When the boss turns pusher: a proposal for employee protections in the age of cosmetic neurology
- Dr J M Appel, 140 Claremont Ave #3D, New York, NY 10027, USA; jacobmappel{at}gmail.com
- Received 16 August 2007
- Accepted 16 October 2007
Abstract
Neurocognitive enhancement, or cosmetic neurology, offers the prospect of improving the learning, memory and attention skills of healthy individuals well beyond the normal human range. Much has been written about the ethics of such enhancement, but policy-makers in the USA, the UK and Europe have been reluctant to legislate in this rapidly developing field. However, the possibility of discrimination by employers and insurers against individuals who choose not to engage in such enhancement is a serious threat worthy of legislative intervention. While lawmakers should not prevent individuals from freely pursuing neurocognitive enhancement, they should act to ensure that such enhancement is not coerced. This paper offers one model for such legislation, based upon a proposed US law, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, to address precisely this particular pitfall of the impending neuroscience revolution.
Footnotes
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Competing interests: None declared.
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↵i Chatterjee enumerated the four concerns as relating to safety, character and individuality, distributive justice and coercion. Ronald Bailey had earlier laid out eight objections,14 which neatly overlap with those advanced by Chatterjee. See also Chatterjee (2004).3
