The Terminal Man - Crichton Michael - Страница 2

Readers who find the subject matter of this book shocking or frightening should not delude themselves by also thinking it is something quite new. The physical study of the brain has been proceeding for more than a century; the technology of behavior modification has been developing for more than fifty years. For decades, it was there for anyone to see, discuss, support, or oppose.

Nor has there been any lack of publicity. Research in neurobiology is spectacular enough to appear regularly in the Sunday supplements. But the public has never really taken it seriously. There has been so much ominous talk and so much frivolous speculation for so many years that the public now regards "mind control" as a problem removed to the distant future: it might eventually happen, but not soon, and not in a way that would affect anyone now alive.

Scientists engaged in this research have sought public discussion. James V. McConnell of the University of Michigan told his students some years ago, "Look, we can do these things. We can control behavior. Now, who's going to decide what's to be done? If you don't get busy and tell me how I'm supposed to do it, I'll make up my own mind for you. And then it's too late."

Many people today feel that they live in a world that is predetermined and running along a fixed pre-established course. Past decisions have left us with pollution, depersonalization, and urban blight; somebody else made the decisions for us, and we are stuck with the consequences.

That attitude represents a childish and dangerous denial of responsibility, and everyone should recognize it for what it is. In that spirit, the following chronology is presented:

1864 Morel, Fairet, and other French neurologists describe some elements of psychomotor epilepsy.

1888 Hughlings Jackson (Great Britain) provides the classic description of psychomotor epilepsy and its preceding aura.

1898 Jackson and Colman (Great Britain) localize the disorder to the temporal lobe of the brain.

1908 Horsley and Clarke (Great Britain) describe stereotaxic surgical techniques for use on animals.

1941 Jasper and Kershman (U.S.A. and Canada) show that the electroencephalogram of patients with psychomotor epilepsy is characterized by discharges from the temporal lobe.

1947 Spiegel and co-workers (U.S.A.) report the first stereotaxic surgery performed on a human being.

1950 Penfield and Flanagan (Canada) perform ablative surgery for psychomotor epilepsy, with good results.

1953 Heath and co-workers (U.S.A.) perform stereotaxic implantation of depth electrodes.

1958 Talairach and co-workers (France) begin chronic stereotaxic implantation of depth electrodes.

1963 Heath and co-workers (U.S.A.) allow patients to stimulate themselves, at will, via implanted electrodes.

1965 Narabayashi (Japan) reports on 98 patients with violent behavior treated by stereotaxic surgery.

1965 More than 24,000 stereotaxic procedures on human beings have been performed in various countries by this date.

1968 Delgado and co-workers (U.S.A.) attach "stimoceiver" (radio stimulator plus radio receiver) to freely ambulatory hospital patients with psychomotor epilepsy.

1969 Chimpanzee at Alamogordo, N.M., is directly linked by radio to a computer which programs and delivers his brain stimulations.

1971 Patient Harold Benson is operated on in Los Angeles.

M.C. 

Los Angeles

October 23, 1971