Government 'may sanction nerve-agent use on rioters', scientists fear

The Independent

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

A high-level group of experts has asked the Government to clarify its position on whether it intends to develop "incapacitating chemical agents" for a range of domestic uses that go beyond the limited use of chemical irritants such as CS gas for riot control.

The experts were commissioned by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of sciences, to investigate new developments in neuroscience that could be of use to the military. They concluded that the Government may be preparing to exploit a loophole in the Chemical Weapons Convention allowing the use of incapacitating chemical agents for domestic law enforcement.

The 1993 convention bans the development, stockpiling and use of nerve agents and other toxic chemicals by the military but there is an exemption for certain chemical agents that could be used for "peaceful" domestic purposes such as policing and riot control.

The British Government has traditionally taken the view that only a relatively mild class of irritant chemical agents that affect the eyes and respiratory tissues, such as CS gas, are exempt from the treaty, and then only strictly for use in riot control.

But the Royal Society working group says the Government shifted its position to allow the development of more severe chemical agents, such as the type of potentially dangerous nerve gases used by Russian security forces to end hostage sieges. "The development of incapacitating chemical agents, ostensibly for law-enforcement purposes, raises a number of concerns in the context of humanitarian and human-rights law, as well as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC)," the report says.

"The UK Government should publish a statement on the reasons for its apparent recent shift in position on the interpretation of the CWC's law enforcement position." The Royal Society group points to a 1992 statement by Douglas Hogg, the then Foreign Office Minister, who indicated that riot-control agents were the only toxic chemicals that the UK considered to be permitted for law-enforcement purposes. But in 2009 ministers gave a less-restrictive definition suggesting the use of "incapacitating" chemical agents would be permitted for law-enforcement purposes as long as they were in the categories and quantities consistent with that permitted purpose.

Professor Rod Flower, a biochemical pharmacologist at Queen Mary University of London, said the latest scientific insights into human brain is leading to novel ways of degrading human performance using chemicals.

Neuroscientists to Top Brass: Mess With Minds… Carefully

Wired
Katie Scott

A working group led by the Royal Society has warned the scientific community and the Government to tread carefully when entering the ethical minefield that is the use of neuroscience.

A report published today by the Royal Society tackles the divisive issue of the potential uses of neuroscience research by the military or security forces — whether to improve the performance of our troops, to “diminish” the performance of the enemy or, perhaps most controversially, in law enforcement.

The paper, entitled Brain Waves Module 3: Neuroscience, conflict and security, is one of four that have been published looking at the current and potential impact of neuroscience on society and policy, the law, and education.

This, the final report to be released, looks at the neuroscience research that is already being deployed by the military and what is being developed.


In a military context, the report authors have looked at the potential and current uses of neuroscience in every step of a soldier’s career, from recruitment to rehabilitation after injury. There are neuroimaging techniques that could help determine the best recruit for the role based on their propensity for risk-taking or specific skills that could help them train in a specialist area, for example, reconnaissance.

It also discusses the benefits of using brain stimulation technology to improve learning; and neuropharmacological agents to enhance cognition or attenuate effects of sleep deprivation, or treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The potential of neural interface systems (NIS) — a person controlling a computer with their mind — could go beyond “the restoration of function to individuals with sensory or motor deficits” (such as Braingate), says the report. “The ability to control a machine directly with the human brain could, for example, provide the potential to remotely operate robots or unmanned vehicles in hostile territory.”

However, NIS could also be deployed on a smaller scale as sensory enhancers, add the authors. They state: “For example, research has been conducted on the ability of individuals to feel the heat and distance of an object of interest in a room by a simple procedure involving a small magnetic implant on a fingertip or anywhere else on the human body. Placing a small coil of wire around the finger can cause the magnet to vibrate. If the coil is connected up to an external sensor then signals from the sensor will alter the vibrations of the magnet, which are detected by the recipient.

“In this way a sonar sensor or an infrared sensor can be used to operate with the magnet — hence the recipient ‘feels’ how far away an object is or remotely ‘feels’ how hot an object is. Unobtrusive neural interfaces like these sensory implants might provide an edge to the law enforcement fields in small but tangible ways.”

However, a clear emphasis from the authors, who include psychologists, life scientists and international security experts, is the legislation that needs to be put into place to protect civilians and military personnel alike. In particular, the report calls for governmental clarification on a recent interpretation of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s (CWC) law enforcement provision, which, as the paper details, “suggests that the use of incapacitating chemical agents for law enforcement purposes would be in compliance with the CWC as long as they were in types and quantities consistent with that permitted purpose”.

Rod Flowers was chairman of the working group that produced the paper and is Professor of Biochemical Pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London. He says: “We know that neuroscience research has the potential to deliver great social benefit — researchers come closer every day to finding effective treatments for diseases and disorders such as Parkinson’s, depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy and addiction. However, understanding of the brain and human behaviour coupled with developments in drug delivery also highlight ways of degrading human performance that could possibly be use in new weapons, especially incapacitating chemical agents.

“This is why it is so important that UK government is clear about its reasons for the changes made to its interpretation of the law enforcement exemption in the CWC. It’s absolutely crucial that countries adhering to the CWC address the definition of incapacitating chemical agents under the CWC at the next Review Conference in 2013.”
Flowers also argues that neuroscientists need to be aware of the potential dual usage of their research at an early stage of their training. “The neuroscientists conducting this research also need to be aware that knowledge and technologies used for beneficial purposes can also be misused for harmful purposes,” he argues.

Key will be communication between scientists and those in power. The paper says: “The UK government…should improve links with industry and academia to scope for significant future trends and threats posed by the applications of neuroscience.” The authors also call for the bodies such as the World Medical Association to study “the legal and ethical implications of biophysical degradation technologies (such as directed energy weapons) targeted at the central nervous system”.

Ethical issues aside, Flower questions whether the resources being used for neuroscience research for potential military applications might not be better deploted elsewhere: “The application of neuroscience research in the development of enhancement and degradation technologies for military and law enforcement use raises significant ethical considerations. Support for this type of research is potentially diverting funding and resources away from other important social applications such as the treatment of neurological impairment, disease and psychiatric illness. This is why it should be subject to ethical review and as transparent as possible.”

A message to the environmental movement

James Corbett

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Climate junk hard to dump

Financial Post

Some might rightfully argue that the Financial Post or Peter Harbor may have their own axes to grind on behalf of the petroleum industry or their related markets. I chose this article because it demonstrates the damage of biased scientific practices. If there is a desire for drastic change in the generation of CO2, the scientific community may need to eliminate skepticism by providing a more credible consensus about the level of CO2 contributed by human activity.

Let's separate into three categories those that question what everybody else seems to believe about global warming:

1. Those that refuse to acknowledge that there is a warming trend at all.

2. Those that acknowledge that there is a warming trend, but refuse to believe that any human activity is contributing to the warming trend.

3. Those that acknowledge the warming trend and acknowledge at least some human contribution to the warming trend, but believe the human contribution to global warming is exaggerated.

If you occupy the third category, safety and common sense would suggest that human CO2 emissions should be curbed- even if the level of anthropogenic is as small as the sliver in this illustration
Just by speculation, I would guess that those most influenced by the oil industry are more likely to fall into categories 1 and 2. My rationale for this is that 1 and 2 requires no curbs or restrictions in the use of oil. Here's the article:


The past six months has seen a series of unprecedented setbacks for the cause of catastrophic man-made climate change: the collapse of the Kyoto process; the release of incriminating Climategate emails; the discovery of the shoddy standards of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); the mounting evidence that a job-creating green industrial revolution is a fantasy; and the growing suspicion by the public that it has been sold a bill of goods.

The British Royal Society recently released a statement that "Any public perception that the science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect," thus contradicting its own former president, and true believer, Lord May. And if the science isn't settled, there can hardly ever have been "consensus" on the issue.

A forthcoming paper by Mike Hulme, Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, from which the Climategate emails emerged, admits that the actual group involved in the "consensus" that "human activities are having a significant influence on the climate" was in fact "only a few dozen," rather than the thousands invoked by the IPCC.

Last week, economist Richard Tol, one of the IPCC's own lead authors, suggested that the whole IPCC process should be suspended until the selection of authors has been fixed. This week, the IPCC's head, Rajendra Pachauri, who has previously accused skeptics of flat Earthism and "voodoo science," suddenly had a Damascene conversion as to the validity of dissent. "I am not deaf," he wrote, "to those who do not agree with the scientific consensus on man-made climate change. Nor, indeed, to those who do not agree with the findings--or, in some cases, the existence--of the IPCC."

But while such newfound humility (even though still embracing bogus "consensus") is welcome, every country on Earth is still officially committed to catastrophic man-made warming as a reality that demands a draconian policy response. The erection of such a massive commitment on such shaky foundations begs for explanation, and must be put in both a larger political and psychological context.

Hubristic overestimation of human significance -- in this case both for doing harm and correcting it by policy -- may be the fundamental reason for broad acceptance of man-made climate change theory. The notion that man's sinful and selfish ways will be punished goes back to the myth of the Flood. In many ways, belief in climate apocalypse reflects similar moralistic disapproval of "materialist" Western society, and the claim that its wealth has been bought at the expense of others, including now that of "future generations."

This quasi-religious belief is particularly appealing to the political and bureaucratic classes, because it provides new justifications for intervention to correct the imperfections and ongoing inequities of perpetually demonized capitalism. In a classic example of psychological "projection," however, alarmists claim that it is their opponents who are tainted by "greed" and "self-interest."

One insufficiently addressed question is why scientists would allow themselves to be recruited to essentially political objectives. Another is why they seem so resolutely committed to increasingly shaky theories, and lash out at critics. Surveys have shown that natural scientists tend to be left-liberal in their leanings. Many perhaps believe that a world with more top-down economic control and greater transfers to poor nations is desirable whatever the realities of climate science, and that given the possibility (however remote) of man-made climate catastrophe, that it is appropriate to adopt the "precautionary principle."

Such a mindset can be buttressed by the way science is done. In his classic book TheStructure of ScientificRevolutions, Thomas Kuhn noted that scientific groups adopted, and committed to, "paradigms," which then became fundamentally unquestionable. That stance was hardened furtherwhenmoralvalues, suchasbeing "sociallyuseful," wereinvolved.

The IPCC came with its moralistic paradigms pre-installed.

Kuhn noted that "professionalization" of any paradigm leads to "an immense restriction of the scientist's vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change." He even suggested that a scientist, as a captive to a paradigm, is " like the typical character of Orwell's 1984, the victim of a history rewritten by the powers that be."

Kuhn also suggested why catastrophic man-made climate change theory--even if it is found to have been greatly exaggerated, or even falsified -- will take a good deal of killing. "The transfer of allegiance from paradigm to paradigm," he wrote, "is a conversion experience that cannot be forced." The problem is that there is no other clear and simple climate theory to which to be "converted" at the moment.

Kuhn noted that the Earth-centred Ptolemaic system of astronomy, based on elaborately waltzing planets, "worked" for a long time, but eventually became a monster whose complications overwhelmed its usefulness. Then along came Copernicus. The resultant destruction of the Earth-centred universe led to enormous soul-searching, as did Darwin's vaporizing of the assumption of biological "progress" towards divine ends.

For most modern liberals, including many scientists, the market sun still goes round the government Earth, and it's a paradigm they are reluctant to change. Policy skeptics, by contrast, who are still trying to establish the revolutionary and counterintuitive insights of Adam Smith, point out that carbon rationing, green industrial strategy and aid transfers under the aegis of "clean development" are--whatever the science--economic junk.

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