The Path Whisperer

Scientists Erase Specific Memories in Mice

Joe Z. Tsien

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081022/hl_hsn/scientistserasespecificmemoriesinmice

The Spotless Mind

Alain Brunet

http://www.popsci.com/category/tags/alain-brunet

Isn’t this a little backwards? Why not try to do something about psychopathic criminals rather than erase their tracks (not that it’s likely to work, IMO)? What’s the purpose here? To torture people for hours, get the desired information (the primitive and simplistic sociopathic mind just can’t get it that torture doesn’t work) and then erase the unpleasant memory from the victim’s mind? Don’t try to stop rape and murder rampages, but erase the survivors’ memories? Don’t stop sociopathic officers at checkpoints from ordering their men to fire on cars filled with families, just erase the shooters’ memories later?

Basically I’m with Startrek’s Captain Kirk:

“Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor.  You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves! I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!”

http://www.startrekfans.net/lofiversion/index.php/t29330.html

This is just my gut feeling, but I’m not sure that sociopaths would even understand that view, they certainly wouldn’t care about others.

Also I believe that human nature is just too corrupt for this kind of power.  It’s been only about 150 years since we had organized slavery in the U.S.  Has human nature changed?  Slavery still exists here and there in the world or even occasionally here in the United States (usually with illegal immigrants — of course, even if not overt, they essentially live in a state of economic slavery).  Or look at corporations, they go overseas and revert to using child labor or near slavery conditions.  Give corporations sociopathic freedoms and they will follow sociopathic dictates.  Furthermore, otherwise decent (but weak) individuals will follow the companies’ interests and corrupt normals will continue to study at the feet of sociopaths for the secret of conscienceless corruption and evil.   There’s been no progress when it comes to who we are.

The Spotless Mind’s Alain Brunet works at McGill University.  That seems to ring a bell. . . .  let’s see . . . McGill . . . memory erasing . . . depatterning . . . Ewen Cameron!  Aha!  McGill was famous as the home of Ewen Cameron’s depatterning experiments.  He sought to take subjects (his fellow human beings) back to a white slate, erasing memories and even personalities through drugs, brainwashing and certain torture techniques.  I don’t think he was exactly successful, though he did create a number of vegetables and otherwise damaged human beings.  Being a monster psychopath, humans were no more than ants to him.

“McGill’s Psychiatry department was founded in 1943 by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron. Although Cameron continues to be a subject of controversy, there is no doubt that he was a great builder. In 1944, the Allan Memorial Institute opened. The site was Ravenscrag, a stately mansion located on the slopes of Mount Royal, which was renovated to house an institute of psychiatry.” Cameron then led both the Allan and the McGill department of psychiatry until 1963. [emphasis added.]

Ewen Cameron

http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/Psychiatry/history.htm

“Continues to be a subject of controversy”?? Josef Mengele is still controversial too, I suppose.  It’s worth noting that Cameron led McGill’s psychiatry department for twenty years.  In addition he was served as president of both the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association.  For more info:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron, http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/part1/chapter1.

So apparently Alain Brunet is following in the great man’s footsteps in a university that still has not seen fit to disown him. Further, I’m not tremendously reassured about Alain Brunet’s connections with the U.S. military: grants (http://www.douglasrecherche.qc.ca/profiles/details.asp?l=e&id=15) and work in military hospitals (http://www.dialogues-cns.org/htm/annuaire/b.asp). It seems his intent is to cure PTSD (post traumatic shock disorder) among soldiers by erasing memories.

When checkpoints fail

In 2006, Brian Palmer quoted a Marine officer as saying only 60 out of 1,000 deaths at Iraqi checkpoints were of “bad guys” (weapons or explosives were found in the vehicles later), the rest innocent victims.

“The corporal at Mojave Viper laid out a few more reasons why drivers don’t always stop. “Maybe his wife’s pregnant — he ‘s trying to get her to the hospital. That happens all the time. Maybe he’s just a fucking retard.” Marines make mistakes too, he allowed.”

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/07/stop-and-kill.html (the late and lamented Steve Gilliard’s blogspot)

Absolutely, such actions will leave the soldiers and Marines with PTSD (sociopathic soldiers/Marines and officers on the other hand won’t be affected in the slightest). However, it seems to me, that for memory erasure to work against PTSD, the memories would have to be erased almost instantly (or extremely shortly), before the event percolated through the different layers of the psyche.  Children who have been abused or suffered a great loss (such as the death of a parent) under the age of three have no memory of it but it affects their lives profoundly.  One way of putting it is that a child won’t remember the parent or the death but will remember the loss.

So will these soldiers have their memories wiped clean everyday, after every engagement, what?  The movie Groundhog’s Day comes to mind.  Do they think Americans raise their children for this?