Dendreon Wins
April 14th, 2009Hank Greely Talks to the Farm about Enhancement
April 13th, 2009Neuroethicist Hank Greely was interviewed recently by the Farm, Stanford's magazine, about why the Nature article on neurocognitive enhancement was a good idea.
Some good snippets: (1) "Part of me thinks that any attention is good attention, because we think this is a really important issue." (2) "Our regulatory system isnt set up to look at or think about the enhancement uses of drugs that are approved for medical conditions." (3) "Right now, to the extent the public has thought about this issue at all, its kind of the knee-jerk drugs are bad, enhancement is bad, lets ignore it. Not a good solution." (4)"I think it (neuroethics) is really fascinating, really hard, not going to be figured out in my lifetime and more important than genetics." (5) "For me personally its the sense of inevitability. Were going to have to confront this issue, and we havent even begun to think about it. (6) So, if given free rein, I would rewrite the regulatory regime in a way to make the regulation of these kinds of drugs, when used for enhancing purposes, more rational. (7) But I do think that some changes will be needed. Im ultimately not pessimistic about whether well get those changes.