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    Advances in neuroscience 'may threaten human rights'
    Nature Magazine - January 22, 1998

    Paris.  Neuroscience is being increasingly recognized as posing a
    potential threat to human rights, just as another area of biology --
    research in human genomics -- may lead to an excessive focus on
    genetic determinism and raises the spectre of genetic discrimination.
    This was one of the conclusions to emerge from the annual public
    meeting of the French national bioethics committee held last week in
    Paris on the theme of 'Science and Racism'.

    Jean-Pierre Changeux, the chairman of the committee and a
    neuroscientist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, told the meeting
    that understanding the working of the human brain is likely to become
    one of the most ambitious and rich disciplines of the future.

    "But neuroscience also poses potential risks", he said, arguing that
    advances in cerebral imaging make the scope for invasion of privacy
    immense. Although the equipment needed is still highly specialized,
    it will become commonplace and capable of being used at a distance,
    he predicted. That will open the way for abuses such as invasion of
    personal liberty, control of behaviour and brainwashing. These are
    far from being science-fiction concerns, said Changeux, and
    constitute "a serious risk to society".

    Denis Le Bihan, a researcher at the French Atomic Energy Commission,
    told the meeting that the use of imaging techniques has reached the
    stage where "we can almost read people's thoughts".

    The national bioethics committee is taking such threats so seriously
    that it is launching a study to consider the issues and recommend
    possible precautions. The study will also cover more immediate issues
    such as the legal question of whether criminals are responsible for
    their actions; Changeux predicts an increase in defence arguments
    based on irresponsibility due to a genetic predisposition to certain
    types of behaviour.

    In closing the meeting, Claude Allegre, the minister for national
    education, research and technology, hinted at the creation of a
    revamped parliamentary office of technology assessment, arguing that
    the national bioethics committee's approach in the life sciences
    needed to be applied to other areas of science.

    Declan Butler
    Nature; Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1998
    Registered No. 785998 England.
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