From Neuroethicists are not saying enough about the problem of dual-use:
The minutes of many U.K. Ministry of Defense's secret committees' meetings held during the Cold War period are now available to the public in the National Archives. Thus, we know that one March day in 1959, the Chemistry Committee of the U.K.'s Advisory Council on Scientific Research and Technical Development met in London to discuss the possibilities for developing new chemical incapacitating weapons agents--including ones with neurological effects--something both the United Kingdom and its allies were trying to achieve. According to the minutes of the meeting, the technical experts were not optimistic. One of them, identified as Dr. Bowman, said the field was not particularly promising given what was known from the large amount of work done by pharmaceutical firms working on cures for mental illnesses. Following this, the minutes of the meeting state that :"...THE CHAIRMAN, however, emphasised that the Committee was looking for [an] agent which would produce, not cure, psychoses; we might succeed by modifying the curative agents..." The Chairman, therefore, held a very modern view of dual-use in which civil science could produce materials, technologies, and knowledge that might be misused later by those with hostile intent--not the usual Cold War view, in which military research produced civilian spin-offs, such as the Internet.
To be sure, the current concern about dual-use both recognizes this possible role of civilian institutions generally and also extends this concern specifically to substances with neurological effects. The second recommendation of the 2006 U.S. National Academies report entitled “Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences”--often called the Lemon-Relman report--states: "Adopt a broadened awareness of threats beyond the classical 'select agents' and other pathogenic organisms and toxins, so as to include, for example, approaches for disrupting host homeostatic systems..." Homeostatic systems include the chemical neurotransmitters and neuromodulators that regulate the human nervous system.
Since the end of the Cold War, we also have seen the rise of a new sub-division of bioethics: neuroethics. Neuroethics is concerned with both philosophical issues about the relationship between brain and mind and practical issues about the impact of our growing ability to understand and manipulate the brain upon society. It is therefore of some interest to discover what this comparatively recent field of study has to say about the problem of dual-use.
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Yet, in regard to the question of dual-use the advances in neuroscience have already seen application in the Russian use of some form of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller, as a novel incapacitating chemical agent to break the 2002 Moscow theater siege. Moreover, Russia is unlikely to be the only state interested in the development of such new agents, given the changing nature of modern warfare. One can only hope that neuroethicists will begin to pay some attention to the clear and present danger that the hostile misuse of modern neuroscience could lead to the erosion of the prohibition of chemical weapons embodied in the Chemical Weapons Convention and make a valuable contribution to the discussion of this problem in the run up to the 3rd Five Year Review Conference of the convention in 2013. For example, the peaceful purpose defined in Article II.9 (d) as “Law enforcement including domestic riot control purposes” could be read to mean that ordinary domestic riot control agents are a sub-category of a larger group of chemical agents that can be used legally. ...
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