Missing Shades of Grue

The Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics (SCBE) was chosen to become one of the first Centers for Excellence in Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI) of genetic research through funds made available by the National Human Genome Research Institute. In July 2004, the Center started a 5 - year mission devoted to the proactive identification and integration of ELSI considerations into the design and conduct of current and emerging genetic research. Under the leadership of Mildred Cho, PhD, Judy Illes, PhD, and Joachim Hallmayer, MD, one aspect of the center will focus on identifying the ethical and social issues arising from research on the genetic contributions to, and mechanisms of, behavior and neurogenetic conditions using autism as a model. The initial research questions will examine the social evolution of autism as a disease and identity by investigating the history of funding for autism research, the changes in diagnostic criteria, the effects of medicalization and commercialization and the impact of educational and parent advocacy forces. The ultimate goal will be to convene a multi-disciplinary Behavioral and Neurogenetics Working Group that will draw from neuroethics, psychiatry, sociology, anthropology, epidemiology, pharmacogenetics, philosophy, law, health policy and others.

Neuroethics.upenn.edu is a source of information on neuroethics, provided by the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania.

Here you will find:
* summaries of neuroethical issues prepared expressly for this website
* pointers to the literature with links to downloadable articles or article abstracts
* exclusive interviews with leaders in the field, focusing on their particular areas of expertise
* links to other relevant websites on neuroethics, neuroscience, and policy
other sources of education and amusement, including neuroethics course syllabi, a neuroethics conference calendar, and a listing of novels and films that deal with neuroethical issues.

Our goal is to inform students and professionals in bioethics, neuroscience, medicine, business, education and law, and all other interested readers who surf our way.

The bottom line is that we have two windows through which to look for an answer to the question of conscious awareness in brain-damaged patients, and while neither is crystal clear, both are useful.? The first is extended behavioral observation (as opposed to snippets of video), undertaken with an awareness of our susceptibility to the ?Kismet? phenomenon.? The other is functional neuroimaging, interpreted cautiously and with an awareness of how much remains to be learned about activation-cognition correlations in damaged brains.

Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid.

The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.

At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine. [...]

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.

Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.

There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. [...]

The Ten Commandments in their proper historical context commend atheism in regard to the religion of the gods and anarchism in respect to the laws of the kings. Arising from a revolutionary people, they support the overthrow of authoritarian structures in the name of human community. That sounds pretty good to me.

The question of what "personhood" is, is one of the more difficult, and more central questions raised by many of today's ethical dilemmas. Obviously, it is at the center of the abortion debate, and as the Terri Schiavo case has made clear, it is also the primary question raised by the definitions of "life" and "death." For better or worse, this is a question that medicine and science cannot answer for us. This means that we have to come up with definitions which, while they may be based on empirical facts, also include interpretations of those facts that are not strictly scientific. In a previous post, I stated unequivocally that I believe that cases of obvious higher-brain death (i.e., when it is physically impossible for a person to ever have any higher-brain functioning again), there is no reason to use the modifier "higher-brain." The "person" is simply "dead." ...

An individual human person is differentiated from other human individuals, as well as nonhuman individuals, by a collection of memories, beliefs, knowledge, skills, and tendencies. In other words, what defines an individual person is a history. That history is, by and large, contained in the cerebral cortex and surrounding brain areas, along with the cerebellum.

I'm quite open about the shameful fact that I'm inordinately fond of Star Trek -- not that I would recommend it, save on rare and fleeting occasion, and then only with vast luke-warmedness, as good science fiction, or anything other than largely nostalgia on my part -- but this is not where I advocate people go with their Inner Trekkie...:

Diana Schaub, a Loyola College professor and adviser to President Bush, is convinced that cloning and embryonic stem cell research are evil. She says this belief was formed, in part, by watching Star Trek. ...

In the parade of faces talking about Terri Schiavo last week, two notable authorities were missing: Aristotle and Descartes. Yet their legacy was there.

Beneath the political maneuvering and legal wrangling, the case re-enacted a clash of ideals that has run through the history of Western thought. And in a way, it's the essential question that has been asked by philosophers since the dawn of human civilization. Is every human life precious, no matter how disabled? Or do human beings have the right to self-determination and to decide when life has value?

"The clash is about how we understand the human person," said Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a conservative policy group.

When David Steals Goliath's Music

The battle over online music piracy is usually presented as David versus Goliath: the poor student in his dorm hunted down by a music conglomerate. It is easy, in that matchup, to side with the student. But when the Supreme Court takes up the issue this week, we hope it considers another party to the dispute: individual creators of music, movies and books, who need to keep getting paid if they are going to keep creating. If their work is suddenly made "free," all of society is likely to suffer.

From a philosophical perspective, that is all that the theists need: to have the argument back on level ground. It is indeed the correct philosophical position and the right scientific one, and Flew is to be commended for his willingness to "go where the evidence leads." The conclusion is a simple one: Atheists have no greater claim to scientific truth or rationality than theists do. If theists are allowed to argue on the same footing as atheists, it will be better for science and philosophy alike. That makes Antony Flew's recent change of thinking very important indeed.

The reasons for enacting Senate Bill 24 are that too many faculty members at our universities no longer observe their responsibility to teach and not to indoctrinate students; that university administrations no longer enforce their faculty guidelines on academic freedom; and that the existing guidelines are not codified as student rights; as result students currently have no way to redress their grievances.

Terri Schiavo is not legally brain dead. In the United States brain death means whole brain death, including the death of the brain stem, which controls respiration and circulation. The definition of brain death was codified in 1980 in the Uniform Determination of Death Act, which has been adopted by most states. The UDDA noted that the "concept of 'entire brain' distinguishes determination of death under this Act from 'neocortical death' or 'persistent vegetative state.'" A brain-dead patient will show virtually no electrical activity in any part of his or her brain.

Memento gets it wrong when Shelby says: "I don't have amnesia. I know who I am. I just can't form new memories." Well, he does have amnesia, its simply a different type of amnesia than movies tend to deal with. Reterograde amnesia is a favorite of movie makers (both Hollywood and Bollywood), perhaps because it offers an easier opportunity for simplistic drama - someone has a loss of identity, they redefine themselves, or their past catches up with them. Ah, the dramatic possibilities!

In my opinion, Memento also gets it wrong when Shelby says that he has short term memory problems. His problem is not with short term memory itself - it has to do with the transfer of memories from the short term to the long term store. So he can remain in the moment and retain whats happening around him. But he forgets everything as soon as he is out of that moment.

"The 2000 Republican Platform: "Medical decision-making should be in the hands of physicians and their patients."

The 2004 Republican Platform: "We must attack the root causes of high health care costs by: ... putting patients and doctors in charge of medical decisions."

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, March 17, 2005: "So our -- Congress has acted tonight and the House of Representatives acted last night. ... It is clear to me that Congress has a responsibility since other aspects of government at the state level have failed to address this issue."

House Majority Leader Tom Delay, March 19: "For one person in one state court to make this decision is too heavy. ... It does take all of us to think this through.?"

Progress in neuroscience may soon make possible an age of neurocosmetology: the use of drugs to let people affect the way their brains work, so as to make them more effective, more attractive, and more like their "cognitive ideal."? A world where all the women are beautiful and all the men handsome might be bearable if boring. But would a society full of type-A's work at all?? Can it be rational to choose to change in ways that may change who you are?? Should there be moral or legal prohibitions against healthy people messing with their own brain chemistry?

Suddenly, the count of prisoners dead in captivity is up to 108. Boy, that happened fast, didn't it? When I did my seven year hitch in the Navy, the gold standard for horrible, communist, totalitarian, non-Geneva convention deadly bastards who you never wanted to get captured by was the North Vietnamese.

They were happy if you died in your cell. They tortured. They hated. They abused just for perverse commie, Stalinist fun. They were the worst. Worse than Nazis, even, because the Nazis at least sometimes pretended to be civilized about POW treatment. The North Vietnamese didn't even pretend.

So how many American POWS died while captured by the insane and lawless North Vietnamese during the entire Vietnam war? One hundred and fourteen. From all causes. What killed the 108 (so far) reported in our custody?

Mostly "violent causes".

Of course, there will be people who object. There will be people who will say that this is a revival of racial science. Perhaps so. I would argue, however, that even if this is a revival of racial science, we should engage in it for it does not follow that it is a revival of racist science. Indeed, I would argue, that it is just the opposite.

So here we have evolutionary trees and natural selection at the very core of a vitally important area of medical research. Yet we are told again and again by op-ed columnists and certain members of boards of education that evolution is nothing but an evil religion and that creationism of one flavor or another is the future of science. You'd expect then that Intelligent Design or some other form of creationism would help reveal something new about this HIV. But it has not. That should count for something.

members of a House committee issued subpoenas for Ms. Schiavo and her husband to appear at Congressional hearings later this month.

Since Ms. Schiavo, 41, appears unlikely ever to be in a position to testify, the intent of the Congressional subpoenas seemed to be to block the feeding tube's removal by using a law enacted to protect witnesses summoned by Congress.

In Germany, the Nazi Party targeted intellectuals (especially Jewish university professors), artists and newspaper reporters. Nowadays, the hosts of FOX News Channel's shows rant on and on about the decadence of Hollywood, the subversiveness of 'certain' professors and the supposed bias of the 'elite left-wing' media. Folks, it's time to wake up. As far as I'm concerned, Social Security, while important, takes second place to this issue. I said yesterday and I repeat today - the reactionary right is on a holy crusade against any academic who doesn't agree with its narrow-minded world view.