Today in terrifying developments presented as good news:

Government funded scientist Dr. Joe Tsien from the medical college of Georgia can now selectively erase short and long term memories in mice. During memory recall overexpression of calmodulin-dependent kinase 11, a signaling molecule found exclusively in the brain, appears to not disrupt future recollection of that memory but appears to delete the memory itself. The mouse’s brain is otherwise unharmed and it is able to form new memories without incident.

I am less interested in, and less than prepared to interpret any sort of neuroscience article so I will highlight this excerpt from the linked article from the Medical College of Georgia news:

“While memories are great teachers and obviously crucial for survival and adaptation, selectively removing incapacitating memories, such as traumatic war memories or an unwanted fear, could help many people live better lives,”

Isn’t it possible that recollection of war memories might serve a powerful social purpose? Commiting an atrocity is still an wrong even if you can’t remember it. How has fear changed so that it no longer is crucial for survival and adaptation? My feelings, in summary, are as follows: AAAAAAAAAAAA.

The possible uses of this technology for good are questionable while the potential for highly unethical, terrifying behavior by whoever has the knowledge and power to carry this out is not hard to imagine.

To ease your minds a little, the method is chemical-genetic meaning that the mice have five copies of the calmodulin-dependent kinase 11 gene, which had to be introduced while the mouse was still only a couple of cells. So anyone currently beyond that developmental stage is not a canidate for memory erasure. However, I don’t feel like this is the endpoint they were looking for. And while Dr. Tsien recieves more funding I think we need to decide whether some technologies should be pursued just because the can be.

PS. I can’t link to the article published in Neuron because I can only access it through UW, but I have the PDF and could email it if anyone is interested (Brian).