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Volume CXXXII, Number 6 |
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Brain engineering: the next hot trend?
HANNAH DEAN
STAFF WRITER
Better reaction times, smarter kids, better quality of life--can bio-engineering offer these results and more? Or, is the path of genetic improvement too overshadowed by a dark past and, perhaps, a darker future?
Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, addressed these questions and more in Bowdoin's Arnold D. Kates Science Lecture, entitled Ethics and Neuroscience: Should we place any limits on engineering the brain?, on Tuesday night.
Caplan began by simply stating that "Yes, I think we should enhance our brains." However, the arguments that he used to support this statement, the history that the statement recalls, and the moral baggage that his opinion carries with it called to attention a wide range of material.
The most immediate response to genetic engineering or bio-engineering, said Caplan, is "Yuck." The reaction is one based more on "ethical intuition," and, though he admitted that "there may be some truth" in this gut reaction, he emphasized that intuition is the "start of the moral argument, not the end of it." In fact, Caplan said that if we look back at history, it is sometimes the moments during which we get "past an intuition" that we are able to make the most progress.
On the other hand, Caplan also noted that there have been times in human history when bypassing basic human intuition has had disastrous results. The most blaring historical example of this is the "greatest crime committed in the name of science--the Holocaust." Many of the experiments done during this gruesome episode of history were for the sake of the "improvement of the species"- which was what Nazi eugenics was all about.
Caplan acknowledged that, even though the holocaust was horrific and done in the name genetic improvement, the Nazis were applying this improvement to a group of people rather than to individuals. Today, when bioengineering is considered as a means of improving the brain, such improvements are on an individual level. Furthermore, while the Nazis enforced these improvements by means of coercion, present day bioengineering is based on individual choice and consent. Thus, "it is not fair to lump together all eugenics with the outcomes and the processes used during the Holocaust."
Having addressed the historical arguments about genetic improvements, Caplan discussed problems associated with availability of bioengineering. He said, "If these technologies come to pass, there will be great inequity," not only between social classes within the United States, but also between developed and underdeveloped countries. Caplan admitted that he is "very concerned about inequity but those are not arguments against improvement, those are arguments against inequity;" a problem which can be solved through laws concerning the technologies available.
However, according to Caplan, not only are there inherent arguments against bio-engineering, there are also inherent arguments in human nature in favor of the improvements made available by present day technology and genetic research. "Every ethical code says that the number one duty of the parents is to make it better for your kids." This is true across cultures, across classes, and across the globe.
In response to the question of limiting the engineering of the brain, Caplan commented that because it is the inherent moral attitude of each individual to improve the lot of those whom they beget, such improvements will essentially be limitless.