The Anniversary of the First Neuroethics Conference (No, Not That One)

By Jonathan D. Moreno

Jonathan D. Moreno is the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he is a Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) professor. At Penn he is also Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, of History and Sociology of Science, and of Philosophy.  His latest book is Impromptu Man: J.L. Moreno and the Origins of Psychodrama, Encounter Culture, and the Social Network (2014), which Amazon called a “#1 hot new release.”  Among his previous books are The Body Politic, which was named a Best Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, Mind Wars (2012), and Undue Risk (2000).

The 15th anniversary of what is widely viewed as the first neuroethics conference, “Neuroethics: Mapping the Field” was celebrated in 2017. The meeting was held in San Francisco, organized by the University of California and Stanford, and sponsored by the Dana Foundation. Cerebrum, the journal that is published by the foundation, celebrated the anniversary by publishing short memoirs by some of the speakers, including my own. The feature was dubbed “The First Neuroethics Meeting.”

Except that it wasn’t. The first conference that was recognizably about neuroethics was held in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of a conservative think tank, and its 20th anniversary is in 2018. 

It does seem that the 2002 meeting was the first one to use the term neuroethics in its title. With the support of Dana’s president, William Safire, the program brought together many of those who are still leaders in the field. But the earlier one, sponsored by a Washington, D.C. think tank, the Ethics and Public Policy Center and held at the National Press Club, also featured some of those who are still prominent. They included Harvard’s Steven Hyman, later to be the first president of the International Neuroethics Society, Adrian Raine who was then at the University of Southern California, and the present author. But those we might today consider the usual suspects were in the minority. 

And this is where it gets interesting. 

William Bennett, former Director of the

Office of National Drug Control Policy.

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia.)

Called “Neuroscience and the Human Spirit: Meeting the Challenges of Contemporary Brain Research,” the 1998 conference also featured some speakers who were prominent for other reasons, including Charles Krauthammer, William Bennett and Fred Goodwin. Krauthammer was and remains an influential political commentator. Bennett was President George H.W. Bush’s “drug czar” and would go on to be President George W. Bush’s Secretary of Education. Fred Goodwin was formerly scientific director of the National Institute of Mental Health who had been involved in a controversy after he seemed to compare inner city youth to primates. It is fair to say that these and other participants, like the Ethics and Public Policy Center itself, were identified with socially conservative views or at least had annoyed liberals in various ways. 

The National Press Club event was reported in a Nature Neuroscience editorial, which called the conference “unusual,” which indeed it was, even pioneering. “Its purpose,” the editorial noted, “was to examine the extent to which modern brain research threatens traditional views of humanity, including the western religious tradition.” Among the topics addressed were free will, the implications of predicting behavior, and the evolution of religious and moral beliefs. Many of the speakers were deeply concerned about the ways that more knowledge about and control over the brain could compromise traditional ethical and social conventions. 

What in retrospect reads like the rationale for the field of neuroethics, Nature Neuroscience heartily endorsed the goals of the conference. “[T]here are compelling reasons for further discussion. Neuroscientists should recognize that their work may be construed as having deep and possibly disturbing implications, and that if they do not discuss these implications, others will do so on their behalf. The diversity of views expressed at the conference suggests that reconciliation is not imminent, but it will nevertheless be valuable to define the areas of agreement and disagreement more precisely. The EPPC has performed a useful service in promoting that goal.”

Judy Illes, former president of the

 International Neuroethics Society, presided

over the Washington Conference in 2017.

(Image courtesy of Wikimedia.)

When neuroethics went self-conscious as an academic field after the Dana conference, its agenda was markedly different from that of the 1998 meeting. Not a single panel in San Francisco was devoted to the implications of modern brain science for religious faith, nor except indirectly to the effects on moral traditions. For the Ethics and Public Policy Center their conference was a one-off, but the center’s associates (many of whom are important figures in American conservative thought), no doubt regard the field’s themes as typical of left-wing academia in its exclusion of such concerns. 

Looking through a lens two decades later, the Washington conference foreshadowed the science ethics wars to come. It took place right around the time that the first papers were published reporting the isolation of human embryonic stem cells in a University of Wisconsin laboratory and two years before the election of George W. Bush. The bioethics culture wars had not yet erupted into public view through limits on federally supported stem cell research and a presidential bioethics council that was anathema to much of the scientific community. Yet “Neuroscience and the Human Spirit” demonstrated the serious interest among those popularly known as neoconservatives in the relationship between modern science and traditional values. 

Although it was finally stem cell research that became the focus of controversy and allegations of a “war on science” in the early 2000s, in a far more muted fashion neuroscience led the way. 

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Moreno, J. (2018). The Anniversary of the First Neuroethics Conference (No, Not That One). The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/02/the-anniversary-of-first-neuroethics.html

Neuroethics Women to Watch

By Judy Illes, CM, PHD,

Immediate Past President, International Neuroethics Society (INS)

Dr. Illes is Professor of Neurology and Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia. Her research, teaching and service focus on ethical, legal, social and policy challenges specifically at the intersection of the brain sciences and biomedical ethics. Her latest book, Neuroethics: Anticipating the Future (Oxford University Press) was released in July 2017. Dr. Illes hold many prestigious awards for her work both in neuroethics and on behalf of women in science. She was appointed to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian award, in December 2017. 

During the two years that I was President of the INS, and really since 2002 overall when we first set the modern neuroethics vision in motion, one of my greatest joys has been to work with outstanding people in our field. I have relentlessly sought to create opportunities for leadership especially among early career neuroethicists who seek to contribute, sometimes in the footsteps of more senior people and sometimes along a completely separate path that they set of their own. My focus has been on the women and men of our field alike and, during my term as President specifically, these opportunities unfolded in different forms. Working with remarkable staff led by Karen Graham (INS Executive Director) since the birth of the INS and Elaine Snell (Chief Operating Officer), and the INS Board, I created an Emerging Issues Task Force, for example, a Rising Star Lecture (Kreitmair, 2017), and many podium opportunities at our annual meetings. 

I have always been committed to advancing the careers of young people in neuroscience-related fields, and women in particular. In early 2000, for example, I served as Vice President of Women in Neuroscience (WIN) when WIN was an independent not-for profit organization (Haak, 2002). This continued into 2007 when WIN was merged with the Society for Neuroscience, even while the focus of the effort shifted under the umbrella of professional development. I carried on with my mission in 2008 as Chair of a new IBRO committee that I created at the request of Professor Albert Aguayo called Women in World Neuroscience. Today, as a new member the International Women’s Forum (iwforum.org), a group of more than 6500 women heads of state, leaders in business, industry, and a few in education and research, I am set to learn new ways of harnessing strength and bringing impactful innovation to our neuroethics sister- and brotherhood. 

In keeping with the general theme of women in academia and my special focus on neuroethics, I think about women in our field. Honestly, you will see, my reflections are gender nonspecific. I am, however, inspired by the fact that this piece appears in the NEW blog, a creation of Karen Rommelfanger that seems to grow in number and richness all the time. I won’t name names of those to watch in the future, but I will point out a few who have shaped us to get where we are today. Patricia Churchland, for example, my lifelong mentor, immediately comes to mind. She is well known to us in neuroethics and one of the earliest and deepest thinkers in our field (Churchland, 1991). Helen Mayberg is a force at every level imaginable. Besides her warmth, I call out her scientific rigor and distinction. Rarely acknowledged for the depth of her support is Barbara Gill, Executive Director of the Dana Foundation. She is a leading light for us.



Before them, Alexandra Pontius claimed in an ardent email to William Safire to be one of the first to use the word neuroethics in the context of research (Pontius, 1993). We never managed to engage Professor Pontius in the INS, although it would have been excellent to have her anthropology insights and expertise at the table. Further back in time, well before we ever spoke about neuroethics per se (although Ron Cranford had been using the term neuroethics for years in the clinical context of end of life and neurological care [1989]), there were heroes who were practicing a form of clinical neuroethics in their own way. The Montreal-born physician Lucille Teasdale Corti, for example, was one of ten women among the 110 students enrolled at the University of Montreal’s Faculty of Medicine in 1950. Dr. Teasdale dedicated herself to a career of career of surgical care and training in sub-Sahara, Africa. In 1982, in the course of an operation in the AIDS-plagued region, this Canadian great contracted and eventually succumbed to the disease. Imagine the diversity and extent of CNS-related co-morbidities she saw and treated. 

What are some key attributes of these and other extraordinary women? Creativity, foresight, vigor, patience and resilience. Let me describe how I see the importance of these attributes in the neuroethics leaders of the future: 

Creativity: We need to think about what lies beyond Western lands and the principles that come from them, such as consent, autonomy, and justice. Too narrowly construed, they will not suffice as new technology is continuously integrated into our daily life and, in some cases, overtaking it. Gender, ethnicity, and culture are also taking on ever greater importance in how we think about health, therapy, self-improvement, and self-preservation. Fundamentalism is on the rise again. Creativity is needed to ensure porous, respectful solutions to difficult ethics problems challenging brain health in the very definition of humanity. 

Foresight: Neuroscience is moving fast. Neuroethics has to move faster. We need not only to keep up but stay ahead of technological progress. Our strength is in the way we anticipate and positively address upcoming challenge. 

Vigor: The energy we have exerted to situate neuroethics firmly alongside neuroscience discovery and traditional bioethics inquiry has served well to give us credibility and visibility. I do not think sustainability is a risk any longer, but complacency is our enemy. I read this 1950s quote from Dr. Teasdale during a recent visit to the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba: “If you are convinced by what you are doing, if you truly believe in it, then you stay. There is no other way.” 

Patience and resilience: Our world is inundated with violations of fairness. We do not see this in neuroethics per se, but discrimination and inequity are ubiquitous in the academy and industry in which neuroethics resides. Change will not come overnight; continued efforts to undo historical trends come with patience, and with patience comes resilience. 

Let’s embrace these attributes and pursue neuroethics careers that are, as neuroscientist Nobelist Dr. Rita Levi Montalcini said in an interview: "…enriched by excellent human relations, work and interests.” (“Rita Levi-Montalcini, pioneering Italian biologist, dies at 103". The Guardian. 20 December 2012. Retrieved 29 November 2016.) 

Let’s make the next 15 years of neuroethics even better than the first. 

References 

Churchland PS, Roy, DJ, Wynne, BE, Old RW. (Eds.) (1991) Our Brains, Our Selves - Reflections on Neuroethical Questions, Bioscience-society, John-Wiley and Sons, 177-196. 

Cranford, R.E. The Neurologist as Ethics Consultant and as a Member of the Institutional Ethics Committee. (!989). The neuroethicist. Neurologic Clinics, 7:4,697-713 

Haak, L.L. Women in Neuroscience (WIN): The First Twenty Years. (2002) Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 11:1,70-79. 

Kreitmair, K. The Seven Requirements for Ethical Consumer Neurotechnologies. (2017) INS Annual Meeting, November 10-11, 2017, Washington, DC. 

Pontius, A.A. (1993) Neuroethics vs Neurophysiologically and Neuropsychologically Uninformed Influences in Child-rearing and Education. Psychol. Rep. 72, 451–458

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Illes, J. (2018). Neuroethics Women to Watch. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/01/neuroethics-women-to-watch.html

Happy 15th Birthday, Neuroethics!

By Henry T. Greely

Henry T. (Hank) Greely is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and Professor, by courtesy, of Genetics at Stanford University. He specializes in ethical, legal, and social issues arising from advances in the biosciences, particularly from genetics, neuroscience, and human stem cell research. He directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program on Neuroscience in Society; chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research; is the President Elect of the International Neuroethics Society; and serves on the Neuroscience Forum of the National Academy of Medicine; the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academy of Sciences; and the NIH Multi-Council Working Group on the BRAIN Initiative. He was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007. His book, THE END OF SEX AND THE FUTURE OF HUMAN REPRODUCTION, was published in May 2016. 

Professor Greely graduated from Stanford in 1974 and from Yale Law School in 1977. He served as a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court. After working during the Carter Administration in the Departments of Defense and Energy, he entered private law practice in Los Angeles in 1981. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1985. 

Fifteen years ago, on May 13, 2002, a two-day conference called “Neuroethics: Mapping the Field” began at the Presidio in San Francisco. And modern neuroethics was born. That conference was the first meeting to bring together a wide range of people who were, or would soon be, writing in “neuroethics;” it gave the new field substantial publicity; and, perhaps most importantly, it gave it a catchy name. 

That birthdate could, of course, be debated. In his introduction to the proceedings of that conference, William Safire, a long-time columnist for the NEW YORK TIMES (among other things), gave neuroethics a longer history: 

The first conference or meeting on this general subject was held back in the summer of 1816 in a cottage on Lake Geneva. Present were a couple of world-class poets, their mistresses, and their doctor. (Marcus) 

Safire referred to the summer holiday of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley; Byron’s sometime mistress, Claire Clairmont; and Shelley’s then-mistress, later wife, known at the time as Mary Godwin and now remembered as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. The historically cold and wet summer of 1816 (“the year without a summer”) led them to try writing ghost stories. Godwin succeeded brilliantly; her story eventually was published in 1818 as FRANKENSTEIN: OR, THE NEW PROMETHEUS.

Camillo Golgi, image courtesy of

Wikipedia.

Safire’s arresting opening gives neuroethics either too little history or too much. If, like Safire, one allows neuroethics to predate an understanding of the importance of the brain, early human literature – both religious and secular – show a keen interest in human desires and motivations. So does philosophy, since at least classical Greece. But without a recognition of a critical role of the physical brain in human behavior and consciousness, I do not think those discussions should be called “neuroethics,” though they are its precursors. 

It was not until the late 19th century that we saw the beginnings of deeper understanding of not only the role of the brain but of how it might function, notably through the (dueling) work of Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Al Jonsen has noted that many twentieth century issues and events posed issues we would today consider “neuroethics.” (Johnson) The issues seemed particularly intense in the 1960s and early 1970s, with active debates ranging from the uses of electroconvulsive therapy and frontal lobotomies; to legal and medical uses of brain death; to research with psychedelic drugs, aversion therapy, and “mind control.” 

But the nascent field calmed down again, until the rise of good neuroimaging in the 1990s, largely through magnetic resonance imaging, first structural and then functional. These took major steps toward connecting the physical brain to the intangible mind and thus linking neuroscience more directly to human society. People began to write about them for both specialized and general audiences. (Kulynych 1996, Kulynych 1997, Carter 1998, Blank 1999). And academics noticed. In 2000, based on planning begun by Paul Root Wolpe in 1998, the Bioethics Center at the University of Pennsylvania held three experts’ meetings, the first in January, the second in March, and the third in June. 

In retrospect, though, 2002 was clearly the crucial year for neuroethics. It started in January when the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the journal Neuron jointly sponsored a symposium, was called “Understanding the Neural Basis of Complex Behaviors: The Implications for Science and Society.” Then, on February 7, 2002, Penn Bioethics held a public conference on “Bioethics and the Cognitive Neuroscience Revolution” as the culmination of its three meetings in 2000. 

But the most important meeting was held on May 13 and 14 at the San Francisco Presidio. Sponsored by the Dana Foundation and jointly hosted by UCSF and Stanford, this conference, called “Neuroethics: Mapping the Field,” brought together about 150 neuroscientists, philosophers, bioethicists, lawyers, and others. The Dana Press published the conference proceedings later in 2002; the book was fascinating reading then, and remains so today. 

Santiago Ramon y Cajal, image

courtesy of Wikipedia.

Zach Hall of UCSF and Barbara Koenig of Stanford were the main organizers of the meeting. Hall was a neuroscientist, who had returned to the UCSF faculty after serving as Director of the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke at NIH. Koenig was the Executive Director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics (SCBE). Koenig, a bioethicist who did not then have a deep background in neuroscience, was assisted by others at SCBE, notably Judy Illes, a neuroscience Ph.D. who had recently joined the Center. 

Hall, mainly from the neuroscience side, and Koenig, mainly from the bioethics side, organized the meeting but William Safire was its prime mover. Safire was one of the most interesting people I have ever met. (McFadden) He dropped out of Syracuse University after two years and boasted to me – probably accurately – that he was the last person in American politics to be a college dropout. From 1955 until 1968 he worked in public relations firms, his own after 1961, with occasional time out to work on Republican political campaigns. In 1968 he joined the transition team and then the Nixon White House as a special assistant with a focus on speech writing, coining, among other phrases, “the nattering nabobs of negativism” for a speech by Vice President Agnew. He left the Nixon Administration to become a political columnist for the New York Times, which he did until 2005. He remained with the Times, however, continuing to write the “On Language” column he started in the New York Times magazine in 1979 until shortly before his death from pancreatic cancer in September 2009. 

Safire’s New York Times obituary makes no mention of neuroscience or neuroethics, but his involvement was quite real. In 1993 he became a member of the Board of Directors of the Dana Foundation, a private charitable foundation created in the 1950 by Charles A. Dana, a lawyer and businessman; in 1998 he became its vice chairman and then in 2000 its chairman. As chairman Safire made neuroscience the Foundation’s almost exclusive focus. 

Hall’s welcome to start the Conference, as published in the conference proceedings, explains Safire’s role in it: 

This meeting had its genesis in a visit to San Francisco by Bill Safire about a year and a half ago, I took Bill down to the new Mission Bay campus at UCSF and we were talking about all the brain research that would be going on there, I said that we also hoped to have a bioethics center. As we were talking about the need for discussion of these issues with respect to the brain, Bill suddenly turned to me and said, neuroethics. It was like that magic moment – “plastics” in the movie The Graduate. Bill said, “neuroethics,” and I thought, “that’s it.” (Marcus) 

William Safire. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia.)

The conference had four sessions, each with a moderator and three or four speakers, several mealtime speeches, and a concluding section. The sessions were called Brain Science and Self, Brain Science and Social Policy, Ethics and the Practice of Brain Science, and Brain Science and Public Discourse. (In retrospect, and in light of my preferred scope for the field, “Brain Science” would have been a better, broader term than “Neuroscience,” but “neuroethics” and “neurolaw” both sound much better than “brain science ethics” or “brain science law.”) 

The speakers and moderators came from both neuroscience and ethics (broadly construed). Many of them were prominent at the time of the conference; many played important continuing roles in the development of neuroethics. From neuroscience came Marilyn Albert, Colin Blakemore, Antonio Damasio, Michael Gazzaniga, Steven Hyman, William Mobley, Daniel Schacter, and Kenneth Schaffner, as well as Zach Hall. Arthur Caplan, Judy Illes, Albert Jonsen, Barbara Koenig, Bernard Lo, Jonathan Moreno, Erik Parens, William Safire, William Winslade, Paul Root Wolpe, and I all spoke from ethics, law, politics, or philosophy. And at least three speakers did not fit neatly into that divide – Patricia Smith Churchland, a philosopher of the mind deeply involved in neuroscience; Donald Kennedy, a biologist and former president of Stanford who, at that time, was the editor of Science magazine; and Ron Kotulak, a science journalist. 

Like many conferences, this one claimed to want more discussion than presentations. My recollection, supported by the conference proceedings, is that, unlike most conferences, it succeeded in this goal. The general discussions between and among the speakers and the invited audience were insightful, and sometimes heated. 

Also like many conferences, this one was created in the hope that it would have some lasting impact. The most immediate consequence was the publication, with impressive speed, of the conference proceedings in July 2002, but perhaps more important was the publicity given to the idea of neuroethics. 

Two days after the conference ended, Safire used his NEW YORK TIMES column to write about

neuroethics generally and the conference. After starting the column with the Congressional debate over banning human cloning, Safire moved to the importance of neuroethics, ending with “The conference 'mapping the field' of neuroethics this week showed how eager many scientists are to grapple with the moral consequences of their research. It's up to schools and media and Congress to put it high on the public's menu.” (Safire) 

(Image courtesy of Flickr.)

The following week, the cover of THE ECONOMIST proclaimed “The Future of Mind Control” with an image of a shaved head with a dial implanted in its forehead. The issue contained both a long science story on the ethical issues arising from neuroscience and a leader (editorial) on the same subject. (The Economist) While neither ECONOMIST piece used the term “neuroethics” or mentioned the Presidio conference (and the story at least must have been in preparation well before the conference), the effect, especially in conjunction with Safire’s column, was more attention for the issues. 

But perhaps the most important result of the Presidio conference was the field’s name. Safire first used it in print in his May 2002 column, but, according to Hall, had used it with him about 18 months earlier. Although searchers have found earlier uses of the term (Illes, Racine), no one disputes that Safire was the first to use it publicly in its current sense or that he was the one who popularized it. 

It is, in some ways, a poor name for the field. Calling the area “neuroethics” risks limiting it. After all, much of the interest in ‘neuroethics” is in its legal and social implications, not just its “ethical” ones. And using “ethics” also raises a longstanding difficulty between philosophers who sometimes act as though they own the term, and bioethics. I made these arguments at the Presidio conference, but, even as I did so, conceded “I’m afraid this is a doomed argument because I don’t have a better word. ‘Neuroethics’ sounds great.” (Marcus) 

On that point at least, I was right. So tonight I’ll raise a glass to “neuroethics” and wish it “Happy birthday, and many happy returns!” And I hope the readers of this blog will join me. 

References



Rita Carter, MAPPING THE MIND (1998, Berkeley, CA: U. Calif. Press).



Robert H. Blank, BRAIN POLICY: HOW THE NEW NEUROSCIENCE WILL CHANGE OUR BRAINS AND OUR POLITICS (1999, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press)



The Ethics of Brain Science: Open Your Mind, THE ECONOMIST (May 23, 2002), accessed on Apr. 29, 2017 at http://www.economist.com/node/1143317.



The Future of Mind Control, THE ECONOMIST, (May 23, 2002), accessed on Apr. 29, 2017 at http://www.economist.com/node/1143583.



Judy Illes, Neuroethics in a New Era of Neuroimaging, 24 Am. J. Neurorad. 1739 (2003)



Albert R. Jonsen, Nudging toward Neuroethics: An Overview of the History and Foundations of Neuroethics in THE DEBATE ABOUT NEUROETHICS: PERSPECTIVES ON THE FIELD’S DEVELOPMENT, FOCUS, AND FUTURE (ed. Eric Racine and John Aspler, forthcoming 2017, Springer:)



Jennifer Kulynych, Brain, Mind, and Criminal Behavior: Neuroimages as Scientific Evidence, JURIMETRICS 235-244 (1996) 



Jennifer Kulynych, Psychiatric Neuroimaging Evidence: A High-Tech Crystal Ball? 49 STAN. L. REV. 1249 (1997)



Steven J. Marcus, ed., NEUROETHICS: MAPPING THE FIELD, Conference Proceedings at 4 (2002, Dana Press: New York).



Robert D. McFadden, William Safire, Political Columnist and Oracle of Language, Dies at 79, New York Times (Sept. 27, 2009), accessed on January 1, 2017 at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/us/28safire.html. (This is my source for most of the biographical information about Safire.)



Eric Racine, in PRAGMATIC NEUROETHICS (2010 MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass)



William Safire, the “But What If” Factor, NEW YORK TIMES (May 16, 2002), accessed on Apr 29, 2017 at http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/16/opinion/the-but-what-if-factor.html.





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Greely, H. (2017). Happy 15th Birthday, Neuroethics! The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2017/05/happy-15th-birthday-neuroethics.html