Brain Drain

The Senate Intelligence Committee has announced that it will investigate CIA detention and interrogation practices during the Bush administration. Though some observers will surely find fault with officials’ behavior, the goal is to find the facts rather than place blame. An obvious and already much-debated question is the extent of practices like waterboarding and how they were approved. But it would be unfortunate if the committee missed the more subtle question of whether certain novel technologies were used or considered that do not elicit pain but raise far-reaching ethical and political questions. Even if these technologies or their descendants have not yet been applied to interrogations, the temptation to do so could at some point prove irresistible.

One set of questions has to do with the use of brain scanning technologies to identify deception. Although brain researchers largely doubt the validity of such applications of, for example, functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, investigations of these uses of neuroimaging are ongoing and are stimulating a growing scientific literature. Another, and arguably more promising, approach is the artificial induction of brain chemicals associated with trust, like oxytocin. It has been theorized that stimulating the production of this naturally occurring hormone would be an alternative to more indirect ways of developing emotional bonds with interrogation subjects.

The use of these kinds of technologies would obviously raise disquieting associations with abuses uncovered by the Church Committee nearly 25 years ago, including clandestine experiments with hallucinogens. At the request of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a National Research Council committee (of which I was a member), reported on the implications of cognitive neuroscience last summer.

There is no national security exception to the rules governing human experiments. So unless authorities held that the normal rules don’t apply to suspected terrorists (a theory I have speculated about elsewhere), even experimental forays in this area would require intensive prior review and—hold onto your hats—informed consent. Ironically, the notorious LSD “experiments” of the cold war-era themselves contributed to an atmosphere that led to the current rules. The scandal has even been associated with the decay of the CIA’s human intelligence capacity and the failure to detect the events of 9/11.

There is no evidence that any such practices have taken place in recent years, but it would make sense for well-informed interrogators to note the provocative possibilities of the new neurotechnologies for their craft, if not now, then someday. Are there circumstances in which relatively benign but invasive techniques may be used for the sake of national security? The cause of public education in these matters could be advanced were the Senate to raise the issue before another generation of revelations cripples intelligence capacity and undermines public trust—with or without oxytocin.

Tags: bioethics, Neuroscience

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