Press Advisory

Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense

The secret debate or neuroscience research made public

WASHINGTON, D.C. – While recent attention has been devoted to the implications of developments in molecular biology to national security, less public consideration has been devoted to the implications of innovations in neuroscience. National defense agencies, however, have already realized the potential neuroscience research has to change the way modern wars are fought. Defense planners are interested in further studies that may improve soldiers’ endurance and psychological performance, and are developing drugs to influence the brain and create “brain-machine” information systems to aid cognition.

In his new book Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Dr. Jonathan Moreno explores the ethical and political implications of these new advances in neuroscience. Join Dr. Moreno, the Center for American Progress, and a distinguished panel of experts in national security, neuroethics, and civil liberties as they discuss the emerging intersection of neuroscience and national defense.

Featured Panelists:
Jonathan Moreno, Ph.D., Author, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense; Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress; David and Lyn Silfen University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics and the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania Professor
Jennifer Bard, Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law Program, Texas Tech University
Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry and Senior Fellow of the Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania

Moderated By:
P.J. Crowley, Senior Fellow and Director of National Defense and Homeland Security, Center for American Progress

Thursday, December 07, 2006
Program: 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Admission is free.
Lunch will be served at noon.

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW
Washington, DC 20005
Map & Directions Nearest

Metro: Blue/Orange Line to McPherson Square or Red Line to Metro Center

Biographies
Jonathan Moreno, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor and Professor of Medical Ethics and the History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Moreno is the author of the new book Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. He is a member of the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, is a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, and was co-chair of the National Academies’ Committee on Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. He is also a bioethics advisor for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Faculty Affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and a Fellow of the Hastings Center as well as of the New York Academy of Medicine. Moreno has been a senior staff member for two presidential commissions and has given invited testimony for both houses of congress.

Moreno has published a number of books and more than 200 papers, reviews, and book chapters, and is a member of several editorial boards. He is an ethics commentator for ABCNews.com and is a frequent guest on news and information programs. He is often quoted in the national press. Moreno has held full-time faculty appointments at Swarthmore College, the University of Texas at Austin, the George Washington University, and the SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn. He was also a Special Expert in the Department of Clinical Bioethics at the Warren Magnuson Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He was a member of the National Human Research Protections Advisory Committee, a senior consultant for the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and has advised the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. During 1994-95 he was Senior Policy and Research Analyst for the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

Moreno received his bachelor’s degree from Hofstra University in 1973, with highest honors in philosophy and psychology. He was a University Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, receiving his doctorate in philosophy in 1977, and was a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in cooperation with the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate from Hofstra.

Professor Jennifer Bard is Professor of Law and Director of the Health Law Program at Texas Tech University and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Neuropsychiatry at the Texas Tech University School of Medicine. She graduated from Yale Law School after studying law and philosophy at Oxford University. Following a clerkship with the Honorable Frank H. Freedman, Chief Federal District Court Judge, District of Massachusetts, Professor Bard was a litigation associate with Shearman & Sterling in New York for six years where she worked on complex commercial litigation in the fields of Antitrust, Securities Law, International Law, and Art Law. In 1995, she moved to the AIDS Action Council of the Government Affairs Department as a health policy analyst in Washington, D.C.

Professor Bard has been an Assistant Attorney General in the Connecticut Attorney General’s Office where she investigated Medicaid Fraud and Whistle Blower complaints. Before joining the TTU Law Faculty, she taught graduate and medical students as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health as well as a Research Director for the Program on Legal and Ethical Issues in Correctional Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Other appointments include a position as scientist for Sealy Center for Vaccine Development; Adjunct Professor for the University of Houston Law Center; and Associate Member of the Health Law and Policy Institute at the University of Houston. Professor Bard has joint appointments at the Law School and at the Medical School. She is a member of the TTUHSC Institutional Review Board. Professor Bard writes and lectures in the areas of bioethics, public health law, medical malpractice, the insanity defense, and correctional health.

Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in the Department of Medical Ethics and the Department of Sociology. He is a Senior Fellow of Penn’s Center for Bioethics, the Director of the Program in Psychiatry and Ethics at the School of Medicine, and a Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. He is also a member of Penn’s Cancer Center and Center for AIDS Research.

Dr. Wolpe also serves as the first Chief of Bioethics for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The office is responsible for safeguarding the protections of research subjects and astronauts both within NASA and among our international space partners.

Dr. Wolpe did his undergraduate work in the sociology and psychology of religion at the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to receive his Ph.D. in Medical Sociology from Yale University under an NIMH grant in Mental Health Services Research and Evaluation. After graduate school in 1986, Wolpe began teaching at Penn, and has taught there in one capacity or another since then. From 1988-1992, his full-time position was as the Coordinator of Research on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College.

Dr. Wolpe is the author of numerous articles and book chapters in sociology, medicine, and bioethics, and has contributed to a variety of encyclopedias on bioethical issues. His research examines the role of ideology and culture in medical thought, encompassing such diverse fields as genetics and reproduction; neuroethics and the integration of biotechnology into the human body; mental health and illness; human subjects research; religion and its role in bioethical debate, and death and dying.

Dr. Wolpe is the author of the textbook Sexuality and Gender in Society and the end-of-life guide In the Winter of Life. Dr. Wolpe sits on the national boards of organizations such as the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s National Medical Committee, and the National Embryo Donation Advisory Board of RESOLVE, as well as others. He also sits on a number of journal editorial boards, and is the Special Features Editor of the American Journal of Bioethics. He serves as a bioethics advisor to private industry, and to governmental agencies such as the Philadelphia Department of Human Services, Children and Youth Division. The winner of a number of teaching and writing awards, Dr. Wolpe has been chosen by The Teaching Company as a “Superstar Teacher of America” and his courses are nationally distributed on audio and videotape. Wolpe is a regular columnist on biotechnology for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and appears frequently in the broadcast media, including MSNBC, CBS and ABC Evening News, Dateline, and The Jim Lehrer Show, and has recently been cited in news sources such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The Los Angeles Times, and U.S. News and World Report.

P.J. Crowley is a Senior Fellow and Director of National Defense and Homeland Security at the Center for American Progress. During the Clinton administration, Crowley was Special Assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs, serving as Senior Director of Public Affairs for the National Security Council. Prior to that, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. In all, Crowley was a spokesman for the United States government and United States military for 28 years, 11 of which were at the Pentagon and three at the White House. He served for 26 years in the United States Air Force, retiring at the rank of colonel in September 1999. He is a veteran of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. During the Kosovo conflict, he was temporarily assigned to work with then NATO Secretary General Javier Solana.

Prior to joining American Progress, Mr.Crowley served as a national spokesman for the property/casualty insurance industry, focusing on strategic industry issues that included the impact of terrorism on commercial insurance in the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy and the effect of asbestos litigation on the broader economy. A native of Massachusetts, P.J. is a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross and an avid Red Sox fan and golfer. He is married to Paula E. Kougeas, also a retired Air Force colonel and now a teacher. They live in Alexandria, Virginia with their children, Mary and Christopher.

Just released!

Interactive: Mapping access to abortion by congressional district

Click here