Who will guard the guardians of neuroscience?

Brain science is big. With the help of politicians, neuroscientists and the media, the brain has captured the public imagination. In late 2006 and early 2007, readers of The New York Times learned the difference between a “tightwad’s brain” and a “spendthrift’s brain” or how our “neurological circuits stop [us] from buying a George Foreman grill but not a Discovery Channel colour-changing mood clock” (Tierney, 2007); the link between addictive behaviour and a part of the brain known as the insula (Carey, 2007); and how “mirror neurons”—a sort of “neural WiFi” that alters our physiology by tracking the emotional flow, movement and intentions of the people around us—can promote healing (Goleman, 2006). The brain is now seen as the seat of our being, the centre of the self, our secular soul, the source of our conscience and our consciousness. Bioethicists have monitored this interest in the brain and are now parsing important ethical questions brought about by neuroscience. What are the implications of neuroscience for notions of the self, agency and responsibility? How will/should neuroscience influence social policy? How will/should neuroscience be used in clinical settings? How will/should the findings of neuroscience be communicated to the public? (Illes & Bird, 2006; Marcus, 2002). Ethical concerns with aspects of neuroscience together with cultural ideas about the special importance of the brain— Roskies (2002) calls it “neuroessentialism”—have given us a new subspecialty in bioethics: neuro ethics. Now complete with its own professional association and journal, it joins two other fledgling specialty fields in bioethics: genethics and nanoethics. This partitioning into smaller, more focused specialties, although sociologically predictable, is not pleasing to all bioethicists. Several believe that bioethics—itself a relatively new profession—is not yet ready for a subdivision: “What remains to be demonstrated is the validity of [the] claim that advances in neuroscience require a wider perspective” (Knoppers, 2005) and “...it is not clear that the conceptual tools used to study ‘neuro ethics’ are really different than those generally used for the study of ethics” (Wilfond & Ravitsky, 2005).