Should We Screen Kids’ Brains and Genes To ID Future Criminals?
By Gary Marchant,
Slate
| 10. 17. 2012
This article arises from Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University that explores emerging technologies and their implications for public policy and for society. On Monday, Oct. 22, Future Tense will host “My Brain Made Me Do It,” an event in Washington, D.C., on how the legal system will adapt to changes in neuroscience. For more information and to RSVP, or to watch the live stream, visit the New America Foundation’s website.If you read judicial opinions in serious crime cases, which always seem to describe every gruesome and salacious detail, you will almost surely reach two conclusions. First, no “normal” person could ever commit many of the horrific acts described in those cases. Second, everyone involved would be so much better off if we could have somehow anticipated and prevented those crimes from occurring in the first place. The perpetrators themselves might be leading normal lives if their violent tendencies were identified and treated before they committed their crimes. Even more importantly, the innocent victims, as well as their loved...
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It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
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Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
By Robert Resta, The DNA Exchange | 07.22.2024
Medical geneticists and genetic counselors have an often complicated and at times tense relationship with people with disabilities, their families, advocates, and scholars. Geneticists are strong advocates and supporters for all of their patients, regardless of their abilities and disabilities...
By Katherine Bourzac, Nature | 07.10.2024
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...