From ancient times, man has tried to control the destiny of other human beings by depriving them of liberty and submitting them to obedience. Slaves have been forced to work and to serve the caprices of their masters; prisoners have been chained to row in the galleys; and men were and still are inducted into the armed forces and sent thousands of miles away to create havoc, take lives, and lose their own.

Biological assault has also existed throughout recorded history. In ancient China, the feet of female children were bound to reduce their size. In many countries thieves have been punished by having their hands cut off; males have been castrated to inhibit sexual desire and then placed as eunuchs in charge of harems; and in some African tribes it was customary to ablate the clitoris of married females to block their possible interest in other men and insure their fidelity. These barbaric practices belong to the past, but the forceful imposition of biological changes still continues in our age. Sterilization of human beings by surgery or radiation has been legally imposed in some lands as a punishment for sexual crimes or a preventive measure to avoid the spread of genetic defects. In the face of the real danger of population explosion, several scientists have proposed government enforced regulations to control fertility, and it is expected that in the next few years an antifertility drug, which can be added to the water supplies of cities, will be developed. According to Ketchel (126), "Voluntary methods are to be preferred

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but only if they work. If they do not, then involuntary controls must be imposed. . . . Such measures are preferable to the starvation and misery resulting from overpopulation."

When an individual's behavior is judged unfit by members of a society, the consequences may be forceful deprivation of liberty and incarceration. If the individual is confined to a mental hospital, his undesirable conduct may cause the authorities to administer drugs, by forceful injection if necessary, in order to change or control his behavioral responses. In the early 1950s an historical precedent was established for the deliberate destruction of part of the brain as a legal treatment for criminals (130). A man apprehended in Pittsburgh after committing a series of robberies was given the alternative of a long jail sentence or submission to frontal lobe surgery which might curb or eliminate his future criminal behavior. Lobotomy was performed, and although initially the patient appeared better adjusted socially, several months later he committed more thefts. When he realized that the police were closing in, he wrote a letter to the surgeon expressing appreciation for his efforts and regret that the operation had not been successful. Hoping that the study of his case might help others, he donated his brain to the surgeon and committed suicide by shooting himself through the heart. In spite of this therapeutic failure, the possibility of surgical rehabilitation of criminals has been considered by several scientists as more humane, more promising, and less damaging for the individual than his incarceration for life.

Even if our conduct is entirely within the law, we cannot escape the intervention of the state in our private lives and in our most intimate biology. In general, we are not even aware of it. Many "free" societies, including the United States, do not allow a bride and groom to marry legally until blood has been drawn from their veins and a medical officer has certified the absence of syphilis, a procedure which casts a rather insulting doubt on their past integrity and intelligence. In order to cross international borders, it is necessary to document that our skin has recently been scarified and injected with smallpox. In many

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cities, by governmental regulations, the drinking water floods our bodies with chlorine for safety reasons and with fluoride for strengthening our teeth. The table salt that we buy is usually fortified with iodine to aid the proper physiology of our thyroid gland. These intrusions into our private blood, teeth, and glands are accepted, practiced, and enforced. Naturally they have been legally introduced, are useful for the prevention of illness, and generally benefit society and individuals, but they have also already established the precedent of official manipulation of our personal biology.

To evaluate the rationale of governmental intervention in our bodies, we must realize that civilization represents a considerable degree of biological artificiality, mainly the intelligent escape from a primitive natural fate which was characterized by the death of countless babies, the short span of life, and the high incidence of illness and physical misery. Human health has improved in a spectacular way precisely because official agencies have had the knowledge and the power to influence our personal biology, and it should be emphasized that health regulations are similar in dictatorial and in democratic countries.

Our own existence from birth to death must be properly certified to be officially recognized, and we are surrounded by government-regulated industrial manipulations which extend to the food we eat, the water we drink, and the conditioned air we breathe. We are in a highly organized age where social and individual needs often conflict, and social ruling usually prevails. From the medical point of view this organization is highly beneficial, but the loss of personal self-determination is one of the problems of civilized life which must be carefully confronted if we are to reach reasonable compromises. Even if we agree that individual freedom should in general bow to community welfare, we enter into a new dimension when considering the social implications of the new technology which can influence personal structure and behavioral expression by surgical, chemical, and electrical manipulation of the brain. We may tolerate the practicality of being inoculated with yellow fever when visiting Asiatic countries, but shall we accept the theoretical

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future possibility of being forced to take a pill or submit to an electric shock for the socially protective purpose of making us more docile, infertile, better workers, or happier? How can we decide the limits of social impositions on individual rights?

It is convenient to remember that the art of mental escape from reality has been practiced from ancient times, especially by using drugs. Opium, for example, has probably been known since the Stone Age, and its extensive use in the Near and Far East has sometimes been encouraged by local rulers, partly because populations under opium habituation were more apathetic and easier to govern. Peyote also has a long history, being known to the Mexican Indians since pre-Columbian times and revered by some as a link to the divine. A substance closely related to peyote alkaloids is LSD (d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate), which has powerful effects on behavioral reactivity at a microgram dose, and which, along with marijuana, has contributed to changes in the mental and behavioral attitudes of recent generations. During the last fifteen years, a large number of tranquilizers, energizers, and other psychoactive drugs have been discovered, and their use has changed the atmosphere of mental hospitals and the practice of psychiatry. They are highly beneficial both for patients and for relatively normal persons who need pharmacological help to cope with the pressures of civilized life. The widespread use of psychoactive substances including alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, opium, chlorpromazine, and LSD may have an incalculable impact on the social behavior of large population groups. Administration of a chemical mist in order to subdue hostile crowds has already been used as a strategic weapon by armies and by local police. There is no doubt that even more selective and powerful psychodrugs will be discovered in the near future and that decisions must be made to regulate their use and to prevent their abuse.

The history of ESB is very recent, but already there is abundant information about its effectiveness and fears about the dangers of its social misuses. Could a ruthless dictator stand at a master radio transmitter and stimulate the depth of the brains of a mass of hopelessly enslaved people? This Orwellian possibility

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may provide a good plot for a novel, but fortunately it is beyond the theoretical and practical limits of ESB. By means of ESB we cannot substitute one personality for another, nor can we make a behaving robot of a human being. It is true that we can influence emotional reactivity and perhaps make a patient more aggressive or amorous, but in each case the details of behavioral expression are related to an individual history which cannot be created by ESB. The classical methods of punishment and reward through normal inputs are more effective in inducing purposeful changes in behavorial activity than the modifications of emotional tuning evoked by cerebral stimulation. Several of the psychoactive drugs may be nearly as effective and are far simpler to use.

Both medical benefits and social implications of cerebral research depend on the acquisition of knowledge about brain physiology, the possibility of investigating the mechanisms of the mind experimentally, the new approach to the understanding of the determinants of reward and punishment in relation to human emotions and desires, and the unveiling of the neuronal basis of personal identity.

Understanding of biology, physics, and other sciences facilitated the process of ecological liberation and domination. Man rebelled from natural determination and used his intelligence and skills to impose a human purpose on the development of the earth. We are now on the verge of a process of mental liberation and self-domination which is a continuation of our evolution. Its experimental approach is based on the investigation of the depth of the brain in behaving subjects. Its practical applications do not rely on direct cerebral manipulations but on the integration of neurophysiological and psychological principles leading to a more intelligent education, starting from the moment of birth and continuing throughout life, with the preconceived plan of escaping from the blind forces of chance and of influencing cerebral mechanisms and mental structure in order to create a future man with greater personal freedom and originality, a member of a psychocivilized society, happier, less destructive, and better balanced than present man (55).