the new breed of neuro-drugs are helping to shift the old
rhetoric of the "war on drugs" away from drug users as "the enemy" to
being "sick people" who need treatment. It will then become a war
of "good" new drugs versus the "bad" drugs. The good drugs are drugs
that keep the bad, illegal drugs from passing through the blood-brain
barrier. So policing the drug war is going to move from the external
world of cops and helicopters to the internal world of increasing
pressure to use these "neurocops" to reduce or entirely block the
effects of illegal drugs.

Are there such drugs?

There is one under development by a French company called Sanofi-
Synthelabo called SR141716 that blocks or reduces the effects of
marijuana. It is in Food and Drug Administration clinical trials. The
National Institute on Drug Abuse published findings in 2002 showing
that this "anti-drug" reduces the effects of smoked marijuana by up
to 75 per cent. The US government is serious about this effort to
make not only the US but also the rest of the world drug-free,
supposedly. It is now shifting this metaphor from "war"
to "treatment". And in 2002, the Office of National Drug Control
Policy even coined the term "compassionate coercion", saying that
people who use illegal drugs are often in denial, so the government
needs to act in this compassionately coercive way to get them the
treatment that the government says they need.

The bottom line is that cognitive liberty is becoming one of the
major civil rights issues of this century. Our goal is to rally the
folks interested in fighting on the side of freedom of thought.

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