"Why should we be worried about the advances of neuroscience, and in particular those of the Brain Initiative?"

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/bursting-the-neuro-utopian-bubble/?_r=0

Bursting the Neuro-Utopian Bubble

By BENJAMIN Y. FONG

"Why should we be worried about the advances of neuroscience, and in particular those of the Brain Initiative? On one level, its proponents are simply naïve about the corporate wolves with whom they run. George Church, a genetics professor at Harvard and one of the faces of the initiative, describes his sponsors, including Chevron, Procter & Gamble and Merck, as institutions that are “very pragmatic and practical about helping our world get better.” This willful ignorance regarding corporate influence is even more disturbing in the case of the Brain Initiative, which promises a very fine control over the seat of consciousness. With the help of this research, today’s neuro-marketing – marketing researched not with focus groups but M.R.I.s – may soon look quite primitive.

It is not enough, however, to point to the indissoluble marriage of science and industry, to follow the money and lament corrupted applications of this research. It is necessary, rather, to confront the pristine fantasy that guides it, so that the troubles the embodied vision faces cannot be parried as mere problems of implementation."