Dai Rees and Steven Rose (Eds): The New Brain Sciences: Perils and Prospects

Abstract

The New Brain Sciences: Perils and Prospects Dai Rees and Steven Rose (eds) Cambridge University Press, 2004. £24.99, xiv + 301 pp. ISBN 0-521-53714-2 This has been a difficult book to both read and review, because the authors are so diverse in profession and stance. The book developed out of two conferences held in Stockholm and London in 2001 and 2002 and sought to go beyond what are the developments in neurosciences to the questions of ‘why are these happening?’, ‘what do these mean for society?’ and even ‘are there legal implications?’. The choice of authors is interesting. Given so much of the development of the neurosciences has been in the USA (p. 3), it is of interest that there were no participants from North America, except for one from Canada. Steven Rose has long been a vociferous critic of many areas of ‘medical’ and ‘biological’ approaches to human behavior and some of the authors such as David Healy are predictable, given his longstanding attacks on psychopharmacology and the quality of the evidence base from drug trials. The more recent need for disclosure of randomized control trials and of the involvement of pharmaceutical companies has hopefully reduced some of the problems Healy has publicized in the last few years. I admit to being confused by his last few paragraphs. There is recognition of the growing field of psychopharmacogenomics that there are individual differences in the response to particular medications for psychopathology, but does this really mean clinical trials will ‘depend on screening and rejecting patients on genetic grounds’? Other authors are less obvious choices for the contributions they made. Angus Clarke has written on the ‘inappropriateness’ of pursuing research into the genetics of intelligence and other human behavioral traits. As a clinical geneticist experienced in discrete medical conditions, it is not clear he is the most appropriate person to comment on strategies for research into ‘normal’ behavior, a debate I have already been involved in (Hay 2003) over the 2002 Nuffield Council on Bioethics Report which he endorses. To give the editors credit, they do include chapters which disagree with their personal viewpoints. While in his generally excellent overview and introduction, Steven Rose does rail against even the diagnosis of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), far less its treatment by stimulant medication, the chapter on ADHD by Paul Cooper gives a much more pragmatic view from the perspective of what happens in reality in schools. I found very insightful his comment on p. 258 that the debate over ADHD does ‘tell us a lot about the tribalism of competing disciplines and professions’. There were some chapters which I found really thought provoking. Peter Lipton chaired the Nuffield Council Working Party on Pharmacogenetics, and this experience combined with his expertise in the philosophy of science made his chapter on ‘Genetic and Generic Determinism’ a joy to read. Everyone in this field should contemplate his last sentence ‘Genetic knowledge does not itself threaten free will, but what we do with such knowledge is another story’. Equally the next chapter by Alexander McCall Smith on neuroscience and the law deserves close reading. Better known to many because of his humorous detective stories, McCall Smith as a Professor of Medical Law provides an outstanding account of behavioral genetics and individual responsibility, combining legal, philosophical and empirical studies with the final conclusion ‘responsibility survives the insights of neurosciences and behavioural genetics’. I have used both these chapters with my students and have been impressed by the discussion they engender. It would be churlish to go through the book, indicating which chapters I did or did not agree with, although I feel I do have to single out Hilary Rose's chapter as doing a disservice to feminism. There are so many relevant issues that could have been discussed, ranging from Katherine Dalton's controversial work on premenstrual syndrome as a judicial issue to the recent and exciting developments about hormonal influences and treatments for women with schizophrenia, to the shameful treatment of Rosalind Franklin in the race to discover the structure of DNA. Hilary Rose missed an important opportunity, unlike Lorraine Radford, whose chapter on femicide (‘misogynous killing of women by men’) combines both empirical data and thoughtful comments about the limits of biological explanation far less expiation of such inexcusable behavior. I suspect this is a book every reader will both love and hate. It represents such a range of opinions that there are bound to be some chapters with which you agree totally and others with which you disagree just as much. It is unlikely your views on what are the ‘good’ chapters will be the same as mine, but that is the uniqueness of this text. David A. Hay † † Curtin University PO Box U 1987 Perth, WA 6845 Australia E-mail: d.hay@curtin.edu.au