journal of cognitive liberties · administration of mind-changing drugs)1, should be a wake-up call...

JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE LIBERTIES

Sharon O’Toole Dubois, M.A.Editor-in-Chief

Heidi LyppsManaging Editor

BOARD OF ADVISORS

JOHN PERRY BARLOW is co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and is currently a Fellow atHarvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

RAM DASS is the author of eight books and the founder of the Hanuman and Seva Foundations. His 1971classic BE HERE NOW was an international best-seller.

RICK DOBLIN, PH.D., is currently President of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies(MAPS).

ALEX GREY is a visionary artist whose artwork has been exhibited worldwide. He is the author of the bookSACRED MIRRORS: THE VISIONARY ART OF ALEX GREY, and THE MISSION OF ART.

LESTER GRINSPOON, M.D., is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He is theeditor of the HARVARD MENTAL HEALTH LETTER, and author of the book MARIJUANA RECONSIDEREDand co-author of PSYCHEDELICS RECONSIDERED.

LAURA HUXLEY is the founder of Children: Our Ultimate Investment, and the author of several booksamong which are YOU ARE NOT THE TARGET, and THIS TIMELESS MOMENT: A PERSONAL VIEW OFALDOUS HUXLEY.

RALPH METZNER, PH.D., is a psychotherapist and president of the Green Earth Foundation. His mostrecent book is AYAHUASCA—HALLUCINOGENS, CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE SPIRIT OF NATURE.

JONATHAN OTT is a natural products chemist and entheobotanist. His books include PHARMACOTHEON,AYAHUASCA ANALOGUES, and PHARMACOPHILIA.

DALE PENDELL is a poet, software engineer, and longtime student of Ethnobotany. He is the author ofseveral books, including his newest book PHARMAKO/DYNAMIS—STIMULATING PLANTS, POTIONS ANDHERBCRAFT.

SADIE PLANT, PH.D., is a writer. Her recent books include ZEROS + ONES: DIGITAL WOMEN AND THENEW TECHNOCULTURE and WRITING ON DRUGS.

DAVID PRESTI, PH.D., teaches Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for manyyears as a clinician in the treatment of drug abuse at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco.

DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF analyzes the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influenceeach other's values. He is the author of eight bestselling books on new media and popular culture, includingCYBERIA, MEDIA VIRUS, PLAYING THE FUTURE, COERCION: WHY WE LISTEN TO WHAT "THEY" SAY,and the novels ECSTASY CLUB, and EXIT STRATEGY.

ALEXANDER T. SHULGIN, PH.D., chemist, researcher, and author, has synthesized, and evaluated inhimself, over 200 novel psychedelic substances. He has published numerous scientific papers on hisdiscoveries, and with his wife, Ann, has authored the books PIHKAL and TIHKAL.

MYRON STOLAROFF, M.A., is the author of the books THE SECRET CHIEF and THANATOS TO EROS:35 YEARS OF PSYCHEDELIC EXPLORATION. He is on the Board of Directors of the Albert HofmannFoundation, and is past-President of the International Foundation for Advanced Study (IFAS).

THOMAS SZASZ, M.D., is professor emeritus of psychiatry at the State University of New York HealthScience Center, Syracuse. He is the author of dozens of books, including IDEOLOGY AND INSANITY, THEMYTH OF MENTAL ILLNESS, and OUR RIGHT TO DRUGS.

Published three times a year by the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.

Richard Glen Boire, J.D.Director & Arranger

volume 4, no. 1, 2003

03 Front Matter

07 Notes from the Director: Mind MattersRichard Glen Boire

CONCEPTS:

15 On Cognitive Liberty, Part IVRichard Glen Boire

25 Comments to the President’s Council on BioethicsWrye Sententia

41 Canada’s Principled Drug PolicyJulie Ruiz-Sierra

45 Coming Convergence: Technologies for ImprovingHuman PerformanceWrye Sententia

CONTROL:

55 Excerpts from US Patent #3,951,134; Brain WaveMonitoring and Altering ApparatusRobert G. Malech

63 CONTEXT: Cognitive Liberty News

CONSUME:

75 Book Review: Breaking Open the HeadMark Pesce

81 Book Review: The Road of ExcessHeidi Lypps

91 CONFER: Conference Calendar

98 CONTRIBUTE

Publication, Distribution, Copyright, Submissions& Disclaimer

The Journal of Cognitive Liberties is a scholarly forum for expressingthoughts on the importance of cognitive freedom, and for discussing thepolitics, policy, and prospects of integrating and protecting full-spectrumthinking in a modern society.

We invite your correspondence and submissions on all topics related tocognitive liberty. Please format all submissions according to the University ofChicago Press Manual of Style. A detailed Call for Papers can be readonline at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/journal.html. Please address allcorrespondence to the Journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Sharon O’Toole Dubois,Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, Post Office Box 73481, Davis, CA95617-3481.

Articles in the Journal are indexed in the Index ofPeriodical Articles Related to Law, published by theUniversity of Texas at Austin, School of Law.

The Journal of Cognitive Liberties is a publication ofthe Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics, anonprofit law and policy center. In addition tosupporting our work, members of the CCLE receivea three issue subscription to the Journal. Please seethe information in the back of this issue for information on joining the CCLE.Institutional subscriptions are $65 within the USA and $80 internationally.Subscriber and membership information is strictly confidential. Your namewill not be sold or given away.

The Journal of Cognitive Liberties is not engaged in rendering legal or otherprofessional advice, and assumes no such responsibility. The informationherein is subject to change without notice and is not intended to be, norshould it be considered, a substitute for individualized legal advice renderedby a competent attorney.

The Journal of Cognitive Liberties is copyrighted, however, permission ishereby granted to photocopy items for personal or educational use.Reproduction for profit is strictly forbidden. Please contact the editor if youare interested in reprinting an article.

© 2003 Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.All rights reserved worldwide. ISSN 1527-3946.

CONTEN T

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 7

A note from the director

Mind MattersMind MattersMind MattersMind MattersMind Matters

Richard Glen Boire

What state of mind must a man have when deathcalls his name? This may sound “philosophical,”but a recent decision by the Eighth Circuit ad-

dressed this precise issue, concluding that a condemnedman may be forcibly injected with mind-altering drugs in aneffort to chemically induce a particular state of mind prior tohis execution.

In 1986, the US Supreme Court held that the EighthAmendment bars executing an “insane” person. (Ford v.Wainwright, (1986) 477 U.S. 399.) At the time, the decisionseemed reasonable and raised few eyebrows.

Richard Glen Boire is co-director and chief legal counsel of theCenter for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 9

MIND MATTERS

8 JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE LIBERTIES

RICHARD GLEN BOIRE

Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court observed that“[f]reedom to think is absolute of its own nature; the mosttyrannical government is powerless to control the inwardworkings of the mind.” (Jones v. Opelinka, (1942) 316 U.S.584, 618.) The Singleton decision shows how much thingshave changed. Along with new treatments for everythingfrom social anxiety to Alzheimer’s Disease, the 1990s “De-cade of the Brain” produced new mind-changing drugs thathave now found their way into the medical bag of the State’sExecutioner.

Yet, our justice system has been caught flatfooted. Op-erating on antiquated models of the brain, inherited Enlight-enment-era notions of “freedom of thought,” and infantilizinganti-drug mantras such as “Just Say No,” our thinking aboutdrugs and society is dangerously immature.

Just as drugs change the way we think, it is time for usto change the way we think about drugs. As a basic startingpoint, we should recognize that at the heart of freedom isthe right to think for ourselves, and thinking for ourselvesnecessarily includes the right to self-determine our own brainstates. Freedom of thought requires cognitive liberty.

Singleton, and cases like it (for example U.S. v. Sell,which is currently before the US Supreme Court, and in-volves a dentist seeking to resist the government’s forcibleadministration of mind-changing drugs)1, should be a wake-up call to legal scholars, ethicists, and the public at large.Sophisticated and sustainable policies with respect to psy-choactive drugs will not come from the politicians, nor fromthe police. But the courts can, and ought to, do better.

It is time to develop a jurisprudence of the mind; onethat takes account of the latest understandings of the brain,the advancing powers of psychopharmacology, and whichsituates these within our country’s tradition of embracing

In February, however, the Eighth Circuit (en banc) ruledthat the government may chemically induce “sanity” for thepurpose of executing an “insane” person. (Singleton v. Nor-ris, No. 00-1492, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 2198.)

Assuming that the man is set to die by lethal injection,this means that the government can inject him twice. First,with a psychoactive drug that will make him think a certainway; and second, with a lethal drug that will end his life.Ironically, both injections will bepreceded by the standard anti-bacterial alcohol swabbing com-mon to everything from a bloodtest to a flu shot.

The Eighth Circuit’s decisionin Singleton is but the tip of a fast-forming iceberg; one that ourculture is now colliding with. In aworld awash with psychoactivedrugs (both legal and illegal), andwith many more such drugs yetto be discovered or created, it isimperative that we quickly change our course. If we don’tact immediately, we will find some of our most-cherishedfreedoms waterlogged, rusted, and barnacled.

The absurdities entailed in the Singleton decision shouldbe a wake-up call to our justice system.

Drugs will increasingly provide new options for modulat-ing the chemistry of the brain, and thereby changing howwe think. Just as recent changes in technology are requir-ing a rewrite of longstanding laws concerning everythingfrom copyright to privacy, advancements in our understand-ing and ability to monitor and manipulate the brain now re-quire a more sophisticated examination of what we meanby freedom of thought, and what protections we give it.

Nothing is more private,more intimate, moreproperly within thesphere of eachindividual’s sovereigntythan the interiorenvironment of his orher own mind.


RICHARD GLEN BOIRE

individual freedom, self-determination, and limited govern-ment. Cognitive liberty is the human right most in need ofimmediate elaboration and defense. Nothing is more private,more intimate, more properly within the sphere of each indi-vidual’s sovereignty than the interior environment of his orher own mind and intellect. The right of a person to liberty,autonomy and privacy over his or her own intellect is situat-ed at the core of what it means to be a free person. Yet asthe law currently stands there is no explicit recognition of,let alone elaboration upon, a basic right to mental sover-eignty.

The “war on drugs” has taken a new turn. No longer is itjust an issue of the government telling you which drugs areoff-limits, it’s now also about which drugs the governmentcan force a person to take.

Welcome to the age of chemical coercion and cognitivecensorship.

Note

1. In 2002, the Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Dr. Sell, arguing that the forcedmedication would violate his First Amendment right to freedom ofthought. The court is expected to rule on the case in June 2003.Further information on the Sell v. US case is online at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/sell_index.htm

CONCEPTS

15 On Cognitive Liberty, Part IVRichard Glen Boire

25 Comments to the President’s Councilon Bioethics Concerning Mind EnhancingTechnologies and DrugsWrye Sententia

41 Canada’s Principled Drug PolicyJulie Ruiz-Sierra

45 Coming Convergence: Technologies forImproving Human PerformanceWrye Sententia

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 15

On Cognitive LibertyOn Cognitive LibertyOn Cognitive LibertyOn Cognitive LibertyOn Cognitive Liberty, (P, (P, (P, (P, (Part IV)art IV)art IV)art IV)art IV)John Stuart Mill and the Liberty of InebriationJohn Stuart Mill and the Liberty of InebriationJohn Stuart Mill and the Liberty of InebriationJohn Stuart Mill and the Liberty of InebriationJohn Stuart Mill and the Liberty of Inebriation

Richard Glen Boire

As an important nineteenth or twentieth century workon political and social theory, John Stuart Mill’s essayOn Liberty ([1859] 1975)1 is considered to be sec-

ond only to theCommunist Manifesto. Written in the midstof the growing political power of Christian temperance groupspushing for alcohol prohibition and speaking directly to theissue of the rights of individuals and the limits of authoritari-an control, On Liberty is a seminal antiprohibition text, whichassumes ever greater importance and relevance when con-sidered in the context of today’s $19 billion “war on drugs.”Drafted in the tumult of the first societal debates over alco-hol prohibition, Mill’s essay examines “the nature and limitsof the power which can be legitimately exercised by societyover the individual” (3) and is one of the earliest politicalstatements against drug prohibition as well as a vindicationof cognitive liberty.

Richard Glen Boire Richard Glen Boire Richard Glen Boire Richard Glen Boire Richard Glen Boire is the co-director and chief legal counsel ofthe Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.This essay was originallypublished in the Independent Review, Vol. 7 No.2, Fall 2002, pp. 253-258.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 17

ON COGNITIVE LIBERTY, PART IV


RICHARD GLEN BOIRE

person’s action to lie within a protected “region of humanliberty” (13). Encompassed within this domain of liberty is:

the inward domain of consciousness; demandingliberty of thought and feeling, absolute freedom ofopinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical orspeculative, scientific, moral, or theological...libertyof tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of ourlife to suit our own character; of doing as we like,subject to such consequences as may follow: with-out impediment from our fellow-creatures, so longas what we do does not harm them, even thoughthey should think our conduct foolish, perverse, orwrong. (13)

For Mill, a society that refuses to recognize and respectthis sphere of liberty is not a free society, and laws that in-vade this province are unjustifiable; freedom demands thisprotected domain. “The only freedom which deserves thename,” writes Mill, “is that of pursuing our own good in ourown way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others oftheirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it” (14).

Mill was quick to emphasize that these principles applyonly to adults. Children, while they are still under the care ofan adult, “must be protected against their own actions aswell as against external injury” (12), and it is therefore ap-propriate for society or the government to act paternalisti-cally toward them. Mill also acknowledges and repeatedlyunderscores that when a person’s behavior does directlyaffect other people, it is, by its very nature, social conductand thus becomes an appropriate object for social andgovernment control. The roots of alcohol prohibition grewout of Protestant Christianity. In 1832, James Teare, founderof the Preston General Temperance Society in England, was

On Liberty was published in 1859 but was penned in1855, only four years after the state of Maine enacted thefirst law in the United States prohibiting the sale of alcohol,an action that kicked off a wave of prohibition laws in the

country. By 1855, thirteen stateshad passed alcohol prohibitionlaws, and the American Temper-ance Society had long since shift-ed from a call for “temperance”to a demand for wholesale prohi-bition. In England, where Mill

wrote, the United Kingdom Alliance of Legislative Suppres-sion of the Sale of Intoxicating Liquors sprang up in 1853,and it used the Maine law as a model in pushing for alcoholprohibition in England. Thus, it is not surprising that Mill’sconsideration of the rights of individuals vis-à-vis society andthe government, forged in the midst of such heated socialcontroversy, would confront directly the important questionof cognitive liberty.

“The object of this Essay,” wrote Mill, “is to assert onevery simple principle...that the sole end for which mankindare warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering withthe liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection...that is to prevent harm to others” (10–11). Gov-ernment interference, wrote Mill, is appropriate only when aperson engages in conduct that threatens the interests ofothers. What happens inside a person’s body or mind is thatperson’s private business, not the business of society andcertainly not the business of the government. He expressedthis point unambiguously: “Over himself, over his own bodyand mind, the individual is sovereign” (11).

So long as a person’s decision and subsequent con-duct did not threaten others with harm, Mill considered the

“Over himself, over hisown body and mind, theindividual is sovereign.”

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 19



RICHARD GLEN BOIRE

affect the interests of other people, writes Mill, that personshould have “perfect freedom, legal and social, to do theaction and stand the consequences” (70).

Mill rejects challenges that assert that a person’s ac-tions inherently have some effect on society or that an actthat harms the individual also harms society. Mill respondsto these challenges on two levels. First, he acknowledgesthat if a person’s “self-regarding” conduct disables him fromperforming some public duty orproduces identifiable harm to an-other person, then that conductproperly cannot be considered“self-regarding,” and society maycontrol or punish the person. Us-ing alcohol intoxication as an ex-ample, Mill explains: “No personought to be punished simply forbeing drunk; but a soldier or a po-liceman should be punished forbeing drunk on duty. Whenever, inshort, there is a definite damage,or a definite risk of damage, eitherto an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of theprovince of liberty, and placed in that of morality or law”(76). To the extent that the “harm” to others from drinkingalcohol is amorphous or that the drinker violates no specificduty, Mill views the ancillary “harm” from the drinker’s ac-tion as an “inconvenience...which society can afford to bear,for the sake of the greater good of human freedom” (76).

In essence, Mill views the temperance challenge as em-bodying a Puritanical perspective that considers innumera-ble self-regarding actions to be morally wrong and thus

“there is hardly anypart of the legitimateform of action of ahuman being whichwould not admit ofbeing represented, andfairly too, asincreasing thefacilities for someform or other ofdelinquency.”

speaking for many temperance advocates of the time whenhe took the floor at a temperance meeting in Manchesterand declared all intoxicating liquor anathema to religiouspeople: “the sooner it is put out of this world, the better”.2

Not surprisingly, therefore, woven throughout On Liberty aresubtle and not so subtle jabs at both the timidity (“essentiallya doctrine of passive obedience,” (48)) and the coercive-ness of Christianity. Religion, says Mill, is an “engine of mor-al repression” (14), seeking “control over every departmentof human conduct” (14). In some of his harshest words, Milladmonishes:

Christian morality (so called) has all the charac-ters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protestagainst Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather thanpositive; passive rather than active; Innocencerather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rath-er than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts(as has been well said) “thou shalt not” predomi-nates unduly over “thou shalt.” In its horror of sen-suality, it made an idol of asceticism, which hasbeen gradually compromised away into one of le-gality. (47–48)

Mill’s most fundamental objection to the Christianity ofthe mid–nineteenth century was to its complete capitulationto authority, coupled with its all-encompassing dogmatismand a singular way of conceiving of the world; these lattertraits, Mill believed, often led Christians to suppress eccen-tricity, individuality, original thought, and simple pleasures.

On Liberty champions responsible alcohol inebriationas a private pleasure, which the government has no author-ity to interfere with as long as the drinker is not harminganother person. Provided that a person’s conduct does not

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sale is in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition oftheir use. And though the impracticability ofexecuting the law has caused its repeal in severalof the States which had adopted it...an attempthas notwithstanding been commenced, and is pros-ecuted with considerable zeal by many of the pro-fessed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar lawin this country. (82–83)

Mill acknowledges that selling alcohol is a social actbecause it inherently involves a buyer and a seller, but, ashe notes, the underlying aim of the laws that prohibit salesof alcohol is to squelch the use of alcohol. “The infringe-ment complained of is not on the liberty of the seller,” notesMill, “but on that of the buyer and consumer; since the statemight just as well forbid him to drink wine as purposely makeit impossible for him to obtain it” (83). Mill remarks that whena “trade law” has the effect of prohibiting a commodity, it isreally a prohibition law in disguise.

Similarly, Mill is skeptical of so-called sin taxes, whichartificially inflate the price of a product in order to discour-age its use. Such a tax, he explains, “is a prohibition, to thosewhose means do not come up to the augmented price; andto those who do, it is a penalty laid on them for gratifying aparticular taste” (93). A person’s “choice of pleasures,”writes Mill, ought to be each person’s “own concern, andmust rest with his own judgment” (93). Ultimately, however,Mill would permit a special tax on products such as alcohol,but only to the extent that the tax increased revenue for thegovernment. A “sin tax” would be inappropriate if set so highthat it actually dissuaded a sufficient number of buyers soas to result in a decrease in total tax revenues from sales ofthe product.

With respect to items that can be abused, such as “poi-sons,” Mill notes that “there is hardly any part of the legiti-mate form of action of a human being which would not

inherently injurious to the society. He rejects this position asreligious moralizing cloaked in claims for social policy. Asanexample, he quotes the secretary of the United KingdomAlliance for the Legislative Suppression of the Sale of Intox-icating Liquors, who wrote:

If anything invades my social rights, certainly thetraffic in strong drink does. It destroys my primaryright of security, by constantly creating and stimu-lating social disorder. It invades my right of equal-ity, by deriving a profit from the creation of a mis-ery I am taxed to support. It impedes my right tofree moral and intellectual development, by sur-rounding my path with dangers, and by weakeningand demoralizing society, from which I have a rightto claim mutual aid and intercourse. (83)

Mill calls the secretary’s definition of social rights a “mon-strous principle” (83) that, if accepted, would vitiate themeaning of liberty entirely: “there is no violation of libertywhich it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to anyfreedom whatever....The doctrine ascribes to all mankind avested interest in each other’s moral, intellectual, and evenphysical perfection, to be defined by each claimant accord-ing to his own standard” (84).

Although Mill is perfectly capable of presenting his argu-ment in theoretical terms, he turns his attention to what hecalls “gross usurpations upon the liberty of private life actu-ally practiced” (82) and without equivocation responds toefforts under way at that time to prohibit the drinking ofalcohol:

Under the name of preventing intemperance, thepeople of one English colony, and of nearly halfthe United States, have been interdicted by law-from making any use whatever of fermented drinks,except for medical purposes: for prohibition of their

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RICHARD GLEN BOIRE

On Liberty even considers whether the governmentproperly may regulate pubs where alcohol is served. In thisregard, Mill concludes that because such places are neces-sarily social and because public harms associated withdrunkenness are more likely to occur in or near such estab-lishments (at least relative to other public places), the gov-ernment may regulate them, setting closing times and re-stricting operating licenses to “persons of known or vouched-for respectability” (94). Any other restrictions, however, in-cluding setting a limit on how many pubs may exist in anygiven area, would be overreaching. Such a limit “for the ex-press purpose of rendering them more difficult of access,and diminishing the occasions of temptation, not only ex-poses all to an inconvenience...but is suited only to a state ofsociety in which the labouring classes are avowedly treatedas children or savages” (94).

On Liberty stands as a classic document in defense ofindividual freedom, as relevant and persuasive today as itwas in 1859. All elected officials, jurists, and public-policymakers should read On Liberty, along with the Bill of Rights.Whereas modern-day politicians, entranced by the “war ondrugs,” rapaciously violate “the inward domain of conscious-ness” (13) by imposing ever more drug prohibitions and plac-ing hundreds of thousands of citizens behind bars for drugoffenses, On Liberty powerfully avows that a governmentgrossly exceeds its legitimate power when it interferes withmatters of the mind and the interior condition of its citizenry.

Notes

1. Mill, John Stuart. [1859]1975. On Liberty. Edited by David Spitz.Toronto: W. W. Norton.

2. Inglis, Brian. 1975. The Forbidden Game: A Social History ofDrugs. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p.137.

admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing thefacilities for some form or other of delinquency” (89). Thus,if a person desires to purchase a poison, it is inappropriatefor the government to enjoin the purchase merely becausethe person might abuse the poison or use it to commit acrime. Instead, the laws should stop after requiring that drugsand poisons be labeled with cautionary statements. Mill doesnot believe that doctors shouldbe the gatekeepers to drugs,noting that “to require in allcases the certificate of a med-ical practitioner would make itsometimes impossible, alwaysexpensive, to obtain the articlefor legitimate uses” (90). Atmost, any adults who wish topurchase such an item may berequired to register their name, address, and an explanationof why they are purchasing a particular item.

Although Mill firmly believes it would be an illegitimateuse of power for the government to prohibit inebriation basedon a inchoate concern that an inebriated person might causeharm to others, he concedes that if an inebriated persondoes harm another person, then the government rightfullymay prohibit that person from becoming inebriated in thefuture. “Drunkenness,” Mill explains, “in ordinary cases, isnot a fit subject for legislative interference; but I should deemit perfectly legitimate that a person, who had once been con-victed of any act of violence to others under the influence ofdrink, should be placed under a special legal restriction,personal to himself; that if he were afterwards found drunk,he should be liable to a penalty...The making himself drunk,in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to oth-ers, is a crime against others” (90).

...a government grosslyexceeds its legitimatepower when itinterferes with mattersof the mind and theinterior condition ofits citizenry.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 2524 JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE LIBERTIES

Written Comments to theWritten Comments to theWritten Comments to theWritten Comments to theWritten Comments to thePresident’s Council on BioethicsPresident’s Council on BioethicsPresident’s Council on BioethicsPresident’s Council on BioethicsPresident’s Council on Bioethicson the Ton the Ton the Ton the Ton the Topic of Mind Enhancingopic of Mind Enhancingopic of Mind Enhancingopic of Mind Enhancingopic of Mind EnhancingTTTTTececececechnologies and Drugshnologies and Drugshnologies and Drugshnologies and Drugshnologies and Drugs

Wrye Sententia

Advances in bioscience and technology are raising a num-ber of ethical issues concerning manipulation of the humanbody & brain. The President’s Council on Bioethics was cre-ated by executive order (no. 13237) in November, 2001,for the purpose of advising the President on bioethical is-sues that may emerge as a consequence of progress inbiomedical science and technology. The Council is chargedwith keeping the President and the nationapprised of new developments, and providing a forum fordiscussion and evaluation of these profound issues. Begin-ning in the year 2002, 17 leading scientists, doctors,ethicists, social scientists, lawyers, and theologians namedby President George Bush to serve on this Council, began

Wrye Sententia is co-director of the Center for CognitiveLiberty & Ethics.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 27

COMMENTS TO PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL ON BIOETHICS


WRYE SENTENTIA

Constitution’s Bill of Rights both support a basic human rightto cognitive liberty, or freedom of thought.1 Yet “freedom” isthe sort of preeminent democratic value that is often thesubject of political hair-splicing and posturing. The complex-ity of our social fabric, (with its diversity of interests, identi-ties, and cultures), conspires to make any assignation oftranscendent value difficult, particularly when, as is the casewith bio- or neuroethics, the issues span such elementary,yet increasingly malleable values as individual and collec-tive quality of life. The CCLE recognizes, as does this Coun-cil, that the complexity of manyof the issues involving brain en-hancement are not easily resolv-able. However, we hope that byinterjecting the principle of cog-nitive liberty into the discussion,the Council will find useful dis-tinctions in drafting its recom-mendations.

To the CCLE and our supporters, the question of mindenhancement is fundamentally a question of cognitive self-determination interwoven with an ethics of reciprocal au-tonomy. While etymologically, autonomy means “establish-ing one’s own laws,” reciprocal autonomy is interactive. Re-ciprocal autonomy is not a question of arbitrary legislation,created for oneself, but rather of laws that permit, wheneverpossible, successful interaction with others based on respectand tolerance for each other’s core values and freedoms.As Dr. J.F. Malherbe, Professor of Social Work at the Univer-sité du Québec at Montréal, and author of The Contributionof Ethics in Defining Guiding Principles for a Public DrugPolicy, has written, “Every unjustified restriction, which addsto the already heavy burden of civilized individuals, can onlyincrease their sense of being the object of some form oftotalitarianism, rather than the subject of their own destiny.”2

The State cannot,consistent with theFirst Amendment of theConstitution, forciblymanipulate the mentalstates of individuals.

a series of discussions in Washington, D.C. that continuestoday (visit: http://www.bioethics.gov/).

The rapidly expanding purview of neuroscience and agrowing array of technologies capable of affecting or mon-itoring cognition carry implications for cognitive liberty thatdemand analysis. In October, 2002, CCLE co-director WryeSententia presented comments to the President’s Councilon Bioethics in Washington D.C. She raised cognitive liber-ty issues related to drugs and technologies of brain enhance-ment, a topic then under scrutiny by the Council. Thewritten comments she provided the Council follow. —Ed.

About the CCLE & Cognitive Liberty

The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE), is a non-profit education, law, and policy center working in the publicinterest to foster cognitive liberty. The CCLE defines cogni-tive liberty as the right of each individual to think indepen-dently and autonomously, to use the full spectrum of his orher mind, and to engage in multiple modes of thought. TheCCLE works to protect the full potential of the humanintellect.

The CCLE and Neuroethics

The CCLE’s comments before this Council center on thosepharmacological and technological interventions that directlyaffect the mind, and consequently implicatecognitive liberty. The CCLE is concerned with the ethics oftreating or manipulating the mind, or as some are now call-ing it, “neuroethics.” Our focus is on those uses of drugs orother technologies and their attendant social policies thatencroach upon individual rights to cognitive liberty and itslogical corollary, cognitive autonomy—two faces of the samecoin.

Cognitive liberty is an essential human right. The UnitedNations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the US

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WRYE SENTENTIA

1. As long as their behavior doesn’t endanger others,individuals should not be compelled against their will to usetechnologies that interact with the brain, or be forced to takecertain drugs.

The development of psychopharmaceuticals and electronictechnologies in use now, or, on the cusp of interfacing directlywith brain function, raises numerous cognitive liberty concerns.

The individual, not corporate or government interestsshould have sole jurisdiction over the control and/or modu-lation of his or her brain states andmental processes.3

While the development of psy-chopharmaceuticals can be applaud-ed for their potential to aid millions ofsuffering Americans who voluntarilytake them, the application of suchdrugs, in mandatory government con-texts raises the chillingly dark prospectof the government forcibly administer-ing these new drugs to chemically al-ter the way that certain people think.Likewise, while electronic technologiesthat interface with the brain have positive applications, is-sues of mental privacy and coercion come into play whencorporate or government policies mandate use.

One pressing concern of the CCLE is that of govern-ment-mandated drugging using psychotropic drugs.4 At leasttwo instances in the recent news suggest that this may besomething that the US government considers to be withinthe purview of its power. The first concerns a proposal dis-cussed by the FBI as a potential measure to administer mind-altering drugs to terrorist detainees (not those convicted ofterrorism, merely suspect detainees) in order to elicit infor-mation. Fortunately, torture—which includes the forced useof mind-altering drugs—is banned by international conven-

Pre-emptivecontrol ofthoughts by thegovernment viadrugs ortechnologiesshould be strictlyprohibited.

Decisions about as intimate a freedom as cognitive lib-erty should be allocated to the individual rather than the gov-ernment. The CCLE works from the premise that the role ofthe state, criminal law, science and ethics, should be guidedby principles that maximize opportunities for each individualto self-actualize. Public policy decisions should be framedby principles of legal liberalism, rather than moralism, or pa-ternalism. This is not to say that morals or safety precau-tions have no place in determining appropriate uses of drugsor other technologies, but that the role of the State shouldnot be to determine what is or isn’t moral, what are or arenot acceptable, personal, risks. In our opinion, public policyfor psychotropic drugs and/or brain technologies should stemfrom our democratic government’s responsibility for preserv-ing individual autonomy and choice to the maximum extentpossible.

While neuroethical issues are complex and often deeplyphilosophical, the CCLE maintains that a solid starting pointfor practical discussion and analysis begins with two funda-mental recognitions that may seem axiomatic:

1. As long as their behavior doesn’t endanger others,individuals should not be compelled against their will touse technologies that directly interact with the brain, orbe forced to take certain psychoactive drugs. 2. As long as they do not subsequently engage in behavior that harms others, individuals should not be prohibited from, or criminalized for, using new mind-enhancing drugs and technologies. Simply put, the right and freedom to control one’s own

consciousness and electrochemical thought processes, isthe necessary substrate for virtually every other freedom.I would now like to elaborate on the two principles men-tioned above:

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Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University), research wasundertaken to examine the viability of using psychopharma-ceutical agents, or “calmatives” as “non-lethal techniques”of military and civil intervention; listing, among other possi-ble applications, crowd control.7 Different environments, thereport explains, require tailored means of drug administra-tion: “In many cases the choice of administration route,whether application to drinking water, topical administrationto the skin, an aerosol spray inhalation route, or a drug-filledrubber bullet, among others, will depend on the environment.”8

Examples of environments include “a group of hungry refu-gees that are excited over the distribution of food and unwill-ing to wait patiently,” “a prison setting,” an “agitated popula-tion,” and “hostage situations.”9

As with emergent drugs, a number of electronic tech-nologies that interact with the brain could promise benefit orperil. Some applications of neurotechnologies, while still intheir infancy, are already being used to monitor thought pro-cesses for control measures. While something like transc-ranial magnetic stimulation, (technology which uses nonin-vasive magnets placed around the brain to alter electronicimpulses, and thereby enhance mood) may be valuable asa form of depression therapy, the prospect of its perfected,or future application to alter “improper” or dissident thinkingis daunting.10 The Human Brain Project, an internationallyorchestrated research project sponsored by the NationalInstitute of Mental Health, is seeking to, among other thingsprovide a blueprint of so-called “normal” brain activity.11 Frombrain scanning to brain implants, these kinds of technolo-gies draw attention to questions of mental privacy and shouldalert us to the real need for protections of mental autonomy.

Scientists are now using Functional Magnetic ResonanceImaging (fMRI), a brain imaging technique, to detect differ-ences in brain blood flow activity between intentionally de-ceptive and truthful statements.12 Similarly, what is being

tions to which the US is a party, and therefore is not yet anoption within the US (although there was some talk ofdeporting the suspects to countries where mind-druggingtorture would be allowed, an action which also violates USsignatory agreements).5

The second instance concerns a recent federal courtcase currently being considered by the US Supreme Court.6

In this case, the US government is seeking to forcibly injecta St. Louis dentist, Dr. Charles Sell with a mind-altering drugagainst his will for the purpose of making him “competent”to stand trial on fraud charges. The CCLE is an amicus cu-riae party to this case in support of Dr. Sell. While the gov-ernment may control the behavior of those in custody of theState, the Sell case concerns an explicitly declared non-dangerous pre-trial detainee and a government effort tochemically alter his thinking process. In the context of theever-increasing ability to pharmacologically intervene in theminds of Americans, the Dr. Sell case presents the SupremeCourt with the timely and extremely important opportunity toarticulate some unequivocal rules that respect freedom ofthought and cognitive liberty.

The State cannot, consistent with the First Amendmentof the Constitution, forcibly manipulate the mental states ofindividuals. Pre-emptive control of thoughts by the govern-

ment via drugs or technologiesshould be strictly prohibited.The US Joint Non-LethalWeapons Directorate (JNL-WD) is reportedly pursuing thedevelopment of neurochemi-cal weapons aimed at combat-ting unruly mental states that

may precede disruptive behaviors. In an October 2000 re-port prepared for the JNLWD by the Institute for EmergingDefense Technologies (a subunit of the Applied Research

We should policedangerous conduct, notdifferent thoughts.

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hancement.” Dr. Krauthammer pointed out the difficulty indistinguishing “enhancement” aided by new legal psy-chopharmaceuticals from the decades-long debates over“illicit” substances in the war on drugs.17 Distinguishing “rec-reational” use from mind-enhancement purposes appearsas fraught as attempts to distinguish therapeutic uses fromenhancement—one person’s mental recreation is another’sconsciousness tool for self-improvement. Under a liberaldemocracy, we must recognize that what goes on inside aperson’s head is entitled to privacy and autonomy. We shouldpolice dangerous conduct, not different thoughts. We mustalso not confuse a possibility of personal risk with socialharm. Indeed, the CCLE would assert that making peoplecriminals simply for using a particular psychoactive drug vi-olates the fundamental right to cognitive liberty, overstepsthe government’s legitimate powers, and, further, has beenineffective in eradicating illicit drug use, while erodingcitizen’s confidence in government information about drugs.18

Despite the lessons that should have been learned afterthe failure of alcohol prohibition, the US government is cur-rently leading an international war on drugs, budgeting in2002 roughly 19 billion dollars to police the criminal lawsaimed at prohibiting the use of illegal drugs. Inasmuch asthis is a real and present instance of government policy withrespect to mind-altering drugs, the CCLE believes it pre-sents a glaring example of a failed policy—one that this Coun-cil should guard against repeating, or using as precedent,for crafting future policies with respect to mind enhance-ment.

CCLE Recommendations

The CCLE suggests that a declarative statement of the indi-vidual’s right to self-determination over his or her mentalstates incorporated in the language of national policy direc-

called “Brain Fingerprinting,” (a method currently debatedin terms of its efficacy) uses electroencephalographic (EEG)recordings of a subject’s brain waves in relation to his or hermemory of events, as an improved polygraph which claimsto distinguish person’s “guilty” thoughts. Proponents of “BrainFingerprinting” have been working on corporate and gov-ernment applications, including airport brain-scan securitychecks.13

These examples all underscore the need to set brightline rules that protect individuals from being compelled, orunwittingly subjected to mind-changing drugs or technolo-gies. Compelled use of (legal or illegal) psychotropic drugsor technologies should be considered abusive, and can bestrictly discouraged by drafting policies that respect the in-tegrity of an individual’s fundamental right to cognitive liberty.

2. As long as they do not subsequently engage in be-havior that harms others, individuals should not be prohibit-ed from, or criminalized for, using new mind-enhancing drugsand technologies.

For millennia, humans have used various plants and psy-choactive substances to occasion states of mind condu-cive to personal and interpersonal healing, spiritual or reli-gious states, philosophical exploration, or creativity boost-ing.14 Some researchers and scholars have concluded thatthe occasioning of alternative states of consciousness isnothing less than a fundamental human drive, akin to thesexual drive or the drive to sustain life.15 William James (1842-1910), one of America’s preeminent philosophical thinkerson the nature of consciousness, experimented with psycho-active drugs in his pursuit of knowledge, and gave philo-sophical credence to, the role of alternative states of con-sciousness in evolving conceptions of the self and society.16

This touches on a thorny issue raised by Dr. Krautham-mer in the Council’s inaugural meeting on the topic of “En-

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[“…freedom of thought…one may say…is the matrix, the indis-pensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom. Withrare aberrations a pervasive recognition of that truth can be tracedin our history, political and legal.”]

2. Ch. 3, Canadian Senate’s Special Committee on Illegal Drugs,“Final Report: Cannabis: Our Position For a Canadian Public Pol-icy” (September 2002). Report summary available online at: http://www. cognitiveliberty.org/pdf/Canadian_MJ_Rpt.pdf

3. The sale of Prozac™ and similar antidepressant drugs is current-ly one of the most profitable segments of the pharmaceutical drugindustry. According to IMS Health, a fifty-year-old company spe-cializing in pharmaceutical market intelligence and analyses, “an-tidepressants, the #3-ranked therapy class worldwide, experienced18 percent sales growth in 2000, to $13.4 billion or 4.2 percentof all audited global pharmaceutical sales.” (IMS Health, Antide-pressants, online at:http://www.imshealth.com/public/structure/nav-content/1,3272,1034-1034-0,00.html.) Sales of “antipsychotic”drugs are currently the eighth largest therapy class of drugs withworldwide sales of $6 billion in the year 2000, a 22 percent in-crease in sales over the previous year. (See IMS Health, Antipsy-chotics, a summary of which is available online at: http://www.imshealth.com/public/structure/navcontent/1,3272,1035-1035-0,00.html.) A report published by the Lewin Group in Janu-ary 2000, found that in 1998, antidepressants and antipsychoticsaccounted for 9 percent of Medicaid prescriptions. The same re-port found that within the Medicaid program alone, “Antidepres-sant prescriptions totaled 19 million in 1998…[and] [a]ntipsychoticprescriptions totaled 11 million in 1998.”(Lewin Group, Accessand Utilization of New Antidepressant and Antipsychotic Medica-tions (Jan. 2000), prepared under contract for the Office of HealthPolicy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evalua-tion, and The National Institute for Mental Health, Department ofHealth and Human Services. Available online at: http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/Psychmedaccess/; According to Datamonitor, “An-tidepressants have become a key focus for pharmaceutical manu-facturers due to the huge growth in the market instigated by thelaunch of Prozac™ in the 1980s. Due to their expansion into new

tives would deter abuses of power while still respecting indi-vidual choice.

Discrimination on the basis of what psychotropic drugsor technologies one does, or does not use should be strictlyprohibited. The wording of existing discrimination policiescould be adapted to incorporate a cognitive liberty clause,protecting against surreptitious technological or pharmaceu-tical interventions.

Additionally, “drug testing” as an employment screeningpolicy for the purposes of assessing one’s mental state, ratherthan one’s performance, should be curtailed.

Again, the CCLE maintains that a solid starting point forpractical discussion and analysis begins with these two fun-damental recognitions:

1. As long as their behavior doesn’t endanger others,individuals should not be compelled against their will touse technologies that directly interact with the brain, orbe forced to take certain drugs. 2. As long as they do not subsequently engage inbehavior that harms others, individuals should not beprohibited from, or criminalized for, using new mind-enhancing drugs and technologies. The CCLE respectfully urges that any regulatory

recommendations arrived at by the Council take these twoprinciples as bright-line rules.

Notes

1. UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 18: “Every-one has the right to freedom of thought…”; Abood v. Detroit Boardof Education, 431 US 209 (1977) [“[A]t the heart of the FirstAmendment, is the notion that an individual should be free to be-lieve as he will, and that in a free society one’s beliefs should beshaped by his mind and his conscience rather than coerced by theState...”]; Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 326-327 (1937)

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10. “Magnets That Move Moods,” Newsweek (June 24, 2002),p.57.

11. Human Brain Project, online at: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/neu-roinformatics/index.cfm. For an informative article on the HumanBrain Project, see Jennifer Kahn’s “Let’s Make Your Head Interac-tive,” Wired (9.08 August 2001) 106-115. Online at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.08/brain.html.

12. See, briefing paper from Society for Neuroscience on BrainWave Deception Research 2001; http://web.sfn.org/content/Pub-lications/BrainWaves/PastIssues/2002spring/index.html

13. On proponents pushing to use this technique as an anti-terror-ist screening device, see: Lawrence Farwell, “Brain Fingerprintingas Counter-Terrorist System.” http://www.brainwavescience.com/counter-terrorism; Steve Kirsch, “Identifying Terrorists Using BrainFingerprinting” http://www.skirsch.com/politics/plane/ultimate.htm.For two critiques of Brain Fingerprinting, see: Wrye Sententia,“Brain Fingerprinting: Databodies to Databrains” Journal of Cogni-tive Liberties, Vol. I I, No.3, pp 31-46 (online at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/6jcl/6JCL31.htm); US Government’s Gen-eral Accounting Office Report (Oct. 2001), “Federal Agency Viewson the Potential Application of ‘Brain Fingerprinting’” (online at:http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/issues/mental_ surveillance.htm#Reports).

14. P.T. Furst, Hallucinogens and Culture (Novato, CA: Chandler& Sharp, 1976); R.E. Shultes and A. Hofmann, Plants of the Gods:Origins of Hallucinogenic Use (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).

15. Ronald K. Siegel, Intoxication: Life in Pursuit of ArtificialParadise (New York: Dutton, 1989).

16. Dmitri Tymoczko, “William James the Nitrous Oxide Philoso-pher,” The Atlantic Monthly (May 1996; Volume 277, No. 5) pp.93-101. Online at: http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96may/ni-trous/nitrous.htm Additional references and resources available at:http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/proj_willjames.html

17. “But fundamentally, I am [sic] yet to see how our debate aboutenhancement and all the issues that we have raised differ from the

markets away from depression, the therapy class is now valued at$14bn and is set to continue expanding despite the upcomingpatent loss of numerous key products.” Datamonitor, Market Dy-namics 2001: Antidepressants, Report - DMHC1725 (Dec. 21,2001). Datamonitor forecasts that the demand for antidepressantswill continue to grow and estimates the market value to reach$18.3 billion by 2008. (Ibid).

4. The former Soviet Union had no First Amendment equivalent. Itwas not uncommon for prison psychiatrists to forcibly drug politi-cal dissidents after labeling them “mentally ill.” See, Sidney Bloch& Peter Reddaway, Psychiatric Terror: How Soviet Psychiatry IsUsed to Suppress Dissent (1977); Clarity, “A Freed Dissident SaysSoviet Doctors Sought to Break His Political Beliefs,” New YorkTimes (Feb 4, 1976) A1, 8.

5. Walter Pincus, “Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects PosesDilemma,”Washington Post, Sunday, October 21, 2001; For CCLEcommentary and resources, see: “Drugging or Torture of 9-11Suspects Breaks Constitution, Law, and Treaties”http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/news/narcointerrogation1.htm

6. United States v. Sell 282 F.3d560 (2002), US Supreme Court,No. 02-5664. Oral arguments in the case began Mar. 3rd, 2003.amicus curiae brief online at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/dll/sell_index.htm

7. Calmatives, are defined in this report as “compounds known todepress or inhibit the function of the central nervous system” withan emphasis on those drugs that “can be tailored to be highlyselective and specific for know receptor (protein) targets in thenervous system with unique profiles of biological effects on con-sciousness, motor activity and psychiatric impact.” Dr. Joan M. La-koski, Dr. W. Bosseau Murray, Dr. John M. Kenny, “The Advantagesand Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique,”University of Pennsylvania, (October 3, 2000) p. 2, 3. Online at:http://www.sunshine-project.org

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., p. 10.


WRYE SENTENTIA

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 39

debate that people have about whether or not people ought to beable to use stuff that makes them feel better, and whether thatshould be legal or not.” Charles Krauthammer, M.D. in President’sCouncil on Bioethics, Session 5: Enhancement 1: Therapy vs.Enhancement (April 26, 2002); Transcript available online at: http://www.bioethics.gov/april26full.html#five

18. According to the US government’s 2001 National HouseholdSurvey on Drug Abuse, 15.9 million Americans age 12 and olderused an illicit drug in the month immediately prior to the surveyinterview. This represents an estimated 7.1 percent of the popula-tion in 2001, compared to an estimated 6.3 percent the previousyear. Additionally, the Survey found that 1.9 million persons usedEcstasy (MDMA) for the first time last year, and that an estimated8.1 million persons have tried MDMA at least once in their life-time. In other findings the Household Survey found that: 1.3 mil-lion (0.6 percent) of the population aged 12 or older were currentusers of “hallucinogens,” meaning that they had used LSD, PCP,peyote, mescaline, mushrooms, or MDMA (Ecstasy) during themonth prior to the interview. Marijuana remains the most common-ly used illicit drug. Most drug users were employed. Of the 13.4million illicit drug users aged 18 or older in 2001, 10.2 million(76.4 percent) were employed either full or part time. An estimated66.5 million Americans 12 years or older reported current use of atobacco product in 2001. This number represents 29.5 percent ofthe population. Almost half of Americans aged 12 or older report-ed being current drinkers of alcohol in the 2001 survey (48.3percent). This translates to an estimated 109 million people. (Sub-stance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2002).Results from the 2001 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse:Summary of National Findings (Office of Applied Studies, NHSDASeries H-17, DHHS Publication No. SMA 02-3758). Rockville, MD.)Entire report available online at: http://www.samhsa.gov/oas/nhsda.htm#NHSDAinfo


Canada’s Principled Drug PolicyCanada’s Principled Drug PolicyCanada’s Principled Drug PolicyCanada’s Principled Drug PolicyCanada’s Principled Drug Policy

Julie Ruiz-Sierra

As the ever more costly US war on drugs redoubles its pa-ternalistic efforts to protect Americans from themselves, theCanadian government begins to see the merit of a drug policybased on allowing Canadians to decide for themselves.—Ed.

In March of 2001, the Canadian Senate Special Commit-tee on Illegal Drugs was formed and charged with the taskof examining the effectiveness of Canadian policies on Can-nabis. Composed of five senators, the committee was em-powered to call for expert witnesses, documentary evidence,and governmental records, and even to look to the policiesof other nations in accomplishing its task. After more than a

Julie Ruiz-Sierra is Associate legal counsel of the Center forCognitive Liberty & Ethics.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 43

CANADIAN SENATE REPORT ON CANNABIS


JULIE RU IZ-SIERRA

exchange of dialogue within the community.” Thus, the prop-er role of law is to promote freedom rather than control.Governance is not a matter of merely expressing rules andlimitations on behalf of and for the benefit of citizens, butought to be a means of facilitating human action and self-governance. Finding the imposition of criminal law toactions that do not concern an interaction between people,nor establish a particular victim, to be poorly justified, thecommittee concluded that only offenses involving significantdirect danger to others should be matters of criminal law.Finally, although the second part of the report places greatemphasis on research-based knowledge, the committee ac-knowledged that scientific inquiry cannot be divorced fromcontext and that while it must continue to inform the politicaldecision-making process, it must not supplant that process.

These considerations set the stage for a rigorous, com-prehensive inquiry into the evolving social context of druguse in Canada, that concludes four volumes later with thecommittee’s controversial recommendation that criminal reg-ulation of Cannabis be limited only to behavior that causesdemonstrable harm to others, namely: Illegal trafficking, sell-ing to minors, and driving while impaired. Ultimately, thereport is as remarkable for the process through which itsconclusions are reached as it is for the conclusionsthemselves, and serves as a striking example of what well-reasoned, justice-based drug policy might look like.

Notes

The entire report is available for download at:http://www.ukcia.org/research/CanadianPublicPolicy/default.html

A summary of Chapter 3, “Guiding Principles”, is availableonline via the CCLE Web site at: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/pdf/Canadian_MJ_Rpt.pdf

year of hearings, the committee reported its extensive find-ings and recommendations last September in a report enti-tled Cannabis: Our Position for a Canadian Policy.

The report is a model of informed and accountable pol-icy, structured on an abiding respect for individual rights thatreaders might find refreshing in a government publication.Reluctant to make policy recommendations based solely onpublic opinion or scientific evidence, both of which it deemedconstantly subject to interpretation and verification, the com-mittee took care to ground its work in guiding principles. Insharp contrast to the philosophical underpinnings of drugpolicy in the United States, the committee made the premiseunderlying its policy recommendations explicit in the report’sintroduction:

[I]n a free and democratic society, which recog-nizes fundamentally, but not exclusively the rule oflaw as the course of normative rules in which gov-ernment must promote autonomy as far as possi-ble and therefore make only sparing use of con-straint, public policy on psychoactive substancesmust be structured around guiding principles re-specting the life, health, security and rights andfreedoms of individuals, who naturally and legiti-mately, seek their own well-being and developmentand can recognize the presence, difference, andequality of others.

Chapter 3 of the report, where the committee clarifiedtheir conception of the appropriate roles that the state, crim-inal law, science, and ethics must play in the developmentof a public policy on Cannabis, is of particular interest. Thecommittee cites ethical considerations as an appropriatestarting point for defining desirable outcomes. An ethicalpublic policy on illegal drugs, and on Cannabis in particular,“must promote reciprocal autonomy built through constant


The Coming Convergence:The Coming Convergence:The Coming Convergence:The Coming Convergence:The Coming Convergence:TTTTTececececechnologies for Improvinghnologies for Improvinghnologies for Improvinghnologies for Improvinghnologies for ImprovingHuman PerformanceHuman PerformanceHuman PerformanceHuman PerformanceHuman PerformanceWrye Sententia

Wrye Sententia is the co-director of the Center forCognitive Liberty & Ethics.

While psychoactive plants and drugs have inspiredand catalyzed visionary experiences formillennia, and while 20th century chemists were

able to create promising and useful drugs graced with anumber of psychoactive properties, we are now entering aphase of human history where developments in molecularchemistry, biology, cognitive science and informatics will fa-cilitate large-scale advances in coordinated methods of mindenhancement and the manipulation of brain function.

Despite advances in biology, chemistry, and neuro-science, the mind remains largely a mystery. Nonetheless,in combination, a number of scientific advances make pos-sible new, increasingly precise neuropharmaceuticals andother brain technologies. Changing an individual’s way of

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 47

COMING CONVERGENCE


WRYE SENTENTIA

posed military applications like that of the “Aug Cog” supersoldier amped up with augmented cognition or pharmaceu-tical anti-fear drugs) the possibility of many of its proposedtechnological advances, soberly points to the real need forcogent ethical and legal guidelines to protect individual rightsin navigating these mounting waves of change.

How does NBIC convergence relate tocognitive liberty?

Cognitive liberty is neurological liberty, and NBIC conver-gence concerns brain/mind function in a number of existingand hoped-for applications. Cognitive liberty concerns theethics and legality of safeguarding one’s own thought pro-cesses, and by necessity, one’s electrochemical brain-mindstates. A number of key visionary ideas and projects putforth by the proponents of NBIC convergence point to excit-ing possibilities for cognitive enhancement, while other pro-posals suggest the possibility for more external, or surrepti-tious control of cognitive function.

More and more, new products in physical and mentalhealth (e.g. neural or cognitive prostheses, bioscience, neu-ropharmaceuticals); in cognitive potential (e.g. bioinformat-ics, neurology, psychiatry, pharmaceuticals); in proposedparallel life forms (e.g. nanotechnology, biochips, neural andinformation technologies) will define areas where NBIC con-vergence touches on issues of mental freedom and person-al liberties. A systemic control of matter must not equatewith a systemic control of minds.

Who is involved in NBIC Convergence?

The convergence of Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno-technologies iscurrently cast as the next phase in social evolution by a num-ber of experts and representatives in certain scientific fields.NBIC convergence has now, and increasingly gathers, pro-

thinking by changing his or her brain chemistry is the (brain)wave of the future.

What is NBIC convergence?

Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno (NBIC) convergence is about engi-neering matter for the purpose of improving human perfor-mance, and to some degree, engineering cultural change inthe process. Proponents of NBIC convergence anticipatethe coming unity of key systems of science: 1. Nanoscienceand nanotechnology; 2. Biotechnology and biomedicine; 3.Information technology; and, 4. Cognitive science. The com-bination of these fields inspired by the control of matter atthe nanoscale,1 will permit finer-tuned transformations ofthinking.

Information is transmitted in a number of ways andpassed along as units of meaning. Languages conduct mes-sages with letters and words; atoms and molecules encodebiological systems via DNA and cells, computer systemsrelay information digitally using bits, and human cognitivesystems communicate information with neurons, brains, andpeople. Even social systems rely on a transfer of encodedmeaning via “memes”—units of reproducible social mean-ing in an evolutionary culture.

The desired result of NBIC convergence is a generalunderstanding of how information is encoded and recodedinto each of these systems that will enable rapid advancesin improved human performance in both the public and pri-vate sectors.

NBIC convergence points to an important new phase inscientific research and development, but more broadly bea-cons to the pressing need to address social and human well-being in the context of these integrated technologies andengineered systems. Whether or not NBIC convergencerepresents another incarnation of technological utopianism,or neuro-Taylorism for the 21st century (particularly in pro-

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WRYE SENTENTIA

Many of the research projects, experiments, and trendsaddressed in the NBIC Convergence Report will likely havean impact on cognitive liberty. Contributor James S. Albusof the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is look-ing, no less, than for a convergent scientific theory that will“bring about the engineering of mind.”4 As the Report’s edi-tors from the NSF indicate, a principal goal is mastery ofmatter and as a consequence, mastery of our as yet un-charted brains:

“We stand at the threshold of a new renaissancein science and technology, based on a compre-hensive understanding of the structure and be-havior of matter from the nanoscale up to the mostcomplex system yet discovered, the human brain.”5

There are 5 major themes in the NBIC ConvergenceReport: Expanding human cognition and communication;Improving human health and physical capabilities; Enhanc-ing group and societal outcomes; National security; Unify-ing science and education. The first theme, more compre-hensively than the others, addresses scientific work aimedat understanding the structure, functions, and potential en-hancement of human cognition (for example, with “The Hu-man Cognome Project”). Other sections of the Report sim-ilarly focus on the study of cognitive processes overlappingwith NBIC science to develop individual, commercial, andmilitary applications, including; brain-to-brain and brain-to-machine interfaces, cognitive engineering, as well as bothdrug and non-drug treatments to enhance human perfor-mance.

Whether or not we can overcome the formidable chal-lenges to understanding the elusive mysteries of mind, 21st

century mechanist science points to an ever greater andmore comprehensive understanding of the brain’s electro-chemical processes and functional attributes that will bring

fessional endorsement among science, engineering andcomputing communities, as well as the growing attention ofgovernment, private companies, individuals, and policy or-ganizations like the nonprofit ETC Group, the Center forResponsible Nanotechnology, and the Center for CognitiveLiberty & Ethics.

This February, the University of California, at Los Ange-les hosted an important conference, “NBIC Convergence2003,” at which representatives from the world’s scientific,business, government, academic and nonprofit communi-ties gathered to discuss the possibilities and anticipateconsequences of NBIC technology integration. The Centerfor Cognitive Liberty & Ethics was a supporting organizationof this event.

In December 2001, the US government’s InteragencySubcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering andTechnology (NSET), the National Science Foundation (NSF)and the Department of Commerce (DOC) organized a work-shop to focus specialized attention on potential uses andtrends in NBIC convergence. The result of these meetingswas a published NSF/DOC sponsored report in whichpanel participants (leading experts from government, aca-demia, and the private sector), provided their professionalassessment and strategic conjectures as to the possibleimplementation of NBIC convergence. The 416-page gov-ernment report, “Converging Technologies for ImprovingHuman Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology,Information Technology and Cognitive Science” (hereafterNBIC Convergence Report),2 develops various aspects ofa collective vision for human enhancement. The participantswho prepared this report together assert the need for moreresearch and development in NBIC convergence, as wellas attention to “preserving fundamental values such as pri-vacy, safety and moral responsibility.”3


WRYE SENTENTIA

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 51

Notes

1. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. As currently understood,all matter, living and nonliving, originates at the nanoscale.

2. M.C. Roco and W.S. Bainbridge, “Converging Technologies forImproving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology,Information Technology and Cognitive Science,” NSF-DOC Re-port, Washington, D.C., June 2002, 416 pages (also forthcoming,Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, 2003). The full report is avail-able at: http://www.nsf.gov/nano

3. From Executive Summary of NBIC Report: “It is essential toprepare key organizations and societal activities for the changesmade possible by converging technologies. Activities that acceler-ate convergence to improve human performance must be enhanced,including focused research and development, increased techno-logical synergy from the nanoscale, developing of interfaces amongsciences and technologies, and a holistic approach to monitor theresultant societal evolution. The aim is to offer individuals andgroups an increased range of attractive choices while preservingfundamental values such as privacy, safety, and moral responsibil-ity,” p. 7.

4. James S. Albus, “Engineering of Mind to Enhance Productivity,”NBIC Report, p. 284. See also: Engineering of Mind: An Introduc-tion to the Science of Intelligent Systems (Albus and Meystel 2001)which outlines the research that its authors believe will eventuallyconverge in a scientific theory that can support and bring aboutthe engineering of intelligent systems and of mind.

5. Op. cit., “Overview,” M.C. Roco and W.S. Bainbridge, p. 1.

both conscious and unconscious mental processes underthe purview of human control. Readers interested in this areaare strongly encouraged to consult the full NBIC Conver-gence Report.

55 Excerpts from US Patent #3,951,134;Brain Wave Monitoring and AlteringApparatusRobert G. Malech

CONTROL

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 55

Excerpts from US Patent No.Excerpts from US Patent No.Excerpts from US Patent No.Excerpts from US Patent No.Excerpts from US Patent No.3,951,134: Apparatus and Method3,951,134: Apparatus and Method3,951,134: Apparatus and Method3,951,134: Apparatus and Method3,951,134: Apparatus and Methodfor Remotely Monitoring andfor Remotely Monitoring andfor Remotely Monitoring andfor Remotely Monitoring andfor Remotely Monitoring andAltering Brain WavesAltering Brain WavesAltering Brain WavesAltering Brain WavesAltering Brain Waves11111

Inventor: Robert G. Malech

Assignee: Dorne & Margolin Inc.

Date Granted: April 20, 1976

Abstract

Apparatus for and method of sensing brain waves at aposition remote from a subject whereby electromag-netic signals of different frequencies are simulta-

neously transmitted to the brain of the subject in which thesignals interfere with one another to yield a waveform whichis modulated by the subject’s brain waves. The interferencewaveform which is representative of the brain wave activityis retransmitted by the brain to a receiver where it is demod-ulated and amplified. The demodulated waveform is thendisplayed for visual viewing and routed to a computer for

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 57

US PATENT NO. 3, 951,134


R.G. MALECH

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to apparatus and a method formonitoring brain waves wherein all components of the ap-paratus employed are remote from the test subject. Morespecifically, high frequency transmitters are operated to ra-diate electromagnetic energy of different frequencies throughantennas which are capable of scanning the entire brain ofthe test subject or any desired region thereof. The signals ofdifferent frequencies penetrate the skull of the subject andimpinge upon the brain where they mix to yield an interfer-ence wave modulated by radiations from the brain’s naturalelectrical activity. The modulated interference wave is re-transmitted by the brain and received by an antenna at aremote station where it is demodulated, and processed toprovide a profile of the subject’s brain waves. In addition topassively monitoring his brain waves, the subject’s neuro-logical processes may be affected by transmitting to his brain,through a transmitter, compensating signals. The latter sig-nals can be derived from the received and processed brainwaves.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

Referring to the drawing, specifically Fig. 1, a high frequen-cy transmitter produces and supplies two electromagneticwave signals through suitable coupling means to an anten-na. The signals are directed by the antenna to the skull ofthe subject being examined. The two signals from the anten-na, which travel independently, penetrate the skull and im-pinge upon the tissue of the brain.

Within the tissue of the brain, the signals combine, muchin the manner of a conventional mixing process technique,

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Medical science has found brain waves to be a useful ba-rometer of organic functions. Measurements of electricalactivity in the brain have been instrumental in detecting phys-ical and psychic disorder, measuring stress, determiningsleep patterns, and monitoring body metabolism.

The present art for measurement of brain waves em-ploys electroencephalographs including probes with sen-sors which are attached to the skull of the subject understudy at points proximate to the regions of the brain beingmonitored. Electrical contact between the sensors and ap-paratus employed to process the detected brain waves ismaintained by a plurality of wires extending from the sen-sors to the apparatus. The necessity for physically attachingthe measuring apparatus to the subject imposes several lim-itations on the measurement process. The subject may ex-perience discomfort, particularly if the measurements are tobe made over extended periods of time. His bodily move-ments are restricted and he is generally confined to the im-mediate vicinity of the measuring apparatus. Furthermore,measurements cannot be made while the subject is con-scious without his awareness. The comprehensiveness ofthe measurements is also limited since the finite number ofprobes employed to monitor local regions of brain waveactivity do not permit observation of the total brain waveprofile in a single test.

further processing and analysis. The demodulated waveformalso can be used to produce a compensating signal whichis transmitted back to the brain to effect a desired change inelectrical activity therein.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 59

US PATENT NO. 3, 951,134


R.G. MALECH

Fig. 1

Note

1. The full text of US Patent No. 3,951,134 can be readonline by accessing the noted Web site and conducting asearch for the patent by number:http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/srchnum.htm

zures, sleepiness and dreaming can be detected. Bodilyfunctions such as pulse rate, heartbeat regularity and oth-ers also can be monitored and occurrences of hallucina-tions can be detected. The system also permits medical di-agnoses of patients, inaccessible to physicians, from remotestations.

with each section of the brain having a different modulatingaction. The resulting waveform of the two signals has itsgreatest amplitude when the two signals are in phase andthus reinforcing one another. When the signals are exactly180 degrees out of phase the combination produces a re-sultant waveform of minimum amplitude. If the amplitudes ofthe two signals transmitted to the subject are maintained atidentical levels, the resultant interference waveform, absentinfluences of external radiation, may be expected to assumezero intensity when maximum interference occurs, the num-ber of such points being equal to the difference in frequen-cies of the incident signals. However, interference by radia-tion from electrical activity within the brain causes the wave-form resulting from interference of the two transmitted sig-nals to vary from the expected result, i.e., the interferencewaveform is modulated by the brain waves. It is believedthat this is due to the fact that brain waves produce electriccharges each of which has a component of electromagnet-ic radiation associated with it. The electromagnetic radia-tion produced by the brain waves in turn reacts with thesignals transmitted to the brain from the external source.

The modulated interference waveform is re-transmittedfrom the brain, back through the skull. A quantity of energyis re-transmitted sufficient to enable it to be picked up by theantenna. This can be controlled, within limits, by adjustingthe absolute and relative intensities of the signals, originallytransmitted to the brain. Of course, the level of the transmit-ted energy should be kept below that which may be harmfulto the subject.

As will be appreciated by those familiar with the art, ap-paratus and method of the subject invention has numeroususes. Persons in critical positions such as drivers and pilotscan be continuously monitored with provision for activationof an emergency device in the event of human failure. Sei-

63 Cognitive Liberty News

CONTEXT

62 JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE LIBERTIES Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 63

COGNITIVE LIBERTY NEWS

Police Sabotage VideoCameras in OregonInternal sources indicate that of-ficers in the Eugene, Ore. policedepartment may have intention-ally damaged video cameras onvehicles. SpectraTek, the maker ofthe $90,000 camera system, saysthat it received no complaints orwarranty requests, though policedepartment officials claim that theequipment was flawed from thestart. Police have admitted that offic-ers may have tampered with theequipment in order to avoid moni-toring, and technicians did un-cover evidence that wires hadbeen disconnected over threeyears. Repair records note thatthere were three incidents wherethe patrol carsÊ video antennaswent missing.Additionally, e-mailsindicate many people involved inthe program suspected officerswere tampering with the equip-ment.

Associated Press,Sept. 30, 2002http://www.ap.org/

CONTECONTECONTECONTECONTEXXXXXTTTTT

A bricolage of news related to cognitive liberty

A Question of WillA neuroscientific twist on the sameold debate about free will: Neuro-scientists have detected brain sig-nals directing a muscle to movebefore the subject reports havingmade a conscious (or „free will‰)decision to move the muscle. The researchers also found thatmagneticfields influence the subjectÊs deci-sion to choose left or right. Morepuzzling still, the test subjects stillfelt that they had made the deci-sion to choose left and right freely.

Boston Globe,Oct. 15, 2002www.boston.com/globe/

Inventors ForecastNanotechnologiesWhat do inventors expect to seein the 21st century? That was thekey question in an Oct. 16, 2002round table discussion with Na-tional Inventors Hall of Fame in-ductees at the US Department ofCommerce in Washington DC.The

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 65



CONTEXT

Over 200,000 of these cards havebeen issued in Jiangxi. The newsystem debuted in Spring 2002,and Chinese police claim it willidentify criminals operating onlineand prevent crimes.

The Register UK,Nov. 6, 2002www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27939.html

US Research on“Nonlethal” CombatSedatives ChallengedRecently uncovered documentsreveal the US program research-ing possible combat and law en-forcement use of sedatives andother drugs that affect the centralnervous system (CNS). Drugs un-der consideration include Valium,Prozac, convulsants, and „drugs ofabuse‰ such as opiates andketamine. Funding for studies ofthese „nonlethal‰ weapons rosefrom $14 million in 1997 to $36million in 2001. Work on the useof these drugs is being conductedat the Institute for Emerging De-fense Technologies of Pennsylva-nia State University with the sup-port and oversight of the MarineCorps. The research is part of a broadereffort to create an arsenal of non-lethal weapons for the military and

police. But critics, such as the Aus-tin, Texas-based Sunshine Project,say that turning such drugs intotools to subdue hostile forces ordomestic dissidents would violatethe International Chemical Weap-ons Treaty, which the US ratifiedin 1997. They also contend thatresearch on nonlethal chemicalagents sends a message to othercountries that itÊs acceptable toresearch similar and even moretoxic substances.

Science,Vol. 297, No. 5582,Aug. 2, 2002, p. 764

Panel Calls for More“Nonlethal” WeaponryA National Research Councilpanel chaired by a Sandia NationalLaboratories administrator hascalled for more US military re-search on so-called „nonlethal‰weapons technologies intended tocontrol combatants or largecrowds. This recommendationcame after the Russian militarycaused as many as 118 fatalitiesin October 2002 by using an opi-ate-based gas to end a hostagestandoff in a Moscow theater. The panel recommended theresearch as part of a broad en-dorsement of the idea that mili-tary officers need a wide range ofnonlethal weapons on hand

inductees gathered to commemo-rate the bicentennial of the UnitedStates Patent and TrademarkOffice. Ray Kurzweil, one of the induct-ees, forecast a hybrid human-machine future: „We are alreadyputting neural implants in thebrains of people with disabilitiesand certain diseases. In the futurewe will be able to do this nonin-vasively with blood-cell-sizedrobots. A few decades from now,we will have billions of thesenanorobotes in our blood stream,going intoi the capillaries of ourbrain, where they will interactwith our biological neurons. Theresult will be a full immersion vir-tual reality involving all of thesenses from inside the nervoussystem, and a direct expansion ofhuman intelligence. When you talkto a human 35 or 40 years fromnow, you will be interacting withan intimate blending of both bio-logical and nonbiological intelli-gence.‰

KurzweilAI.net,Oct. 16, 2002www.kurzweilai.net

Brain-On-a-ChipTechnology for TestingNew DrugsTensor Biosciences of Irvine, Cali-fornia has developed a method ofkeeping „mini-brain‰ brain tissuefrom rats and mice alive for weeks,which will allow scientists to testnew drugs for a range of psychi-atric diseases including AlzheimerÊsand schizophrenia. The glass chips contain thou-sands of interconnected animalbrain cells suspended in a solu-tion of artificial cerebral fluid. Anarray of 64 electrodes on the chipÊssurface monitors the overall elec-trical activity of the brain tissue.

Reuters,Oct. 16, 2002www.reuters.com

Chinese Police MonitorInternet UseInternet users in the Chinese prov-ince of Jiangxi must now use iden-tity cards to access the Internet inlocal cybercafes. These cards,which must be swiped to log on,contain personal information suchas the userÊs name and address,and allow police to monitor whichusers are online and which sitesthey are accessing. In addition, thenew system allows police to blockparticular sites or particular users.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 67



CONTEXT

DARE ProgramIneffective, Says GAOIn a January 2003 report, the USGeneral Accounting Office (GAO)expresses concern over the effec-tiveness of Drug Abuse ResistanceEducation (DARE) programs atpreventing students from using il-legal drugs. Since 1983, the DAREprogram has been operating in 80percent of all US public elemen-tary school districts, from the fifththrough twelfth grades. In thecourse of six long-term evaluationsof DAREÊs effectiveness, the GAOreported „All of the evaluationssuggested that DARE had no sta-tistically significant long-termeffect on preventing youth illicitdrug use.‰ The exact amount of spendingon DARE programs is unlear, buta $2 million grant from the Dept.of Justice and part of a $439 mil-lion grant from the Dept. of Edu-cation were used to support theprogram.

Drugwarfacts.org,Jan. 16, 2003www.gao.gov/new.items/d03172r.pdf

Google BlocksControversial Web SitesGoogle.com, the worldÊs leadingInternet search engine, has re-moved search listings of over 100

controversial sites in France andGermany. Acording to a new re-port from Harvard UniversityÊsBerkman Center, absent fromGoogleÊs French and German list-ings are Web sites that are anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, or related towhite supremacy. Also banned isJesus-is-lord.com, a fundamental-ist Christian site that opposesabortion. Google spokespersons con-firmed the delistings. The removalof controversial sites, claimsGoogle, was in respose to govern-ment complaints and an effort toavoid legal liability underGerman law.

CNET News,Oct. 23, 2002http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963132.html

Pentagon Planned toTrace Net UsageThe Pentagon considered, thendecided against, a plan to makeanonymous use of parts of theInternet impossible by tagging datawith personal markers. The surveil-lance plan, known as eDNA, wasoutlined in an August 2002 work-shop, but was scrapped afterangry debates about thetechnologyÊs implications eruptedbetween computer scientists andpolicymakers at the agency.

because they are being called onto serve in more situations out-side of conventional warfare.

Washington Post,Nov. 5, 2002

www.washingtonpost.com

GHB Now Approved toTreat Sleep DisorderIn a rare exception to Schedule 1drug classification, the FDA hasapproved the drug GHB (gammahydroxy butyrate) for sufferers ofcataplexy. The disorder, whichcauses a sudden loss of muscletone that causes collapse, strikes50,000 people with the sleep dis-order narcolepsy. GHB gained fed-eral approval under special restric-tions aimed at preventing non-medical uses. FDA officials said they hadworked with the Drug Enforce-ment Administration and thedrugÊs manufacturer, OrphanMedical Inc. of Minnetonka, Minn.,to design strict restrictions on thedistribution of GHB. The drug willbe sold under the name Xyrem.

„Date-Rape Drug OKdto Treat Sleep Disorder,‰Los Angeles Times, July 18,2002, www.latimes.com

Nicotine May EnhanceCognitive AbilitiesSmoking may be harmful to thehuman body, but new evidenceshows that nicotine may enhanceattention and memory. A studypublished by the journal Neuronhas identified parts of the brain inwhich nicotine stimulates cogni-tive abilities. Using functional mag-netic resonance imaging, research-ers found that nicotine improvesattention in smokers by enhanc-ing function in areas of the brainassociated with visual attention,arousal and motor activation (theposterior cortical and subcorticalregions.) By giving 15 smokers either atransdermal nicotine patch or aplacebo and asking them to per-form a rapid visual informationprocessing task, the researcherswere able to assess nicotineÊs ef-fects on brain function. The find-ings suggest that nicotine shifts thebrainÊs cognitive resources to ar-eas related to task-associated func-tions.

Betterhumans News,Jan 14., 2003www.betterhumans.com

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 69



CONTEXT

accidents in the 2001 Afghanistanwar, have regularly been givenamphetamines to fly longer hours.Upon completing their mission, thepilots are then administered seda-tives. Pilots refer to Dexedrine, theamphetamine they are issued in10 mg. doses, (double the 5 mg.Gulf war era dosage) as „go pills.‰The sedatives issued to pilots,Ambien (zolpidem) and Restoril(temazepam), are referred to as„no-go pills.‰ Use of Dexedrine has been im-plicated in several friendly-fireincidents, most notably in April2001, when US fighter pilots mis-takenly dropped a bomb on agroup of Canadian infantrymen,killing four and wounding eight.Several attacks on Afghan civiliansmay also have stemmed fromDexedrine-fueled pilot error. Areport titled „Performance Main-tenance During Continuous FlightOperations,‰ produced by theNaval Medical Research Labora-tory, revealed the extent of pilotsÊspeed usage; up to 96 percent ofthose flying combat missions in the1991 Gulf war.

The Independent,Aug. 3, 2002www.independent.co.uk

Implantable Chip Trialson HumansDespite previous denials that itsimplantable microchip would betested on humans, a company isnow testing the device on a Floridafamily. Digital Angel, a subsidiaryof Applied Digital Solutions, Inc.,is marketing the chip as a high-tech safety device. The chip is the size of a rice grainand can be injected beneath theskin of a personÊs arm, transmit-ting information when scanned bya receiver unit. The technology isdesigned to replace ID systemssuch as company ID cards andmedical emergency ID bracelets.In the future the chips may alsobe used like driversÊ licenses, pass-ports, and credit cards. The Digi-tal Angel chip may also include GPStracking technology, which thecompany says may have applica-tions including „locating lost ormissing individuals, locating miss-ing or stolen household pets, moni-toring parolees, managing live-stock; pinpointing stolen propertyand preventing the unauthorizeduse of firearms.‰

Politech News,Feb. 12, 2003www.politechbot.com

A description of eDNA sent toparticipants said: „We envisagethat all network and client re-sources will maintain traces ofuser eDNA so that the user canbe uniquely identified as havingvisited a Web site, having starteda process or having sent a packet.This way, the resources and thosewho use them form a virtual„crime scene‰ that contains evi-dence about the identity of theusers, much the same way as a realcrime scene contains DNA tracesof people.‰

New York Times,Nov. 22, 2002www.nytimes.com

Pentagon Initiates TotalInformation AwarenessProgramA new Pentagon effort known asthe Total Information AwarenessProgram will create a „vast elec-tronic dragnet‰ to seek out pat-terns of terrorist activities. As thedirector of the effort, Admiral JohnM. Poindexter, has described thesystem in Pentagon documentsand in speeches, it will provideintelligence analysts and law en-forcement officials with instantaccess to information from e-mailand telephone records to creditcard and banking transactions andtravel documents, all without asearch warrant. The system is one

of a number of governmentprojects now underway attempt-ing to unite both commercial andgovernment data for law enforce-ment purposes. Historically, military and intelli-gence agencies have not been per-mitted to spy on Americans with-out extraordinary legal authoriza-tion. But Admiral Poindexter, theformer national security adviserimplicated in the Iran-Contra scan-dal in the Reagan administration,has argued that the governmentneeds broad new powers to pro-cess, store and mine billions ofminute details of electronic life inthe United States. The new agency would requirethe amendment of the Privacy Actof 1974 in order to look at thepersonal data of citizens. The Pri-vacy Act was instituted to limitwhat government agencies coulddo with private information.(Note: As of press time,Congress has failed to approve theTIA Program.)

New York Times,Nov. 9, 2002www.nytimes.comAlso see: www.darpa.mil/iao/index.htm

Better Bombing ThroughChemistryUS military pilots, responsible forat least 10 deadly „friendly fire‰

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 71



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Marijuana Science FairProject Stirs ControversySan Jose eighth grader VeronicaMouser won her fight to have hermedical marijuana project enteredin the school science fair, weeksafter the principal banned it.Ralston Middle School principalbanned the project Jan. 17. Shesaid that Veronica could not dothe necessary research, sincemarijuana is still illegal under fed-eral law, even though CaliforniaÊsProp. 215 sanctions it for medici-nal use. Upon reviewing the projectafter protest from Mouser and herparents, principal Ferguson re-versed her position and decidedto allow the project to be enteredinto the district science fair. Theschool district later approved theproject as well, ruling that Mouserhad stayed within both the law andscience fair guidelines. Mouser, 13, did not use mari-juana herself or administer it toher test subjects. Instead, she stud-ied three medical marijuana pa-tients, who logged the effects ofusing marijuana for one week torelieve pain and nausea, and theeffects of abstaining from mari-juana for one week. She deter-mined that the marijuana did helprelieve symptoms. Mouser says of

her project, „I think I learned thatstanding up for what you believein is really hard, but itÊs reallyworth it.‰

San Jose Mercury News,Jan. 30, 2003www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews

Online Mushroom SporeSellers ArrestedFour owners of online mushroomspore business PsylocybeFanaticus were arrested Feb. 18in Amanda Park, Washington. Thearrests came after years of surveil-lance and investigation by theDrug Enforcement Agency. Daniel Mancano, a DEA specialagent, claimed the investigationwas prompted by calls from par-ents around the country whosechildren had received packagesfrom Psylocybe Fanaticus. Thepackages contained spore syringesand instructions on how to growhallucinogenic mushrooms, andwere sold for $30 each. Assistant US Attorney DouglasWhalley said itÊs not illegal to sellmushroom spores alone, butclaims that selling them with thepurpose of producing hallucino-genic mushrooms is illegal. Theadult mushrooms contain psilocy-bin and psilocin, which are illegalto possess, while the spores con-tain neither substance.

The Seattle Times,Feb. 24, 2003www.seattletimes.com

Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe(This is Not a Pipe)On Feb. 24th, federal agents raidedmore than 100 homes and busi-nesses throughout the nation aspart of a new effort by the DEAto crack down on sellers of pipesand bongs often used by marijuanasmokers. „Operation PipeDreams‰ resulted in the arrestsof over 50 people, including six inNorthern California, who now facefederal charges of trafficking in il-legal drug paraphernalia, Authorities said businessescould no longer protect themselvesby posting signs or Internet warn-ings indicating that their productsare for tobacco use only. Attor-ney general John Ashcroft stated:„With the advent of the Internet,the illegal drug paraphernalia in-dustry has exploded. Quite sim-ply, the...industry has invaded thehomes of families across thecountry...This illegal billion-dollarindustry will no longer be ignoredby law enforcement.‰ If convicted, those arrested facea maximum of three years inprison, a $250,000 fine, or both,for each count in the indictments.

San Francisco Chronicle,Feb. 25, 2003www.sfgate.com

CONSUME

75 Breaking Open the Head: Book ReviewMark D. Pesce

81 The Road of Excess: Book ReviewHeidi Lypps

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 75

BREAKING OPENTHE HEAD: A PsychedelicJourney Into the Heart ofContemporary ShamanismBy Daniel PinchbeckBroadway Books (Random House),2002. $24.95, 297 pp.

Book Reviews

What is it about thep s y c h e d e l i cexperience that is

so singular, so unique, thatevery generation must bereminded of the ElysianFields (and Circles of Hell)which await us through thegratuitous grace of someneurological alchemy? In the 19th century Baudelaire andDe Quincey scandalized Europe with their tales of hashishand opium. In the 1950s Aldous Huxley took mescaline andwrote the enduring tract of psychedelic literature, The Doorsof Perception. What followed, over the 1960s and early1970s, was a bewildering array of trip reports, from the highsof Timothy Leary’s High Priest to the propagandistic warn-ings of Go Ask Alice. When it comes to the psychedelicexperience, it’s almost as if word-of-mouth isn’t enough: weneed written proof. Yet, in the era of DARE and zero toler-ance, accurate information about psychedelics is almost ashard to come by as the substances themselves. Despite theheroic efforts of organizations like Erowid to disseminate ac-curate and up-to-date information about psychedelics, ourculture has made a collective decision to treat psychedelicsas dangerously destabilizing agents of change, untrustworthy

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chemical dependencies, such as heroin and alcohol—andalthough Pinchbeck does drink moderately today, his ibogaexperience helped him bring his problem drinking to an end.

From Gabon to Mexico, retracing the steps of R. Gor-don Wasson, the New York banker who “rediscovered” thepsilocybin mushroom, Pinchbeck meets up with the son ofMaria Sabina, the sorceress who initiated Wasson into themushroom mysteries. Mushrooms may represent humani-ty’s oldest connection to the psychedelic experience, andPinchbeck uses his Mexican experience as a starting pointfor an intellectual argument on the cultural necessity of thatexperience. The foundation of Pinchbeck’s argument is builtupon his reading of anthropologist Mircea Eliade, the firstmodern to study shamanism (Eliade rashly defined shamanicintoxication as a degenerate form of the tradition), and phi-losopher Walter Benjamin, who emphasized “the importanceof intoxication for perception.” Mourning the loss of the Di-onysian rituals of ecstasy, Benjamin predicted that mankindmight someday “experience its own destruction as an aes-thetic pleasure of the first order.” The repressed ecstatic,Pinchbeck reminds us, inevitably returns as the chaotic cat-astrophic.

Pinchbeck never lingers anywhere too long; BreakingOpen the Head is a psychedelic Cook’s Tour, each stop alittle further from the consensus reality comfort of rationalistmaterialism. He lights next at that annual carnival in thedeserts of northern Nevada, Burning Man. Here Pinchbeckencounters a modern psychedelic culture “more decadentthan Warhol’s Factory, more glamorous than Berlin in the1920s, more ludicrous than the most lavish Busby Berkeleymusical…more implausible than any mirage.” But it’s not allfun and games at Burning Man. Although the event exploresthe possibilities of a post-consumer culture driven by cre-ative, ecstatic values, “Burning Man also has a sorrowingstreak. As they dance, the revelers also grieve…for

and inherently damaging. The level of discourse about psy-chedelic drugs has been reduced to the Drug Czar’s “Be-cause I Say So” ads linking drug use with terrorism. In thispost-9/11 era, few individuals have the courage required tostep forward and speak truth to power. Fewer still can speakabout the psychedelic experience eloquently, passionately,and reasonably.

So it was like a breath of fresh air when I opened thepages of Daniel Pinchbeck’s stunning “tale of wonder,”Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into theHeart of Contemporary Shamanism. Co-founder of the laud-ed Open City magazine—which showcases the rising tal-ents of contemporary literature—Pinchbeck begins his nar-rative in a self-described “spiritual crisis,” bored with thematerialism of his peers and numbed by the “media smog”which drowns out the sight of anything not commodified. InPinchbeck’s circle of downtown New York intellectuals, thedrugs of choice were alcohol, heroin and cocaine—an unho-ly trinity for a human spirit weary of experience. These of-fered nothing to him, so he found himself turning to LSD andpsilocybin mushrooms, feeling, all the while, as though he’drelapsed into some teenage behavior, dropping acid in Wash-ington Park and watching the world melt away. These firstpsychedelic experiences opened Pinchbeck to another de-scription of the world, outside the tidy, reductive, Freudianreasoning of his peers, and launched him on the journeythat forms the backbone of the book.

Beginning in Gabon—home of the Bwiti, the African cultof iboga—Pinchbeck plunges headlong into a series of ad-ventures that take him around the world. In a twelve-hourpsychedelic trip, iboga rewinds and replays Pinchbeck’s past-to-present, showing him how he came to be the man hewas—a heavy drinker and womanizer, incapable of mean-ingful relationships—and offered him an opportunity to changehis ways. Iboga is known for its ability to treat people with

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augmented ears, he seemed to be weaving a sub-tle discourse on reality, describing the victory ofform over emptiness. As he sang, he seduced aspirit-creature that started to grow, spinning cot-ton candy filaments around itself. Then Tintin start-ed to sing as well. But he seemed to challengethe shaman’s metaphysical viewpoint, arguing thatemptiness ultimately triumphs over form. Don Cae-sario sadly concurred, and the cotton candy cre-ation was released to fall back into the void…Ihad no more doubts that the Secoya engaged inextra-dimensional exploration, using ayahuasca astheir psychic telescope and transport.

Pinchbeck returns to the US, and dabbles in a few othermore exotic compounds—notably DMT and DPT (which, af-ter a harrowing experience with extra-dimensional entitiesinvading his apartment, he describes as “not for human con-sumption”). Traveling into the machine-elf world of DMT(nearly a carbon-copy of the experience first described byTerence McKenna), he hears a voice telling him, “This is it.Now you know.” This is the final crack that breaks open DanielPinchbeck’s head, sending the stuttering edifice of moderni-ty crashing down. How, he wonders, could an entireuniverse, apparently as real and solid as our own, exist justbeyond our perceptions? Something isn’t adding up, or rather,something isn’t being accounted for. If such a metaphysicalfundamental has been overlooked, Pinchbeck asks, whatdoes that say about the prejudices of a culture that rulesthese visions irrelevant, immaterial, and unimportant?

And now we see the complete arc. Pinchbeck performshis function as cultural everyman perfectly. Within the con-fines of intellectual New York culture, he is archetypal, pos-sessed with the same hopes and fears as his peers, and

everything spiritless and vacant—the hideous Medusa maskof our culture—that needs to be torn off and fed to theflames…The greatest party in the world is also a wake forthis world.”

It’s this paired feeling of joy and loss that follows Pinch-beck into his final journey, to the Ecuadorian Amazon, wherehe meets up with Don Caesario, a Secoya Indian and sha-man. Pinchbeck has come to drink yage, the “vine of souls,”and experience the cleansing and the visions which havemade this brew, ayahuasca, the de facto cure-all throughSouth America. Though he drinks the brew, and has his vi-sions, Pinchbeck really can’t take his mind off the geologistsfrom Occidental Petroleum, just a few miles away, busilyexploring for oil. The Secoya culture might soon be sweptaside, as roads and pipelines and civilization come pouringin. The meaninglessness of modernity—which Pinchbeck isrunning away from on every page of Breaking Open theHead—would supplant the rich internal life which the Sec-oya maintain through their use of ayahuasca. Oil or no, thetradition teeters on the verge of extinction: Don Caesario’sson, converted to Christianity, will not follow in his father’sfootsteps to become a shaman; the line, thousands of yearslong, may soon end. Yet, in the twilight of his tradition, DonCaesario treats Pinchbeck to one of the most profoundmoments related in the book, a suite of icaros, or ayahuas-ca songs:

Don Caesario drank another cup of the bitter brew,prepared for him by his assistant Tintin. Then hesang alone. His song seemed to be the wildestand most private ode, a psalm of solitude, unveil-ing the secret knowledge of his soul. He barelywhispered. He breathed into the stars. Then themelody returned, his voice rose up. To my


MARK D. PESCE

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 81

THE ROAD OF EXCESS: A History of Writers on DrugsBy Marcus BoonHarvard University Press, 2002.$29.95, 339 pp.

Nowadays, writingabout the effect ofdrugs on the body

steers an author into hotlycontested cultural terrain. Butwhat of the effect of drugs onthe written word, or on cultureitself? The Road of Excess bravely, if imperfectly, veers intothis new territory. Marcus Boon’s work serves as both a his-torical survey of drugs and their thought products, and asort of introduction to what drugs “mean” to modern cul-ture. Boon establishes “drug literature” as a viable, if under-developed, field of study.

As well as a comprehensive survey of substance-tingedliterature, Boon’s book is an exploration of the ways in whichdrugs altered the word in the modern West. Its title, takenfrom a William Blake quote, “the road of excess leads to thepalace of wisdom,” marks the point in time when mind andbody were split, in Boon’s view, and drugs replaced religiousbelief as the way to change one’s mental state and reunitemind with matter.

In addition to stimulating shifts in mental states, Boonargues, drugs function as allegories of mental states, just asthey were in pre-modern literature. Slyly, Boon points outthat the potions and magical balms of writers like Miltonserved as a material representation of an altered state, justas the noir novel scene of a needle sliding into a vein signi-fies a character’s change of state to us. In current cultureand law, however, the cognitive shift that drugs cause isequated with a moral shift as well. The moral effects of drugsare dependent on set and setting: degeneracy and crime, ifyou’re a DEA agent, enlightenment and wisdom, if you’re an

yet has found a way to a richer internal life, a mythologywhich includes the ineffable, the impossible, and the unfath-omable. Why would anyone want to break open their head?Why, in the end, does Pinchbeck see his journey not as rec-reation, but as necessity? The horror of the situation, of “ego-centric materialism and spiritual nihilism,” and the imminentdanger of “the transformation of the earth into a non-humanwasteland” forces Pinchbeck to assert:

Unlikely as it seems, we have to become our ownshamans, wizards and seers. As spiritual warriors,we must take responsibility for the plight of ourspecies. To break the spell of our culture’s deathtrap deceptions and hypnotic distractions, we needthe courage to confront what lies behind the opendoors of our own minds.

A psychedelic experience which “breaks open the head”is a way through the smog of lies, deception and distractionwhich separate us from an authentic experience of the world,an experience which, it must be admitted, would be as hor-rifying as it would be exhilarating. To deny the existence ofthese visions, positive and negative, is equivalent to drivinga car down a highway, eyes closed, with a foot jammed onthe accelerator petal. Eventually you’ll wreck. That is, unlessyou listen to Daniel Pinchbeck’s advice, open your eyes,and see the world as it really is: Infinite.

Review by Mark D. PesceMark Pesce is a virtual reality developer and author of The PlayfulWorld: How Technology Transforms Our Imagination.

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HEIDI LYPPS

In the midst of a genre of literature that alternately de-monizes and lionizes drug users and their writings, Boontraces a perilous course: analyzing a literature of distortionwithout participating in that distortion. Though clearly noenemy of cognitive alteration, Boon isn’t afraid to take onthe downsides of drug use: addiction, poor narrative struc-ture, descents into the unimaginative, and the cycle of philo-sophical revelation and crushing disappointment drug us-ers can experience; as one ether-snorting professor ex-claimed, “Good heavens! Is this all?” Boon reminds us thatgenerations of writers have found that the unwise use ofsubstances, of whatever kind, can block precisely the path-ways to transcendence they were supposed to throw open.Drugs reveal an incredible range of cognition, but they areeasily mistaken for transcendence itself.

With measure and detail, Boon is also not afraid to spikehis tour with doses of theoretical delight. As he enthusesabout psychedelics, the link between drugs and writing isbased on the desire to create:

…all mental states are extraordinary, not just thenovel ones. The important thing to understand hereis creativity, its source and its power. Literatureand the psychedelic experience are both funda-mentally acts of poeisis—poeisis not as represen-tation but as creation itself.

Boon makes a compelling case for the tremendousextent to which drugs have infiltrated modern culture. Hisresearch makes forays into other genres, too: philosophy,biology, and most notably, popular music, as part of his hopeto break down the boundaries between literature and othercultural pursuits. Really, for example, what would rock bewithout drugs? By stepping outside literature for a moment,Boon asks us to imagine, say, the Velvet Underground with-out their heroin; clearly, rock and drugs are so entangled

entheogen enthusiast. Boon documents this phenomenon,in a wide arc reaching from Confessions of an English Opi-um Eater to Listening to Prozac.

Ambitiously, he goes so far as to posit both the act ofcreating literature and the act of drug-taking as defining qual-ities of modernity. As he defines them, the modern conceptof drug use and the idea of literature evolved simultaneous-ly during the nineteenth century. And after all, both drug useand the writing of literature are two of the principal bridgesleading beyond daily experience. According to Boon, mod-ern consciousness is characterized by a feeling of beingtrapped, of emptiness, and cravings for an outside; and heclaims that: “for all purposes, they constitute what we callmodernity…” A rather gloomy view, but certainly one thatexplains our fascination with drugs, whether used for self-destruction or enlightenment.

Nonetheless, he’s careful in his disclaimers and attemptsto avoid “contamination” by losing perspective on such acontroversial subject. His main goal, he insists, is to openthe way for a clear-headed discussion of modern drug use,not to position himself for or against drugs. On the problemof abuse and prohibition, Boon calls for a reframing of theissue:

I believe, as Burroughs and others did, that themost promising solution to the “drug problem” isneither negating nor affirming drugs, but learningto discriminate between different drugs throughunbiased studies of how human beings interactwith them, and, at a deeper level, opening up newrealms of excess so that drugs no longer carry thewhole weight of our legitimate desire to be high.

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HEIDI LYPPS

how, Boon dissects the what and the why of substance use.Perhaps, he muses, both writing and drug use are ways wereach for the transcendental.

A good postmodernist, Boon agrees with Foucault’s pre-sentation of drugs as “technologies of the self,” and appliesHeidegger’s definition of technologies to drugs, as they “positends and procure and utilize the means to them.” Still, heisn’t content to lump all mind-altering substances into asingle category, just as he refuses to limit his analysis to asingle literary form. With this framework in place, Excessexamines by turns narcotics, anesthetics, Cannabis, stimu-lants and psychedelics for their particular effects on culture.Boon claims to avoid any type of unified theory about drugsand text as a whole. Rather, he examines the effects of eachand its resulting literary topos: Gnostic self-negation and con-fession for opiates, bodies striving to match machines withstimulants, the opening of the imaginal realms for psyche-delics. It is, however, problematic to present a particular sub-stance as representative of an entire style, a difficulty whichthe book’s structure exacerbates. Boon does succeed, how-ever, in imparting a sense of why generations of modernwriters have desired to alter their thoughts and their writingwith foreign substances: the search for the unknown, whatlies outside of everyday experience. As he quotes Rimbaud,the writer seeks to alchemically transform himself by experi-encing:

“a long, immense and systematic disruption of allthe senses…he exhausts in himself all poisons, soas to keep nothing but their quintessences…hebecomes among all men the great sick one, thegreat criminal, the great cursed one—and the su-preme Sage!—For he arrives at the unknown!”

that they may be inseparable. The reader, then, is led to con-sider that drugs may be nearly as entangled with modernwriting in many forms. Boon wants to view consciousnessthrough “an open field of interdependent cultural activity,which would include both drugs and literature, one in whichscience, biography, literary analysis and ethnography areused as necessary.” Yet even as he devotes himself to ahistory of literature, Boon paradoxically suggests the end ofliterature itself; he wonders if writing hasn’t perhaps alreadybeen pushed off its pedestal as the premier cultural prod-uct, to be replaced by music with all its drug-fueled energyand relevance.

At times a rapid-fire narration of names, titles andsynopses, Excess feels in spots like a professor’s narrationof a slide show. “I have written this history,” he says, “withoutrelying on a particular conceptual framework beyond whicha set of names of substances around which stories, texts,practices have clustered, and that of chronology, which Ihave used for convenience.” The research that forms thebook is extensive, but thin in spots; Boon occasionally relieson secondary sources to quote various writers, rather thanexhuming their original words—a practice that tends to mag-nify error, transmitting mistakes virally to the next writer whorelies on him rather than returning to the original work.

The Road of Excess also shares similarities to DalePendell’s Pharmako/Poeia; both texts are inhabited by thesame voices, the same substances. Boon’s is the far moreencyclopedic and linear work—he is, after all, a professordelineating the length and breadth of the literary phenome-non of drugs, not providing a how-to guide for the alchemi-cally inclined. While Pendell’s work whispers conspiratoriallyinto the reader’s ear, serving as a guide to the drugsthemselves, Boon methodically investigates their thought-products and cultural influences. Both are employing the sameauthorities and the same sources—but while Pendell tells you


HEIDI LYPPS

Perhaps unintentionally, this point also makes compre-hensible the failure of modern efforts to censor and eradi-cate drugs from culture: since the urge to experience theunknown cannot be eliminated, the use of drugs as a vehi-cle for experiencing the unknown cannot be completely sup-pressed.

Beyond culture as a whole, however, is the reader her-self and her reaction to the text. The greatest utility and en-joyment in Boon’s book is as a jumping-off point for furtherstudy; hunting down and absorbing the contents of Boon’sindex will occupy me for months to come. I knew a few ofthe big names in drug literature, such as De Quincey andBurroughs, and had run across Michaux; but I’m still rathernew to the whole subject of altered culture—as such, I cannow go forth to the cocktail parties well-armed with knowl-edge of the genre. Reading Excess, you’re handed tantaliz-ing names and ideas for a moment, and then the next slideslips under Boon’s microscope. A number of brief entriesparticularly excited my imagination: The philosopher/scien-tist René Daumal and his inhalant-soaked self-experimenta-tion; 70s rock critic Lester Bangs’ theory on drugs replacingsex and gender with their own qualities; Henri Michaux nam-ing hashish the “spy behind words,” among others. If themeasure of a substance’s potency is in its effect on cogni-tion long after ingestion, Road of Excess is strong medicineindeed.

Review by Heidi Lypps

Heidi Lypps is the Communications Director for the Center forCognitive Liberty & Ethics.

CONFERENCES


Conferences & Events

2003 MARCH 15-19Consciousness, Quantum Physics and the BrainTucson Convention Center and Leo Rich Theater

info: http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/quantum-mind2/

Could quantum information be the key to understanding conscious-ness? Could consciousness enable future quantum informationtechnology? The nature of consciousness and its place in the universe remainmysterious. Classical models view consciousness as computationamong the brainÊs neurons but fail to address its enigmatic features.At the same time quantum processes (superposition of states,nonlocality, entanglement) also remain mysterious, yet are beingharnessed in revolutionary information technologies (quantumcomputation, quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation). Arelation between consciousness and quantum effects has beenpondered for nearly a century, and in the past decades quantumprocesses in the brain have been invoked as explanations forconsciousness and its enigmatic features. Following the first „Quan-tum Mind‰ conference held in Flagstaff at Northern Arizona Univer-sity in 1999, „Quantum Mind II‰ will update current status andfuture directions, and provide dialog with skeptical criticism of theemerging paradigm.

Volume 4, No. 1, 2003 93

EVENTS—CONFERENCES


EVENTS -- CONFERENCES

Terence McKenna), and more. There will be live and DJÊed music,two art galleries, a new chill space, and a myriad of vendors, as wellas a real-time „E-Bay‰ (ThatÊs Entheogen Bay) auction. Dr. SusanBlackmore, author of The Meme Machine, will be both a speaker andMC for the conference.The CCLE is offering 4 Mental Diversity Fund Scholarships to attendthis event. For more information, see: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/mdsf/mdsf_app_info.htmA ticket to all three days of the conference is $225.00 through May15, and $250.00 from May 16 until the event.

2003 JUNE 1-10TRANSVISION 2003 USA CONFERENCE„The Adaptable Human Body: Transhumanism andBioethics in the 21st Century‰Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

info: www.transhumanism.org/tv/2003usa/

What will the body be like in 50 years, and how will changes to ourbodies change our lived experience? How will we adapt the body toour needs and to the environments in which we live? Will we haveconquered sickness, aging and death for all or only for the luckyfew? Will people be migrating to silicon platforms, pursuing en-hanced biological existence, or both or neither? This conference, thefirst Transvision conference to be sponsored by the WorldTranshumanist Association in North America, seeks to explore thefuture of the body from the transhumanist perspective. TV03 USA isco-sponsored by the Yale Interdisciplinary Bioethics ProgramÊsWorking Group on Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology andTranshumanism. Transhumanism is a new approach to bioethicswhich argues that technology can be used to overcome the limita-tions of the human body, and that individuals should be allowed toenhance their bodies. This conference will begin the discussionbetween the transhumanist movement and communities with whichtranshumanists have rarely been in dialogue: professional bioethi-cists, anti-technology activists, and critical social theorists of scienceand technology.

2003 APRIL 2-6„Chance Encounters With Consciousness‰Spring Meeting of the Society for the Anthropology ofConsciousnessMarjorie Barrick Museum, University of Nevada Las Vegas campus

info: Tim Lavalli, [email protected]://sunny.moorpark.cc.ca.us/~jbaker/sac/

The Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness (SAC) is aninterdisciplinary academic organization dedicated to the study ofconsciousness phenomena in cultures around the world. A sectionof the American Anthropological Association (AAA), SAC membersutilize cross-cultural, experimental, experiential, and theoreticalapproaches to study consciousness. SAC publishes a journal,Anthropology of Consciousness, holds an annual Spring Meeting,and sponsors sessions at other meetings, such as those of theAmerican Anthropological Association (AAA). SAC hopes to furtherscholarly exchanges between anthropologists and persons in otherdisciplines within consciousness studies.

2003 MAY 23-25Mind States IV: Continuing Perspectives on ConsciousnessInternational House, Berkeley, CA

info: www.mindstates.org

The Spring of 2003 celebrates the 60th anniversary of the discoveryof the psychoactive effects of LSD, and the conference will have apanel of experts discussing the past, present, and future of thisworld-changing molecule. We will also be showcasing „HofmannÊsPotion,‰ a recent documentary film by Connie Littlefield thatexplores the early days of LSD research. Other panels will be heldon the topic of „visionary art,‰ and on the topic of „control culture.‰Individual presenters will focus on ayahuasca shamanism, mimetics,„the contents of consciousness,‰ the folk art of blotter acid, theneurology of aesthetics, future mind technology, virtual reality,cyberpunk literature, an „Ask the Shulgins‰ Q&A session, a theatri-cal depiction of „Confessions of A Dope Dealer,‰ excerpts from„True Hallucinations‰ (an opera based on the life and times of


EVENTS -- CONFERENCES

2003 JULY 20-29Ayahuasca Healing Retreat: Experiential Seminar in theAmazon Forest of Manaus, Brazil

info: http://www.ayahuasca-healing.net/

As part of this retreat and seminar, there will be lectures by topexperts in the field of visionary and healing plant teachers, such asayahuasca and Salvia divinorum. There will be workshops in RemoteViewing and Lucid Dreaming, plus four ceremonies with ayahuascaand two with Salvia divinorum (ska pastora), group sharing, transper-sonal exercises and excursions.

Presenters:Richard Glen Boire, Control & Freedom TheoristStuart Hameroff, M.D., NeuroscientistPablo Amaringo, Shaman and artistZoe7, Consciousness researcher and authorSilvia Polivoy, Psychologist

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