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"Brain
Fingerprinting"
The guilty mind What
if a brain scan could catch a murderer?: 'Brain fingerprinting'
measures neural response to images from a crime scene. Ethicists
fear it as a new tool of social control
Brad Evenson, National Post,
February 08, 2003
Sometime on the night of July
21, 1977, someone shot John Schweer to death on a railroad track
in Council Bluffs, Iowa. His body lay a short footchase from
the car dealership where he worked as a night watchman. The police
believe whoever killed Mr. Schweer escaped the scene by running
across a field overgrown with tall grass and weeds as tall as
a man's waist.
This dense foliage, the shotgun
blast, Mr. Schweer's crumpled body and many other aspects of
the murder must be imprinted deep in the grey folds of someone's
brain. Crime leaves tracks.
Four months after the killing,
police arrested 17-year-old Terry Harrington, a black college
student, largely on the testimony of a dubious witness.
Harrington claimed he was at
a concert 30 kilometres away -- an alibi his friends and football
coach confirmed. Even so, he was convicted of murder. Mr. Schweer
was a white, retired police officer. The jurors wanted swift
justice; they sentenced Harrington to life with no parole.
Now, 26 years later, Harrington's
hopes for exoneration rest on a witness that scientists say cannot
lie but police could not interview. His brain.
While the world has heard plenty
about genetics, cloning and stem cells, the field of neuroscience
has been quietly making giant leaps forward. Brain scientists
have -- in some cases, literally -- been gazing at our naked
thoughts without any legal or ethical framework to guide their
investigations.
"Gene therapy, stem cells,
genetics of mental illnesses -- those [treatments] will not be
here tomorrow, they will take a while," says Remi Quirion,
scientific director of the federal Institute of Neurosciences,
Mental Health and Addiction.
"But in terms of brain
imaging ... that's already there. There are companies out there
that are starting to promote these techniques to the U.S. government
to counter terrorism." He continues: "With these type
of technologies, someday you could scan brain activity without
necessarily having to ask the person for permission. Say, at
the customs office or someplace like that."
Dr. Quirion, a world-renowned
Alzheimer's scientist, says brain science is moving much faster
than any social dialogue on how it should be used. "Just
a few years back, neuroscientists were not thinking about this
kind of thing," he says.
The field has progressed so
rapidly, he says ethical guidelines are urgently needed because
of people like Lawrence Farwell.
Dr. Farwell, a Fairfield, Iowa,
neuroscientist who once taught at Harvard Medical School, has
patented a technique he calls "brain fingerprinting,"
which he believes can prove the guilt or innocence of Terry Harrington
and others like him.
"If we know the truth,
we can allow a person like Terry Harrington to be freed from
prison," Dr. Farwell says.
The technique involves monitoring
the electrical activity in a person's brain in response to images
from a crime.
When Harrington was tested
two years ago, the results showed he had no knowledge of 12 salient
details -- the tall grass and weeds behind the car lot, for example
-- but had six salient details of his alibi recorded in his brain.
In March, 2001, an Iowa District
Court judge ruled the science behind brain fingerprinting, a
concept called the P-300 response, met the legal standards for
admissibility in court. Harrington is appealing his case; a ruling
is expected as early as this month.
"When you recognize something
significant in the current context, your brain does certain information
processing, and that is manifested on the scalp as a P-300,"
says Dr. Farwell, founder and head of Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories,
Inc.
"One of the advantages
of major crime is that ... it is a significant event in the life
of a perpetrator. Even to a serial killer who has killed 50 people,
it's still a big event."
Dr. Farwell says brain fingerprinting
has potential far beyond the legal system. He says the U.S. military
wants to use his process to combat terrorism. According to his
company's Web site, brain fingerprinting has enjoyed a 100% success
rate in studies conducted with the FBI and other law-enforcement
agencies.
Dr. Quirion and other leading
scientists say such findings are exaggerations.
"There are more and more
of these companies interacting with the U.S. government, saying,
'We have new ways to monitor brain function that could help to
say, 'This guy is probably lying,' or, 'This guy could be violent,'
'" he says.
"One of the dangers is
that these tests are not 100% foolproof -- or at least, not in
my mind."
The larger issue, of course,
is how such techniques will be used when they do become foolproof,
and if people could lose their right to keep their thoughts to
themselves.
- - -
Until recently, brain scientists
were hampered by two rigid barriers: the skull and ethics. It's
unethical to slice open a living human head to poke around unless
the patient is being treated. That's how brain pioneer Dr. Wilder
Penfield did business in the 1950s. While operating on the brains
of epileptic patients, the Montreal neurosurgeon would nose around.
Dr. Penfield found he could elicit responses such as memory,
including sound, movement and colour, by stimulating regions
of the brain. For the most part, however, neuroscientists were
forced to wait until a patient showed up with a tumour or traumatic
brain injury to see how it affected behaviour.
This approach is like assembling
a jigsaw puzzle with 50 billion cellular pieces one motorcycle
crash victim at a time.
Those days are gone.
Today, neuroscience has a battery
of new imaging technologies to gauge and monitor brain activity.
They include magneto-encephalography (MAG) scanning, which measures
the brain's magnetic fields, and functional magnetic resonance
imagining (fMRI), which traces the flow of blood around the brain.
In short, the skull is no longer a barrier.
Just where that leaves ethics
is anyone's guess.
"Say ... we knew what
the brain of a child molester or a person with a predilection
for abusing children looks like," says Gordon DuVal, a bioethicist
at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.
"Say someone who was 14
years old turns up with that brain. What would we do with that
person? I don't know what."
This is not a far-fetched scenario.
Researchers believe they have
already found a gene mutation unique to serial child molesters
that gives rise to subtle changes in the shape and function of
the brain. Genes for suicidal tendency have also been pinpointed.
Last year, Stanford University scientists revealed the brain
patterns of "slow" children, raising the prospect of
giving them special education before they fall behind. Experts
believe many aspects of our "selves" may someday be
mapped and put to use. But what use? Who decides? And what role
will privacy play as science sheds more light on our newly naked
brains?
"Say we knew what the
brain looked like of a nice person or a generous person or a
hard-working person or whatever we think of as good qualities,"
Dr. DuVal says. "Could an employer use some kind of screening
test that let them know for employment, or firing? Would that
be a fair thing to do?"
Dr. DuVal and others say brain
science has raced far ahead of ethical debate. And, as the global
farce over human cloning has shown, it might be futile to create
rules so late in the game.
"The horse may have left
the barn," he says.
Consider the problem of cognitive
enhancement.
Last July, psychiatrists at
Stanford University found healthy airline pilots who took a drug
that boosts memory in Alzheimer's patients did significantly
better in flight simulations. The drug, Aricept, increases the
amount of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brain. When
confronted with emergency situations, new transponder codes and
a series of air traffic control commands, the drug-taking pilots
were less likely to forget their training after 30 days.
"How should the use of
these therapies be regulated in settings beyond aviation or normal
ageing, such as chess matches or test-taking among college students?"
asks Jerome Yesavage, who led the research, published in the
journal Nature Medicine.
Last year, international bridge
tournaments made players take urine tests for use of stimulants,
and a medicine cabinet full of new mind-enhancing drugs is coming.
For example, Cortex Pharmaceuticals
is developing drugs based on ampakine molecules, which can boost
signals between brain cell receptors and improve learning capacity.
Memory Pharmaceuticals and NeuroLogic are hot on the trail of
similar molecules.
"The issue is, Will these
kind of drugs be available for everyone in the future or just
some happy few?" asks Dr. Quirion, noting that such products
are likely to be very expensive.
In a world where rich economies
have denied cheap AIDS drugs to Africa, where they could save
millions of human lives, it's unrealistic to think people will
lose any sleep over an unfair distribution of "smart"
drugs. So relatively speaking, the rich will get smarter and
the poor will get stupider, a cognitive divide. Of course, this
is not different from rich people sending their children to the
best schools. Or is it?
Once we begin tampering with
the brain, some argue we've gone too far. "Even though the
end ... may be the same, say, between education and taking Ritalin
to improve classroom performance, there is something very different
going on in the second case," says Jason Robert, a professor
of ethics at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
"People then start to
worry, in the same way they worry about genetics, about creating
a class of haves and have-nots."
Mr. Robert also wonders about
entitlement. If a heart transplant surgeon is entitled to take
drugs to sharpen his focus, why not a pilot? Or the prime minister?
Why not the guy operating a construction crane with two tonnes
of concrete dangling above a city street?
"It becomes a moral mess,"
he says.
Since our behaviour is based
on biology, some philosophers wonder about how the use of such
"cogniceuticals" affect our human identity.
Drugs such as Prozac and Zoloft,
once prescribed only for depression, are now used to combat obsessive-compulsive
behaviour, pre-menstrual stress, anxiety and excessive shyness.
Indeed, the British Medical Journal recently noted drug companies
are touting serotonin-based drugs -- among others --as treatment
for so-called "female sexual dysfunction," a condition
many doctors doubt can be cleared up with pills.
"If there is such a thing
as a true self, why do we believe we're going to access it more
appropriately through pharmaceutical intervention?" Mr.
Robert asks.
The Greek historian Pliny said,
"The truth will come out in wine," presumably meaning
people are more honest when they're drunk. But can the truth
also come out in Ritalin, Prozac or Aricept? If drugs can focus
our attention, drive away our blues and protect our memories,
do they make us more authentic versions of ourselves?
"Is it the case that taking
Ritalin as a child is going to prevent the development of an
authentic self?" Mr. Robert asks.
"Or is the idea of authenticity
of selfhood just a myth, something that we've been comfortable
with, but in fact all of this is a construction of genes and
environments, and this environment just happens to involve particular
pharmacological treatment?"
The idea of "fixing"
ourselves doesn't thrill everyone.
Gregor Wolbring, an ethicist
and biochemist at the University of Calgary, was born without
legs after his mother took thalidomide during her pregnancy.
Like many youngsters in his situation, he was fitted with artificial
limbs as a child, but chucked them when he got older. "You
fix things based on certain assumptions and expectations,"
says Dr. Wolbring, who heads an organization called the International
Centre for Bioethics, Culture and Disability.
He summarizes society's view
as: "Anyone who cannot meet those expectations should be
fixed."
As artificial limbs, cochlear
implants for deaf people, and other tools become more sophisticated,
it becomes more difficult to discard them. Parents in some U.S.
states have had their children taken away because they would
not fit them with cochlear implants. In much the same way, other
parents are pressured by teachers to feed their children Ritalin,
and people with bipolar disorder are being directed by Canadian
courts to take their lithium. "These things are no longer
tools; they're becoming an obligation," Dr. Wolbring says.
Neurotechnology is reducing
the number of ways it's acceptable to be a person. It is pressuring
people like Dr. Wolbring, who calls himself a "non-mainstream
body composition," to consider themselves birth defects.
Out of this conviction, he
rejects the sophisticated new bionic legs that connect surgically
to his nerves. "I'd rather crawl," he says.
Questions about the biological
basis of behaviour and personality also play a central role in
the criminal justice system.
For example, courts now draw
a line between "organic" brain disorders, such as sleepwalking
or epilepsy, and behavioural disorders, such as pedophilia.
In 1989, for example, Kenneth
Parks was acquitted of murder after he stabbed his mother-in-law
to death while he was sleepwalking. His lawyer argued the Toronto
man was in a state of "noninsane automatism," and was
not aware of his actions. With no free will, he could not be
guilty.
But the lines are shifting.
As neuroscience delves deeper into the brain's structure, researchers
are finding such disorders as pyromania, pedophilia or even sexual
sadism are driven by subtle neural abnormalities. For example,
researchers say pedophiles may have a gene mutation in their
serotonin system that underlies their arousal.
"So the question becomes,
if you have an abnormal, pedophile gene, are you therefore not
responsible?" asks Dr. John Bradford, head of forensic psychiatry
at the Royal Ottawa Hospital.
Dr. Bradford, who has assessed
such notorious sexual offenders as Paul Bernardo, says courts
may someday take the biological roots of behaviours into account.
Consider the nature of sexual sadism, in which people are aroused
by the suffering of others. New research shows people with the
disorder often have brain damage.
"Nobody is sure why that
brain abnormality is there ... but you can see it on an MRI or
a CT scan," Dr. Bradford says.
"The right temporal area
of the brain is the area that seems to be damaged fairly consistently
in sexually sadistic people. Usually this is a part of the brain
that is very sensitive to oxygen. So any oxygen deficits in the
pre-natal, or natal or immediate post-natal period is going to
damage that part of the brain. Again, this [occurs] when a person
is an infant and has no control over these events, but later
on, this person may commit a sexually motivated homicide. And
this is already in the criminal justice arena and is part of
the debate right now."
In the United States, this
defence has kept some sexual killers off death row. In the future,
however, it may come to be regarded much as sleepwalking is today
-- as grounds for acquittal.
However, Dr. Bradford notes,
people may have pedophiliac genes and compulsive drives to rage
or sexual sadism, but they can still exercise control. "Most
men have fantasies of rape, but most men don't rape," he
says.
"This is an example of
volitional control."
Clearly, any debate on neuroethics
must address how such brain information is used.
Imagine how a divorce attorney,
fighting a custody dispute, would use the information that her
client's former husband has a pedophile gene. Should Boy Scout
leaders be screened? Priests? How much would a scandal magazine
pay to get a hold of Michael Jackson's brain profile?
All of which brings matters
back to brain fingerprinting.
Although many reputable scientists,
including Dr. Quirion, believe it does not have the 100% reliability
that its proponents claim, there is no getting around the fact
that such technologies are here to stay. And is this wrong?
"If a person is innocent,
they just sit there and they see some words or pictures flash
on a screen and they don't even know which ones are relevant
to the crime," Dr. Farwell says.
"It's not a highly stressful
situation. It can get an innocent person out of the process of
investigation and let him get on with his life."
Brain scanning may weed out
terrorists by latching on to their "significant memories"
of training with explosives, anthrax or other weapons. The question
is, who gets to decide which memories to go hunting? If it's
OK to screen for secret al-Qaeda codes and techniques, why not
memories of snorting cocaine, or sodomy, which is still a crime
in some U.S. states?
If society decides these are
acceptable uses, that's fine, says Dr. Quirion, but some public
debate is needed. These technologies are not futuristic notions;
they're here today. "We don't need to alarm anyone,"
Dr. Quirion says, "but this is something we should be thinking
about."
bevenson@nationalpost.com
© Copyright 2003 National Post
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
