精神控制的未来

何党生 转载自 经济学家印刷版 | 2007-03-20 10:32 | 投票
标签: 精神控制 

The future of mind control
精神控制的未来



From The Economist print edition
来源:经济学家印刷版

People already worry about genetics. They should worry about brain science too
人们已经开始担心遗传学,他们也应该担心脑科学
 
IN AN attempt to treat depression, neuroscientists once carried out a simple experiment. Using electrodes, they stimulated the brains of women in ways that caused pleasurable feelings. The subjects came to no harm—indeed their symptoms appeared to evaporate, at least temporarily—but they quickly fell in love with their experimenters.
在一次对抑郁症的治疗的企图中,神经科学家曾完成了一个简单的试验。用电极,他们刺激一个妇女的大脑,用于产生快乐的感觉。试验对象并没受到伤害,而他们的症状真的消失了,至少是暂时的-但他们很快与他们的实验者相爱
 
Such a procedure (and there have been worse in the history of neuroscience) poses far more of a threat to human dignity and autonomy than does cloning. Cloning is the subject of fierce debate, with proposals for wholesale bans. Yet when it comes to neuroscience, no government or treaty stops anything. For decades, admittedly, no neuroscientist has been known to repeat the love experiment. A scientist who used a similar technique to create remote-controlled rats seemed not even to have entertained the possibility. “Humans? Who said anything about humans?” he said, in genuine shock, when questioned. “We work on rats.”
这样一个程序(并且,这是神经系统科学历史中最坏的)所造成的要远远大于克隆对人类尊严和人类自治的威胁。克隆的主题是激烈辩论关于大规模禁止的建议。然而,当提及神经系统科学时,没有政府或条约来禁止任何事。在这十年间,诚然,没有神经科学家再重复爱的试验。一个科学家用了类似的技术去创造受到远程控制的兔子,似乎甚至并非是为了娱乐的可能性。“人类呢?谁有说过任何关于人类的?”他说到,在真实的震惊外,当询问时。“我们实用老鼠。
 
Ignoring a possibility does not, however, make it go away. If asked to guess which group of scientists is most likely to be responsible, one day, for overturning the essential nature of humanity, most people might suggest geneticists. In fact neurotechnology poses a greater threat—and also a more immediate one. Moreover, it is a challenge that is largely ignored by regulators and the public, who seem unduly obsessed by gruesome fantasies of genetic dystopias.
并没忽视可能性,然而,让它过去。如果某一天问到猜测哪组科学家最可能要负责,为颠覆人类自然的本质,大多数人也许建议是遗传学家。实际上,神经技术构成了更大的威胁-并且也是一个更迅猛的。而且,它是一个挑战,它被监督者和公众极大的忽视了,他们似乎极端痴迷遗传的糟糕的的社会的可怕的幻想。
 
A persons genetic make-up certainly has something important to do with his subsequent behaviour. But genes exert their effects through the brain. If you want to predict and control a persons behaviour, the brain is the place to start. Over the course of the next decade, scientists may be able to predict, by examining a scan of a persons brain, not only whether he will tend to mental sickness or health, but also whether he will tend to depression or violence. Neural implants may within a few years be able to increase intelligence or to speed up reflexes. Drug companies are hunting for molecules to assuage brain-related ills, from paralysis to shyness (see article).
一个人的遗传的天性当然与他后天的行为重要相关。但遗传基因通过大脑发挥它们的影响。如果你想预测和控制一个人的行为,大脑是开始的地方。在下十年的进程中,科学家能预测,通过扫描检查一个人的大脑,不仅看他是否会有得精神疾病或健康的倾向,还要看他是否有沮丧或暴力的倾向。神经系统的灌输也许在几年内能增加智力或加快反映。药物公司在搜寻用以减轻大脑相关疾病的分子,治愈瘫痪和羞怯(看文章)。

A public debate over the ethical limits to such neuroscience is long overdue. It may be hard to shift public attention away from genetics, which has so clearly shown its sinister side in the past. The spectre of eugenics, which reached its culmination in Nazi Germany, haunts both politicians and public. The fear that the ability to monitor and select for desirable characteristics will lead to the subjugation of the undesirable—or the merely unfashionable—is well-founded.
公众对于神经系统科学超过道德限制的争论早该到来。也许转移公众的注意力远离遗传学也许是很难的,它如此清晰的显示了过去它的险恶的一边。优生学的幽灵的特性,它在纳粹德国达到了它的顶点,它在政客和公众那都挥之不去。对于监控的能力和选择预期的特性的害怕将导致不受欢迎的镇压-或仅仅是不流行的-是有根据的。

Not so long ago neuroscientists, too, were guilty of victimising the mentally ill and the imprisoned in the name of science. Their sins are now largely forgotten, thanks in part to the intractable controversy over the moral status of embryos. Anti-abortion lobbyists, who find stem-cell research and cloning repugnant, keep the ethics of genetic technology high on the political agenda. But for all its importance, the quarrel over abortion and embryos distorts public discussion of bioethics; it is a wonder that people in the field can discuss anything else.
不久前,神经系统科学家也有犯了欺骗受害者为精神疾病和以科学的名义监禁的罪行。他们罪过现在基本已被忘记,感谢关于胚胎的道德地位的部分棘手的争论。反对堕胎的说客,他们发现了干细胞研究和克隆的不一致,保持遗传学技术的道德规范在公众议程里的热衷。但所有的它的重要性,对于堕胎和胚胎的争论歪曲了公众的生物伦理学的讨论;这是个奇迹,人们在这一领域能讨论一切。
 
In fact, they hardly do. Americas National Institutes of Health has a hefty budget for studying the ethical, legal and social implications of genetics, but it earmarks nothing for the specific study of the ethics of neuroscience. The National Institute of Mental Health, one of its component bodies, has seen fit to finance a workshop on the ethical implications of “cyber-medicine”, yet it has not done the same to examine the social impact of drugs for “hyperactivity”, which 7% of American six- to eleven-year-olds now take. The Wellcome Trust, Britains main source of finance for the study of biomedical ethics, has a programme devoted to the ethics of brain research, but the number of projects is dwarfed by its parallel programme devoted to genetics.
实际上,他们很难去做。美国国家卫生机构在研究伦理相关,法律和遗传学的社会影响下有着很大笔的预算,但它没有指定任何特定的关于神经系统科学的道德规范的研究。国家精神健康协会,它的一个组成部分,资助了用于“电子药物”的伦理影响的工作室,然而它却没有对为“活跃多度”的药物的社会影响做相同的检测,那有从6-11岁的7%的美国人现在做了。感谢信任,英国对于生物医学的道德规范的研究的财政主要来源,有一个程序专心致力于脑研究的道德规范,但计划的财政资助要远远小于与其平行的致力于遗传学的项目。
 
Uncontrollable fears
无法控制的恐惧

The worriers have not spent these resources idly. Rather, they have produced the first widespread legislative and diplomatic efforts directed at containing scientific advance. The Council of Europe and the United Nations have declared human reproductive cloning a violation of human rights. The Senate is soon to vote on a bill that would send American scientists to prison for making cloned embryonic stem cells.
担忧者没有花费这些空闲的资源,相反,他们产生了第一部广泛的立法和外交成果,对准了包括科学进展的这部分。欧洲议会和美国国会宣告人类再生克隆是对人权的违反。参议院很快表决了一部议案,那将送美国科学家去监狱,如果他们克隆胚胎干细胞。
 
Yet neuroscientists have been left largely to their own devices, restrained only by standard codes of medical ethics and experimentation. This relative lack of regulation and oversight has produced a curious result. When it comes to the brain, society now regards the distinction between treatment and enhancement as essentially meaningless. Taking a drug such as Prozac when you are not clinically depressed used to be called cosmetic, or non-essential, and was therefore considered an improper use of medical technology. Now it is regarded as just about as cosmetic, and as non-essential, as birth control or orthodontics. American legislators are weighing the so-called parity issue—the argument that mental treatments deserve the same coverage in health-insurance plans as any other sort of drug. Where drugs to change personality traits were once seen as medicinal fripperies, or enhancements, they are now seen as entitlements.
然而神经科学家留下了大量的他们自己的装置,仅仅受到标准的医疗道德和试验准则的限制。这缺乏相关规则和勘漏,并产生了严重的后果。当提到大脑,社会认为:对治疗与改善之间的区别是毫无意义的。拿一片药,例如氟西汀,当你不是临床用于治疗抑郁,而是用于表面的,或不必须的,这将因此被考虑是一个不恰当的医学技术的应用。现在它几乎是仅用作表面的或非必须的,作为出生控制或牙齿矫正。美国立法者正衡量所谓的奇偶的问题-对于精神治疗应该受到同样的健康保险计划的覆盖,作为其他种类的药物的争论。那里,药物改变了人格特性一度曾被看作是医学上的无用,或进步,它们现在被看作是权利。

This flexible attitude towards neurotechnology—use it if it might work, demand it if it does—is likely to extend to all sorts of other technologies that affect health and behaviour, both genetic and otherwise. Rather than resisting their advent, people are likely to begin clamouring for those that make themselves and their children healthier and happier.
关于神经技术的灵活的看法-用它如果它能工作,需要它如果它有用-可能是对其他的影响健康和行为的各种技术的扩展,无论是在遗传学还是其他的。这远远胜于抵抗它们的来临,人们可能开始吵闹着需要能使得他们和他们的孩子更健康和快乐的技术。我也这么认为,如果一个技术的到来,我们无法阻止,那么消极的禁止它的到来的作用不大,因为这只能防君子,不能防小人,真正的犯罪分子,要非法运用一项技术,你是禁止不了的,相反,消极的禁止,只会阻止了正义一方在这方面的正当的,正面的研究,那你用什么能克制邪恶一方的技术呢?相反,我们应该鼓励这一技术的正当研究,并且制定相关的措施,防止技术被滥用,对于滥用者予以最严厉的惩罚,包括死刑,甚至拿滥用技术的人作为人体试验对象。一震撼那些对此技术稍稍抱着歪门邪道想法的人,杀一儆百。同时积极发展克制,比方屏蔽,追踪来源的技术的发展。这才是正确的态度)
 
This might be bad or it might be good. It is a question that public discussion ought to try to settle, perhaps with the help of a regulatory body such as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which oversees embryo research in Britain. History teaches that worrying overmuch about technological change rarely stops it. Those who seek to halt genetics in its tracks may soon learn that lesson anew, as rogue scientists perform experiments in defiance of well-intended bans. But, if society is concerned about the pace and ethics of scientific advance, it should at least form a clearer picture of what is worth worrying about, and why.
这也许是坏的,也许是好的。在公众讨论应该试图解决上有一个问题,也许是帮助调整身体,例如人类授精和胚胎权威,这检查了在英国的胚胎研究。历史教授的是过多的对技术的担心但却很少阻止它。那些寻找停止遗传学在它自己的轨道上的,也许很快就能学到重新的一课,由于流氓科学家进行的不顾那些用心良苦的禁令的试验。但如果社会关心和平和科学进步的道德规范,它制少应该形成一个清晰的画卷,关于什么值得担心,并且为什么。
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