The germ theory of disease: Experiments to determine mode of spread of influenza (Dr. Milton J. Rosenau, 1919)

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ROSENAU, M. J.. (1919). EXPERIMENTS TO DETERMINE MODE OF SPREAD OF INFLUENZA. Journal of the American Medical Association, 73(5), 311.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1001/jama.1919.02610310005002
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Fulltext: sci-hub.ru/10.1001/jama.1919.02610310005002

Abstract:
The experiments here described were performed on an island in Boston Harbor, on volunteers obtained from the Navy. The work was conducted by a group of officers detailed for that purpose, from the U. S. Navy and the U. S. Public Health Service, consisting of Dr. G. W. McCoy, director of the Hygienic Library, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, Dr. Leake, and Dr. Lake, all on the part of the U. S. Public Health Service; and cooperating with those medical officers, was a group also detailed for this purpose on the part of the U. S. Navy, consisting of Dr. J. J. Keegan, Dr. De Wayne Richey and myself.

The work itself was conducted at Gallops Island, which is the quarantine station of the Port of Boston, and peculiarly well fitted for operations of this kind, serving adequately for the purposes of isolation, observations, and maintenance of the large group of volunteers
—
Excerpt:
“The volunteers were all of the most susceptible age, mostly between 18 and 25, only a few of them around 30 years old ; and all were in good physical condition. None of these volunteers, 100 all told in number, had “influenza ;” that is, from the most care¬ ful histories that we could elicit, they gave no account of a febrile attack of any kind during the winter, except a few who were purposely selected, as having shown a typical attack of influenza, in order to test questions of immunity, and for the purpose of control. Now, we proceeded rather cautiously at first by administering a pure culture of bacillus of influenza, Pfeiffer’s bacillus, in a rather moderate amount, into the nostrils of a few of these volunteers. These early experiments I will not stop to relate, but I will go at once to what I may call our Experiment 1.”

***

As the preliminary trials proved negative, we became bolder, and selecting nineteen of our volunteers, gave each one of them a very large quantity of a mixture of thirteen different strains of the Pfeiffer bacillus, some of them obtained recently from the lungs at necropsy; others were subcultures of varying age, and each of the thirteen had, of course, a different history. Suspensions of these organisms were sprayed with an atomi¬ zer into the nose and into the eyes, and back into the throat, while the volunteers were breathing in. We used some billions of these organisms, according to our estimated counts, on each one of the volunteers, but none of them took sick. Then we proceeded to transfer the virus obtained from cases of the disease ; that is, we collected the material and mucous secretions of the mouth and nose and throat and bronchi from cases of the disease and transferred this to our volunteers. We always obtained this material in the same way : The patient with fever, in bed, has a large, shallow, traylike arrangement before him or her, and we washed out one nostril with some sterile salt solution, using perhaps 5 ce., which is allowed to run into this tray ; and that nostril is blown vigorously into the tray. This is repeated with the other nostril. The patient then gargles with some of the solution. Next we obtain some bronchial mucus through coughing, and then we swab the mucous surface of each nares and also the mucous membrane of the throat. We place these swabs with the material in a bottle with glass beads, and add all the material obtained in the tray. This is the stuff we transfer to our volunteers. In this par¬ ticular experiment, in which we used ten volunteers, each of them received a comparatively small quantity of this, about 1 c.c. sprayed into each nostril and into the throat, while inspiring, and on the eye. None of these took sick. Some of the same material was fil¬ tered and instilled into other volunteers but produced no results.

***

Our next experiment consisted in injections of blood. We took five donors, five cases of influenza in the febrile stage, some of them again quite early in the disease. We drew 20 ‘c.c. from the arm vein of each, making a total of 100 c.c, which was mixed and treated with 1 per cent, of sodium citrate. Ten c.c. of the citrated whole blood were injected into each of the ten volunteers. None of them took sick in any way. Then we collected a lot of mucous material from the upper respiratory tract, and filtered ‘ it through Man- dler filters. While these filters will hold back the bacteria of ordinary size, they will allow “ultramicro- scopic” organisms to pass. This filtrate was injected into ten volunteers, each one receiving 3.5 c.c. sub- cutaneously, and none of these took sick in any way.

***

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_J._Rosenau

Eyler, J. M.. (2010). The state of science, microbiology, and vaccines circa 1918. Public Health Reports

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/00333549101250s306
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“The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 dramatically altered biomedical knowledge of the disease. at its onset, the foundation of scientific knowledge was information collected during the previous major pandemic of 1889-1890. the work of otto leichtenstern, first published in 1896, described the major epidemiological and pathological features of pandemic influenza and was cited extensively over the next two decades. richard pfeiffer announced in 1892 and 1893 that he had discovered influenza’s cause. pfeiffer’s bacillus (bacillus influenzae) was a major focus of attention and some controversy between 1892 and 1920. the role this organism or these organisms played in influenza dominated medical discussion during the great pandemic. many vaccines were developed and used during the 1918-1919 pandemic. the medical literature was full of contradictory claims of their success; there was apparently no consensus on how to judge the reported results of these vaccine trials. the result of the vaccine controversy was both a further waning of confidence in pfeiffer’s bacillus as the agent of influenza and the emergence of an early set of criteria for valid vaccine trials. ©2010 association of schools of public health.”

Excerpt:

“Perhaps the most interesting epidemiological studies conducted during the 1918–1919 pandemic were the human experiments conducted by the Public Health Service and the U.S. Navy under the supervision of Milton Rosenau on Gallops Island, the quarantine station in Boston Harbor, and on Angel Island, its counterpart in San Francisco. The experiment began with 100 volunteers from the Navy who had no history of influenza. Rosenau was the first to report on the experiments conducted at Gallops Island in November and December 1918.69 His first volunteers received first one strain and then several strains of Pfeiffer’s bacillus by spray and swab into their noses and throats and then into their eyes. When that procedure failed to produce disease, others were inoculated with mixtures of other organisms isolated from the throats and noses of influenza patients. Next, some volunteers received injections of blood from influenza patients. Finally, 13 of the volunteers were taken into an influenza ward and exposed to 10 influenza patients each. Each volunteer was to shake hands with each patient, to talk with him at close range, and to permit him to cough directly into his face. None of the volunteers in these experiments developed influenza. Rosenau was clearly puzzled, and he cautioned against drawing conclusions from negative results. He ended his article in JAMA with a telling acknowledgement: “We entered the outbreak with a notion that we knew the cause of the disease, and were quite sure we knew how it was transmitted from person to person. Perhaps, if we have learned anything, it is that we are not quite sure what we know about the disease.”69 (p. 313)

The research conducted at Angel Island and that continued in early 1919 in Boston broadened this research by inoculating with the Mathers streptococcus and by including a search for filter-passing agents, but it produced similar negative results.70–72 It seemed that what was acknowledged to be one of the most contagious of communicable diseases could not be transferred under experimental conditions.”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

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Williams, C.. (2019). On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience. History of the Human Sciences, 32(5), 84–107.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0952695119872094
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“The personal papers of the neurophysiologist john c. lilly at stanford university hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. the paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of lilly’s research, then being carried out at the national institute of mental health. lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. this research, wrote lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master-slave controls directly of one brain over another’. the paper is an explicit example of lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards cold war military aims. it is not, however, the research for which lilly is best known. during the 1960s and 1970s, lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. this article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. through an analysis of lilly’s autobiographical writings, i also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of lilly’s research.”

This article was adapted from a chapter of the PhD thesis Battles for the Mind: Brainwashing Altered States and the Politics of the Nervous System (1945-1970), completed at Birkbeck in 2018.

Abstract
The personal papers of the neurophysiologist John C. Lilly at Stanford University hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. The paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of Lilly’s research, then being carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health. Lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. This research, wrote Lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master- slave controls directly of one brain over another’. The paper is an explicit example of
Lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards Cold War military aims. It is not, however, the research for which Lilly is best known. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. Lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. This article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. Through an analysis of Lilly’s autobiographical writings, I also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of Lilly’s research.

The ‘Cold War brainwashing scare’

Lilly’s appointment to the NIMH came shortly after a new term – brainwashing – had been introduced into the English language. The term was first used publicly by journalist Edward Hunter in an article for the Miami News (1950).⁷ In this article and in later works, Hunter claimed that by combining Pavlovian theory with modern technology, Russian and Chinese psychologists had developed powerful techniques for manipulating minds. Although it resonated with concerns about the growing global influence of communism, the term brainwashing would perhaps never have gained traction if it had not been for a series of scandals involving collaboration between American POWs and the Chinese enemy during the Korean War. Most famously, in 1952, Colonel Frank Schwable and 35 other captured US Air Force personnel publicly confessed to committing crimes of germ warfare against North Korea. Other accounts of collaboration at the hands of the Chinese, including the making of public anti-war and anti-McCarthy broadcasts, received widespread attention during the war. Perhaps most controversially, after a long-awaited armistice deal was agreed in 1953, one British and 21 American POWs refused to be repatriated after the war, choosing to relocate to communist China instead. It was widely reported that the soldiers had been exposed to sophisticated techniques of mental coercion based on Pavlovian science, similar to those reported to have been used to extract confessions for Soviet purge trials such as that of Cardinal József Mindszenty in 1949 (Carruthers, 2009).

Scholarship on this period has described the ‘Cold War brainwashing scare’, the ‘brainwashing idea’, and the ‘spectre of brainwashing’, as a central motif in postwar film and literature upon which myriad concerns about agency and influence were projected (for use of these phrases see, respectively, Carruthers, 1998; Reisch, 2012; Taylor, 2004). Whilst such scholarship has often described brainwashing as a ‘cultural fantasy’, the idea of brainwashing nonetheless had real effects, not least within the human sciences. In the early 1950s, building on investigations carried out since the Second World War, the CIA established its notorious MKULTRA programme, which aimed, in the words of its former director Sidney Gottlieb, to ‘investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual’s behaviour by covert means’ (Marks, 1978: 57). What the historian Alfred McCoy has called ‘the Manhattan Project of the mind’ was fuelled by a dual sense of hubris about the CIA’s own research and development potential and paranoia about the capabilities of the enemy, enhanced, as it were, by the semi-tangible reports of enemy scientific projects within what Melley has called the ‘covert sphere’ (McCoy, 2006; Melley, 2012).

According to his own memoirs, Lilly had long been interested in questions of behavioural control. It was reportedly his reading of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World in 1934 and its portrayal of the misuse of the human sciences that influenced his decision to major in biology rather than physics as a student (Lilly, 1997: 57). Although Lilly has somewhat successfully cultivated an image of himself as someone who resisted the lure of military and intelligence funding, like many of his peers, his work and career was heavily shaped by the wider forces shaping the human sciences after the war (Lutz, 1997; McCoy, 2006).

*Lilly, ‘Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents as Reconnaissance and Intelligence Devices (Committee D, Intelligence and Reconnaissance)’, Lilly Papers, Box 54, Folder 17. Exactly when and where this paper was delivered is unclear. In his paper on human manipulation, Lilly implies that both papers were presented at the same place or at connected events: ‘In the following discussion I wish to mention a few human cases; a later supplement will mention certain non-human species as possible agents.’ It is likely that this work or similar was presented at the Pentagon meeting discussed in Lilly’s memoirs (Lilly, 1997: 93–5). According to a former intelligence official’s description of this meeting ‘Dr. Lilly stated that the potential of this technique in “brain-washing” or interrogation or in the field of controlling the actions of humans and animals is almost limitless’: memorandum, Jones to Deloach, 2, FBI personal file, as quoted in Burnett (2016). However, an old inventory for Lilly’s archive from 1992 includes the entry ‘Manuscript of Presentation Given to GAP Symposium on Brainwashing Entitled: “Special Considerations of Modified Human Agents as Reconnaissance and Intelligence Devices”: November 1956’, suggesting that Lilly may have delivered this paper at a meeting for the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, which we know he attended (Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, 1956). Yet this is further complicated by the fact that both papers include references dated as late as 1958, suggesting the papers in the archive were presented after 1956.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899429/pdf/10.1177_0952695119872094.pdf

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Axiology & Agathology

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Shokhin, V. K.. (2020). Axiology and Agathology. Journal of Siberian Federal University. Humanities & Social Sciences, 1370–1383.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.17516/1997-1370-0648
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“From the very beginning, attention is given to the fact that, being introduced at the very beginning of the 20th century, the axiology term, meaning the doctrine of values, almost immediately led to a boom in the development of theories of values (mainly in continental philosophy), whereas the agathology term, meaning the doctrine of goods, which was introduced in 1770 and then rediscovered in 1823, came to almost complete oblivion. for its rehabilitation, one of the commonplaces of the philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries is reviewed, namely, the actual identification of goods and values, as a result of which the former of these concepts is absorbed by the latter. as for values, they are also usually viewed as common human needs, rather than deep and indivisible individual ‘inner possessions’. therefore, it is proposed to distinguish between universal needs and personal valuables and to stratify the world of significant things into values, preferences, and goods. as a result, the latter of these varieties is interpreted as a sphere of practical mind (both in the ancient and kantian senses), teleologically loaded and with the potential to be included in a new, the fourth of the large programmes of theoretical ethics (able to compete well with consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics) and, at the same time, laid into the foundation of the cluster of philosophical disciplines, which is commonly termed as practical philosophy”

Greaves, H.. (2017). Population axiology. Philosophy Compass, 12(11), e12442.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/phc3.12442
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“Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in question may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and ‘person-affecting’ theories. each of these theories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. a series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: it can be proved, for various lists of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. one’s choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up.”

Vyzhletsov, G. P.. (2019). Ontological axiology: origins and modernity. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Philosophy and Conflict Studies, 33(3)

Plain numerical DOI: 10.21638/11701/spbu17.2017.302
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“The article analyzes the current state of ontological axiology in the context the problem of the source of values associated with being as it is relevant to the philosophical discipline. employing examples from the history of the doctrine of values’ formation, the author demonstrates that the source of values is being as whole. according to the author, ontological axiology is based on the unity of objective, subjective and transcendental levels of being, rather than on its individual components. formation of ontological axiology begins with works of nietzsche and concludes in the classical period of its history (1890s – 1930s), with developments of such outstanding philosophers of the 20th century as g. rickert, m. heidegger, m. scheler, n. hartmann, and n. о. lossky. during this period, the doctrine of the absolute character of values as ‘transcendental essences’ was developed. in this case, the values themselves are differentiated, as expressions of the subjective, objective or transcendental levels of being. ontological axiology as a philosophical discipline reaches a new level of development from the 1990s to the 2010s in opposition to the axiological relativism of philosophy and socio-cultural reality of the postmodern. from the standpoint of updated ontological axiology, the source of the objectivity of is the transcendental spirit (deitas) as the spiritual potential of the infinite universe. the life of the universe gives birth to man in the unbreakable unity of his body, soul and spirit. therefore, axiology together with the ontology and epistemology determines the specificity of philosophy and ways of its further development. refs.14.”

Hart, S. L.. (1971). Axiology–Theory of Values. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 32(1), 29.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.2307/2105883
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“AXIOLOGY or theory of values is a relatively newndiscipline although valuational issues have been with usnthe moment man began to reflect upon conditions of hisnlife, the structure and uniformity of nature, and the questnfor the good life. valuational preferences are notnartifacts one can dispense with. inquiries into theirngenetic conditions, their truth and validity claims arenessential for any, reflective, principled conduct. man notnonly is engaged in valuational preferences, but he is alsonconscious of a scale of values, which scale rests with thendegree and quality of satisfactions. the great interest innaxiology at present has many reasons: the divorce ofnontological and valuational questions, the cultural gap,nthe gap between physical and humanistic studies, and thenliterary influence of brentano, ehrenfels, and meinong. thenarticle on ‘axiology’ deals with the major axiologicalnschools of thought: platonism, intuitionism, emotivism, andnnaturalism.”

Thomas, T.. (2018). Some Possibilities in Population Axiology. Mind, 127(507), 807–832.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzx047
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“It is notoriously difficult to find an intuitively satisfactory rule for evaluating populations based on the welfare of the people in them. standard examples, like total utilitarianism, either entail the repugnant conclusion or in some other way contradict common intuitions about the relative value of populations. several philosophers have presented formal arguments that seem to show that this happens of necessity: our core intuitions stand in contradiction. this paper assesses the state of play, focusing on the most powerful of these ‘impossibility theorems’, as developed by gustaf arrhenius. i highlight two ways in which these theorems fall short of their goal: some appeal to a supposedly egalitarian condition which, however, does not properly reflect egalitarian intuitions; the others rely on a background assumption about the structure of welfare which cannot be taken for granted. nonetheless, the theorems remain important: they give insight into the difficulty, if not perhaps the impossibility, of constructing a satisfactory population axiology. we should aim for reflective equilibrium between intuitions and more theoretical considerations. i conclude by highlighting one possible ingredient in this equilibrium, which, i argue, leaves open a still wider range of acceptable theories: the possibility of vague or otherwise indeterminate value relations.”

Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC) technologies

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Martin-Sanchez, F., & Maojo, V.. (2009). Biomedical Informatics and the Convergence of Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC) Technologies. Yearbook of Medical Informatics

, 18(01), 134–142.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1638652
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Abstract

Objectives: To analyze the role that biomedical informatics could play in the application of the NBIC Converging Technologies in the medical field and raise awareness of these new areas throughout the Biomedical Informatics community.

Methods: Review of the literature and analysis of the reference documents in this domain from the biomedical informatics perspective. Detailing existing developments showing that partial convergence of technologies have already yielded relevant results in biomedicine (such as bioinformatics or biochips). Input from current projects in which the authors are involved is also used.

Results: Information processing is a key issue in enabling the convergence of NBIC technologies. Researchers in biomedical informatics are in a privileged position to participate and actively develop this new scientific direction. The experience of biomedical informaticians in five decades of research in the medical area and their involvement in the completion of the Human and other genome projects will help them participate in a similar role for the development of applications of converging technologies -particularly in nanomedicine.

Conclusions: The proposed convergence will bring bridges between traditional disciplines. Particular attention should be placed on the ethical, legal, and social issues raised by the NBIC convergence. These technologies provide new directions for research and education in Biomedical Informatics placing a greater emphasis in multidisciplinary approaches.

The Network of Global Corporate Control

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Vitali, S., Glattfelder, J. B., & Battiston, S.. (2011). The Network of Global Corporate Control. PLoS ONE, 6(10), e25995.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025995
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“The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. so far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. we present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. we find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. this core can be seen as an economic ‘super-entity’ that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.”

Peer-reviewed articles

Peters, T.. (2020). The Struggle for Cognitive Liberty: Retrofitting the Self in Activist Theology. Theology and Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/14746700.2020.1786219
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“Human freedom is best understood as self-determination. free action consists of deliberation, decision, and action. the free human person deserves dignity, that is, we each deserve to be treated as a moral end and not merely as a means to someone else’s end. neurocentrist philosophy-a form of eliminative materialism-based on neuroscience, however, threatens the extinction of the human self and, thereby, threatens to turn our experience of freedom and dignity into a mere delusion. this evacuates the moral agenda of every activist liberation theology. one task of today’s public theologian is to protect cognitive liberty, because it conceptually undergirds political, economic, and social liberation.”

Sommaggio, P., Mazzocca, M., Gerola, A., & Ferro, F.. (2017). Cognitive Liberty. A first step towards a human neuro-rights declaration. BioLaw Journal

Plain numerical DOI: 10.15168/blj.v0i3.255
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“This paper discusses the emerging debate concerning the concept of cognitive liberty and its connection with human rights. therefore, considering how recent developments of neurosciences are granting us an increasing ability to monitor and influence mental processes, this article aims to provide a clear definition of cognitive liberty understood as a necessary condition to all other freedoms that cannot be reduced to existing rights. in this regard, after presenting the most important positions on the issue, we introduce our point of view, according to which cognitive liberty allows us to lay the groundwork for building new neurorelated human rights.”

Weissenbacher, A.. (2018). Defending cognitive liberty in an age of moral engineering. Theology and Science

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/14746700.2018.1488476
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“In 2009, mark walker first proposed the genetic virtue project, advancing that science should explore using genetic engineering to eliminate moral evils just as it attempts to eliminate natural ones like disease. this seemed like an issue for the far future given the unique challenges. walker focused on the wrong aspect of personhood, however, as moral engineering of the brain appears to be a more likely possibility. as early aspects of moral engineering the brain are in development, especially through the manipulation of the neural correlates of religious and political beliefs, emotions, and behaviors, i consider several issues surrounding this project so as to protect individual rights and prevent future harms. i advance an internal criterion for the field called acceptability across ideologies to serve as a guide to protect against coercive and harmful technologies and analyze how current laws protecting cognitive liberty are lacking and in need of revision.”

Sommaggio, P., & Mazzocca, M.. (2020). Cognitive liberty and human rights. In Neuroscience and Law: Complicated Crossings and New Perspectives

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-38840-9_6
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“This chapter discusses the emerging debate regarding the relationship between the concept of cognitive liberty and human rights. for this reason, after briefly presenting some issues related to the development of recent neurotechnology, the different types of definitions of the concept of cognitive liberty, that have been recently proposed, are illustrated. starting from these last, this chapter aims to analyze how, the whole relationship between human rights and cognitive liberty can change depending on the legislative strategy that one prefers to undertake.”

Ienca, M.. (2017). The Right to Cognitive Liberty. Scientific American

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican0817-10
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Ienca, M., & Andorno, R.. (2017). Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology. Life Sciences, Society and Policy

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1186/s40504-017-0050-1
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“Rapid advancements in human neuroscience and neurotechnology open unprecedented possibilities for accessing, collecting, sharing and manipulating information from the human brain. such applications raise important challenges to human rights principles that need to be addressed to prevent unintended consequences. this paper assesses the implications of emerging neurotechnology applications in the context of the human rights framework and suggests that existing human rights may not be sufficient to respond to these emerging issues. after analysing the relationship between neuroscience and human rights, we identify four new rights that may become of great relevance in the coming decades: the right to cognitive liberty, the right to mental privacy, the right to mental integrity, and the right to psychological continuity.”

Walsh, C.. (2010). Drugs and human rights: Private palliatives, sacramental freedoms and cognitive liberty. International Journal of Human Rights

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/13642980802704270
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“This paper reviews the impact of ten years of domestic incorporation of the european convention on human rights (echr) on the evolution of the united kingdom’s primary piece of prohibitive drugs legislation, the misuse of drugs act 1971. the significant cases where traditional interpretation of this act has been challenged in the courts using the convention are discussed. structured thematically, this paper looks at the interplay between drug prohibition and human rights in addressing complex issues, such as our right to self-medicate, to practice our religion(s) freely, and to explore our own consciousness. the intention is to expose the untapped potential of the echr as a tool with which to fundamentally challenge the (discriminatory) drug policy of the united kingdom. © 2010 taylor & francis.”

Kraft, C. J., & Giordano, J.. (2017). Integrating brain science and law: Neuroscientific evidence and legal perspectives on protecting individual liberties. Frontiers in Neuroscience

Plain numerical DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2017.00621
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“Advances in neuroscientific techniques have found increasingly broader applications, including in legal neuroscience (or ‘neurolaw’), where experts in the brain sciences are called to testify in the courtroom. but does the incursion of neuroscience into the legal sphere constitute a threat to individual liberties? and what legal protections are there against such threats? in this paper, we outline individual rights as they interact with neuroscientific methods. we then proceed to examine the current uses of neuroscientific evidence, and ultimately determine whether the rights of the individual are endangered by such approaches. based on our analysis, we conclude that while federal evidence rules constitute a substantial hurdle for the use of neuroscientific evidence, more ethical safeguards are needed to protect against future violations of fundamental rights. finally, we assert that it will be increasingly imperative for the legal and neuroscientific communities to work together to better define the limits, capabilities, and intended direction of neuroscientific methods applicable for use in law.”

Rainey, S., Martin, S., Christen, A., Mégevand, P., & Fourneret, E.. (2020). Brain Recording, Mind-Reading, and Neurotechnology: Ethical Issues from Consumer Devices to Brain-Based Speech Decoding. Science and Engineering Ethics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s11948-020-00218-0
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“Brain reading technologies are rapidly being developed in a number of neuroscience fields. these technologies can record, process, and decode neural signals. this has been described as ‘mind reading technology’ in some instances, especially in popular media. should the public at large, be concerned about this kind of technology? can it really read minds? concerns about mind-reading might include the thought that, in having one’s mind open to view, the possibility for free deliberation, and for self-conception, are eroded where one isn’t at liberty to privately mull things over. themes including privacy, cognitive liberty, and self-conception and expression appear to be areas of vital ethical concern. overall, this article explores whether brain reading technologies are really mind reading technologies. if they are, ethical ways to deal with them must be developed. if they are not, researchers and technology developers need to find ways to describe them more accurately, in order to dispel unwarranted concerns and address appropriately those that are warranted.”

Ienca, M., & Andorno, R.. (2021). Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and Neurotechnology. Analisis Filosofico

Plain numerical DOI: 10.36446/AF.2021.386
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Wolpe, P. R.. (2017). Neuroprivacy and cognitive liberty. In The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics

Plain numerical DOI: 10.4324/9781315708652
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“The term ‘‘cognitive liberty’’ has been used in a variety of ways. in general, it refers to the degree to which an individual has the right to control his or her own mental and emotional brain processes against the desires of external agents, especially the state, to control or access them. it is largely reflective of the value of neuroprivacy, the idea that privacy rights extend to a citizen’s brain, and that if privacy has any meaning at all, it must mean one’s right to protect the contents of one’s brain (i.e., one’s thoughts, emotions, and other subjective states). these terms are relatively recent concepts, reactions to the development of neurotechnologies that are beginning to allow unprecedented access to the inner workings of the brain. the values they reflect, however, have a long pedigree.”

Walsh, C.. (2014). Beyond religious freedom: Psychedelics and cognitive liberty. In Prohibition, Religious Freedom, and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-40957-8_11
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“This chapter will examine the blurred boundaries between the sacred and the secular when it comes to psychedelic experiences, and the inevitable ensuing arbitrariness involved in protecting some such rituals and not others. it will put forth the argument that there is a need to move beyond simply seeking exemptions from drug prohibition in the name of religious freedom; rather, there should be a broader right to ingest psychedelics as an aspect of cognitive liberty. cognitive liberty is the right to control one’s own consciousness. it is a concept that equates to freedom of thought, a right protected internationally by the universal declaration of human rights and enforceable in europe through article 9 of the european convention of human rights.”

White, A. E.. (2010). The lie of fMRI: An examination of the ethics of a market in lie detection using functional magnetic resonance imaging. HEC Forum

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/s10730-010-9141-6
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“In this paper, i argue that companies who use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) scans for lie detection encounter the same basic ethical stumbling blocks as commercial companies that market traditional polygraphs. markets in traditional voluntary polygraphs are common and fail to elicit much uproar among ethicists. thus, for consistency, if markets in polygraphs are ethically unproblematic, markets using fmris for lie detection are equally as acceptable. furthermore, while i acknowledge two substantial differences between the ethical concerns involving polygraphs and fmri lie detection, i argue that these concerns can be overcome and do not lead to the conclusion that markets in fmri lie detection are ethically dubious. it is my conclusion that voluntary markets in fmri lie detection can be justified by consumer autonomy and should be allowed to persist. © 2010 springer science+business media b.v.”

Xu, H., & Dinev, T.. (2012). The security-liberty balance: Individuals’ attitudes towards internet government surveillance. Electronic Government

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1504/EG.2012.044778
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“In the security-liberty balance, individuals would weigh the benefits of government surveillance against what the cost would be to our civil liberties. drawing on social cognitive theory (sct), this study empirically operationalises and tests citizens’ attitudes towards internet government surveillance and discusses predictors of these attitudes that help elicit the notion of security-liberty balance through a survey study. we propose that individuals’ internet self-efficacy and social awareness affect perceived need for government surveillance and government intrusion concerns. the study presents empirically tested relationships which are important for informing the debate and developing well-balanced policies of security protection and civil liberties. copyright © 2012 inderscience enterprises ltd.”

Davies, W.. (2017). Elite Power under Advanced Neoliberalism. Theory, Culture & Society

, 34(5–6), 227–250.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1177/0263276417715072
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“The financial crisis, and associated scandals, created a sense of a juridical deficit with regard to the financial sector. forms of independent judgement within the sector appeared compromised, while judgement over the sector seemed unattainable. elites, in the classical millsian sense of those taking tacitly coordinated ‘big decisions’ over the rest of the public, seemed absent. this article argues that the eradication of jurisdictional elites is an effect of neoliberalism, as articulated most coherently by hayek. it characterizes the neoliberal project as an effort to elevate ‘unconscious’ processes over ‘conscious’ ones, which in practice means elevating cybernetic, non- human systems and processes over discursive spheres of politics and judgement. yet such a system still produces its own types of elite power, which come to consist in acts of translation, rather than judgement. firstly, there are ‘cyborg intermediaries’: elites which operate largely within the system of codes, data, screens and prices. secondly, there are ‘diplomatic intermediaries’: elites who come to narrate and justify what markets (and associated technologies and bodies) are ‘saying’. the paper draws on lazzarato’s work on signifying vs asignifying semiotics in order to articulate this, and concludes by considering the types of elite crisis which these forms of power tend to produce.”

Foster, J. B., & Holleman, H.. (2010). The Financial Power Elite. Monthly Review

, 62(1), 1.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.14452/MR-062-01-2010-05_1
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“The article presents an historical overview of the emergence of the financial sector within the u.s. banking system, focusing on the developments of the end of the 20th century which led to the formation of a financial elite. introductory comments are given noting the rise and fall of different regulatory regimes within the u.s. banking sector in the first half of the century up to 1980. in-depth discussion is then provided highlighting the concentration of the financial sector as a dominant force in the nation’s economy up to the events of the 2008 global financial crisis and the return of political demands for regulation.”

Iyer, R., Koleva, S., Graham, J., Ditto, P., & Haidt, J.. (2012). Understanding libertarian morality: The psychological dispositions of self-identified libertarians. PLoS ONE

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042366
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“Libertarians are an increasingly prominent ideological group in u.s. politics, yet they have been largely unstudied. across 16 measures in a large web-based sample that included 11,994 self-identified libertarians, we sought to understand the moral and psychological characteristics of self-described libertarians. based on an intuitionist view of moral judgment, we focused on the underlying affective and cognitive dispositions that accompany this unique worldview. compared to self-identified liberals and conservatives, libertarians showed 1) stronger endorsement of individual liberty as their foremost guiding principle, and weaker endorsement of all other moral principles; 2) a relatively cerebral as opposed to emotional cognitive style; and 3) lower interdependence and social relatedness. as predicted by intuitionist theories concerning the origins of moral reasoning, libertarian values showed convergent relationships with libertarian emotional dispositions and social preferences. our findings add to a growing recognition of the role of personality differences in the organization of political attitudes.”

Boire, R.. (2000). On Cognitive Liberty. In Journal of Cognitive Liberties

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1080/00207144.2013.753820
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Ienca, M., & Andorno, R.. (2017). Towards new human rights in the age of neuroscience and neurotechnology. Life Sciences, Society and Policy

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1186/s40504-017-0050-1
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Shanker, S. G.. (2009). Three concepts of liberty. In After Cognitivism: A Reassessment of Cognitive Science and Philosophy

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-9992-2_13
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Rindermann, H.. (2012). Intellectual classes, technological progress and economic development: The rise of cognitive capitalism. Personality and Individual Differences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.07.001
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“Cognitive ability theory claims that peoples’ competences are decisive for economic wealth. for a large number of countries lynn and vanhanen (2002) have published data on mean intelligence levels and compared them to wealth and productivity indicators. the correlation between intelligence and wealth was supported by studies done by different authors using different countries and controls. based on their pioneering research two research questions were developed: does intelligence lead to wealth or does wealth lead to intelligence or are other determinants involved? if a nation’s intelligence increases wealth, how does intelligence achieve this? to answer them we need longitudinal studies and theoretical attempts, investigating cognitive ability effects at the levels of individuals, institutions and societies and examining factors which lie between intelligence and growth. two studies, using a cross-lagged panel design or latent variables and measuring economic liberty, shares of intellectual classes and indicators of scientific-technological accomplishment, show that cognitive ability leads to higher wealth and that for this process the achievement of high ability groups is important, stimulating growth through scientific-technological progress and by influencing the quality of economic institutions. in modernity, wealth depends on cognitive resources enabling the evolution of cognitive capitalism. © 2011 elsevier ltd.”

SENTENTIA, W.. (2006). Neuroethical Considerations: Cognitive Liberty and Converging Technologies for Improving Human Cognition. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1196/annals.1305.014
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“Developers of nbic (nano-bio-info-cogno) technologies face a multitude of obstacles, not the least of which is navigating the public ethics of their applied research. biotechnologies have received widespread media attention and spawned heated interest in their perceived social implications. now, in view of the rapidly expanding purview of neuroscience and the growing array of technologic developments capable of affecting or monitoring cognition, the emerging field of neuroethics calls for a consideration of the social and ethical implications of neuroscientific discoveries and trends. to negotiate the complex ethical issues at stake in new and emerging kinds of technologies for improving human cognition, we need to overcome political, disciplinary, and religious sectarianism. we need analytical models that protect values of personhood at the heart of a functional democracy-values that allow, as much as possible, for individual decision-making, despite transformations in our understanding and ability to manipulate cognitive processes. addressing cognitive enhancement from the legal and ethical notion of ‘cognitive liberty’ provides a powerful tool for assessing and encouraging nbic developments.”

Desai, A. C.. (2011). Libertarian Paternalism, Externalities, and the “Spirit of Liberty”: How Thaler and Sunstein Are Nudging Us toward an “Overlapping Consensus”. Law and Social Inquiry, 36(1), 263–295.

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-4469.2010.01231.x
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“In their 2008 book nudge: improving decisions about health, wealth, andnhappiness, richard thaler and cass sunstein use research from psychologynand behavioral economics to argue that people suffer from systematicncognitive biases. they propose that policy makers mitigate these biasesnby framing people’s choices in ways that help people act in their ownnself-interest. thaler and sunstein call this approach “libertariannpaternalism,{’’} and they market it as “the real third way.{’’} in thisnessay, i argue that the book is a brilliant contribution to thinkingnabout policy making but that “choice architecture{’’} is not just ansolution to the problem of cognitive biases. rather, it is a means ofnapproaching any kind of policy making. i further argue that policynmakers must take externalities into account, even when using choicenarchitecture. finally, i argue that libertarian paternalism can best benseen as motivated by what sunstein has celebrated in his work onnconstitutional theory: a humility about the possibility of policy-makernerror embodied in learned hand’s famous aphorism about the “spirit ofnliberty{’’} and an attempt to reduce social conflicts by searching fornwhat john rawls called an “overlapping consensus.{’’}.”

Pustilnik, A. C.. (2012). Neurotechnologies at the intersection of criminal procedure and constitutional law. In The Constitution and the Future of Criminal Justice in America

Plain numerical DOI: 10.1017/CBO9781139108034.011
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“The rapid development of neurotechnologies poses novel constitutional issues for criminal law and criminal procedure. these technologies can identify directly from brain waves whether a person is familiar with a stimulus like a face or a weapon, can model blood flow in the brain to indicate whether a person is lying, and can even interfere with brain processes themselves via high-powered magnets to cause a person to be less likely to lie to an investigator. these technologies implicate the constitutional privilege against compelled, self-incriminating speech under the fifth amendment and the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure under the fourth amendment of the united states constitution. law enforcement use of these technologies will not just require extending existing constitutional doctrine to cover new facts but will challenge these doctrines’ foundations. this short chapter discusses cognitive privacy and liberty under the fourth and fifth amendments, showing how current jurisprudence under both amendments stumbles on limited and limiting distinctions between the body and the mind, the physical and the informational. brain processes and emanations sit at the juncture of these categories. this chapter proposes a way to transcend these limitations while remaining faithful to precedent, extending these important constitutional protections into a new era of direct access to the brain/mind.”

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