Intervention in the Brain: Politics, Policy, and Ethics (Basic Bioethics)

The political and policy implications of recent developments in neuroscience, including new techniques in imaging and neurogenetics.

New findings in neuroscience have given us unprecedented knowledge about the workings of the brain. Innovative researchmuch of it based on neuroimaging resultssuggests not only treatments for neural disorders but also the possibility of increasingly precise and effective ways to predict, modify, and control behavior. In this book, Robert Blank examines the complex ethical and policy issues raised by our new capabilities of intervention in the brain.

After surveying current knowledge about the brain and describing a wide range of experimental and clinical interventionsfrom behavior-modifying drugs to neural implants to virtual realityBlank discusses the political and philosophical implications of these scientific advances. If human individuality is simply a product of a network of manipulable nerve cell connections, and if aggressive behavior is a treatable biochemical condition, what happens to our conceptions of individual responsibility, autonomy, and free will? In light of new neuroscientific possibilities, Blank considers such topics as informed consent, addiction, criminal justice, racism, commercial and military applications of neuroscience research, new ways to define death, and political ideology and partisanship.

Our political and social institutions have not kept pace with the rapid advances in neuroscience. This book shows why the political issues surrounding the application of this new research should be debated before interventions in the brain become routine.

Robert H. Blank is Professor of Political Science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Research Scholar at New College of Florida. His books include Brain Policy, Comparative Health Policy (with Viola Burau), and End of Life Decision-Making: A Cross-National Study (coedited with Janna Merrick; MIT Press, 2005).