Can (and Should) We Regulate Neurosecurity? - Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense - page 250

neuroscience. I will address this question in two steps: first, by reviewing the history
of the science-military relationship in order to draw out generalizable lessons
from that history; and second, by reviewing existing regulatory frameworks that
oversee scientific research. The lessons from history will show that some of these
regulatory frameworks are better than others at capturing the unique features of
the science-military relationship.
THE LESSONS FROM HISTORY
l essOn O ne : c OnTrOversial … n O m Ore , n O l ess
One episode in particular dominates modern discussions of the relationship between
science and the military, the Manhattan Project (Hughes 2002). The atomic bomb-
ings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to be controversial. Were these necessary
so as to save countless lives by quickly ending the war? Or, were the bombings,
which killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese, an act of terrorism that intention-
ally targeted civilians? The ongoing nature of this controversy was reinforced in
August 2010, when the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, attended the annual
memorial of the bombings, the first time a U.S. representative did so. Was Roos'
attendance an inappropriate act of contrition, or an overdue act of empathy? (Fackler
2010). Scientists are representative of the broader communities from which they
come, and so debate exists among scientists about particular episodes (like the
Manhattan Project) and about the more general relationship between science and
the military. Some scientists foreswear any defense industry funding (a perspective
strongly advocated by Bell in Chapter 14); others acknowledge the importance if not
need to participate in national defense (Giordano et al. 2010).
Lesson One, then, is that the current relationship between science and the mili-
tary is controversial … but no more, no less . The controversy is a reality, and it must
be acknowledged that there are legitimate criticisms of intentionally targeting civil-
ians with a weapon of mass destruction. But that controversy surrounding an act in a
time of war should remain distinct from something like the Tuskegee syphilis study,
for which no controversy exists. Everyone now agrees that intentionally misleading
human research subjects about the nature of a disease and actively preventing them
from receiving treatment is a gross violation of human research ethics (Reverby 2009).
l essOn T wO : s uccesses … and f failures.
Indeed, the Manhattan Project dominates current discussions of the relationship
between science and the military. And that is a problem. The problem is that the
Manhattan Project is a rather unique episode in the history of that relationship in that
it was a complete “success.” Theoretical physicists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer
and Edward Teller set out and succeeded in creating a containable, controllable,
deliverable fission-based nuclear device (York 1976). The problem with using the
Manhattan Project as exemplar of the relationship between science and the military
is that the ethical considerations focus only on the dangers of scientific successes .
In fact, the history of the relationship is replete with failures.