The Latest in Consumer Brainwashing--Neuromarketing:
Protect your Children!!!
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Commercial Alert Asks Emory University to Halt Neuromarketing
Experiments
WASHINGTON - December 1 [2003] - Commercial Alert and prominent psychology experts
sent a letter today to Emory University President James Wagner, requesting that
Emory stop conducting neuromarketing experiments. These medical experiments
on human subjects are unethical because they will likely be used to promote
disease and human suffering.
If Emory University is found to have violated federal ethics rules regarding
experiments on human subjects, it may lose its federal research funding.
Neuromarketing is a controversial new field of marketing which uses functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) a medical technology -- not to heal,
but to sell products. A BrightHouse
Institute for Thought Sciences news release issued June 22, 2002 explains
that it uses fMRI ³to identify patterns of brain activity that reveal how
a consumer is actually evaluating a product, object or advertisement.
Thought Sciences marketing analysts use this information to more accurately
measure consumer preference, and then apply this knowledge to help marketers
better create products and services and to design more effective marketing campaigns.²
The BrightHouse Institute¹s neuromarketing experiments are conducted in
the neuroscience wing of the Emory University Hospital.
The letter to Emory University President James Wagner follows.
Dear Mr. Wagner:
The realm of marketing and market research has never been a model of ethical
scruple. But recent developments there are truly macabre in their implications.
The hucksters have enlisted research labs to map the brain¹s activation
responses in order prod desires for particular products.
This new field is called "neuromarketing." It seeks, in the words
of Forbes magazine, to "find a buy button inside the skull." It sounds
like something that could have happened in the former Soviet Union, for the
purposes of behavior control. Yet it is happening right here in America, at
a major university your university. "The neuroscience wing at Emory
University," the New York Times reports, "is the epicenter of the
neuromarketing world."
That is a dubious honor. Universities exist to free the mind, and enlighten
it. They do not exist to find new ways to subjugate the mind and manipulate
it for commercial gain. Emory¹s quest for a "buy button" in the
human skull is an egregious violation of the very reason that a university exists.
It also likely violates the principles of the Belmont Report, which sets out
guidelines for research on human subjects in the United States.
Emory¹s descent into neuromarketing is a project of something called the
BrightHouse Institute for Thought Sciences, which is the leading neuromarketing
research firm. (The name itself is Orwellian: the whole point of neuromarketing
is to bypass thought, not encourage it.) The Institute in turn is part of BrightHouse,
an advertising agency whose clients have included Coca-Cola, Pepperidge Farm,
K-Mart and Home Depot. Brighthouse uses the Emory University Hospital¹s
Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine to conduct its neuromarketing experiments.
The BrightHouse website boasts of having the "most-advanced neuroscientific
research capabilities and understanding of how the brain thinks, feels and motivates
behavior." This knowledge of the brain enables corporations to "establish
the foundation for loyal, long-lasting consumer relationships," the website
says. Loyalty through brain mapping, in other words.
The founder and chief executive officer is Joseph Alden Reiman, an adjunct professor
at Emory University¹s Goizueta Business School. According to the BrightHouse
website, Reiman is also Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Psychiatry
and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine. The "chief
scientist" at the Institute is Clinton D. Kilts, professor and vice-chair
for research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
Dr. Kilts is an expert in addiction. He has published such articles as "Neural
activity related to drug craving in cocaine addiction," and "Imaging
the roles of the amygdala in drug addiction."
Dr. Kilts¹s research interests include "drug craving induced by mental
imagery of drug use-related scenes," according to his Emory University
School of Medicine web page. Is Dr. Kilts now using his knowledge of addiction
to sell products such as Coke? Is he working on mental mapping to induce product
cravings through the use of product-related scenes? Dr. Kilts has declined to
respond to repeated calls regarding his neuromarketing research.
The Belmont Report requires a systematic assessment of risks and benefits in
research on human subjects, and that the benefits outweigh the risks. The risks
of this research are obvious, as is the moral repulsiveness. The benefits are
more questionable, except to corporations such as Coca-Cola.
At the most basic physical level, neurological marketing research relies on
the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging on human subjects. Strong magnets can
harm human subjects if they have metal in their bodies (e.g. cardiac pacemaker,
aneurism clips, intrauterine devices, some dental work, body piercings) or are
carrying metal, such as coins or jewelry. Such harm is not likely but the possibility
does exist. Research subjects occasionally report dizziness or nausea when their
heads are moved within the bore of the magnet.
That¹s on top of any unknown adverse effects of placing a human subject
in the intense magnetic field required for an MRI. It is hard to believe that
this procedure is helpful when not medically required.
But such potential physical harms are secondary. The real risk of neuromarketing
research is to the people including children who are the real targets
of this research. Already, marketing is deeply implicated in a host of pathologies.
The nation is in the midst of an epidemic of marketing-related diseases. Our
children are suffering from extraordinary levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes,
anorexia, bulimia, and pathological gambling, while millions will eventually
die from the marketing of tobacco. Such illnesses affect also the population
at large, as does chronic debt that people incur to support the consumption
that the marketing industry encourages.
Neurological marketing is a tool to amplify these trends. It is hard to think
of a single benefit that could result from teaching corporate marketers how
to press a "buy button" in the minds of individual Americans. Is there
really a person in America who is insufficiently impelled to eat more Pepperidge
Farm cookies or drink more Coke? Where would you rank the task of increasing
this impulsion on the list of the nation¹s pressing needs?
Some might protest that neuromarketing research could be used to shut a buy
button off as well as on. Conceivably. But it is not clear why corporations
would support research that will cause people to buy less of their products.
If the university and the researchers involved were to sign written statements
promising that this research would be used only for such purposes, on pain of
stiff financial penalties, the argument might become remotely credible. But
even then, the prospect of behavior control at that level has totalitarian implications
that require much more discussion than has occurred to date.
Given the prospect of dubious social benefit and almost certain social harm,
it is hard to see how Emory¹s neuromarketing research meets the ethical
standards of the Belmont Report for experimentation on human subjects.
As you know, if Emory University has run afoul of the Belmont Report, it may
lose all federal research funding. If necessary, we may ask the federal Office
for Human Research Protections to investigate whether Emory University¹s
neurological marketing research violates the principles of the Belmont Report.
But more importantly, it is hard to see how neuromarketing research meets the
ethical standards for university research, especially a university such as Emory.
Emory was founded by the Methodist Church in 1836 upon a core of ethical and
religious values. Its mission is to "create, preserve, teach, and apply
knowledge in the service of humanity." Last year, Emory¹s Board of
Trustees affirmed that this includes a "commitment to use knowledge to
improve human well-being."
The Emory School of Medicine has a particular responsibility under that declaration.
Its own mission statement commits it to "advance the detection, treatment
and prevention of disease processes." Emory Medical School exists to eliminate
disease, not encourage it. It certainly does not exist to produce research that
can and predictably will be used to for marketing that tends to
increase disease and human suffering.
If Emory University takes its own mission seriously, it should challenge this
abuse of medical knowledge and technology to manipulate people for commercial
purposes.
At this time, we ask that you immediately:
1) Forbid the BrightHouse Institute, or any other entity, from using any Emory
University property, equipment, office space or facilities, including its MRI,
for the purposes of conducting neuromarketing research; and,
2) Publicly release Emory University¹s Institutional Review Board reviews
of the neuromarketing research.
Sincerely,
Rev. Tom Grey, Executive Director, National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling
Jane M. Healy, PhD, author, Failure to Connect and Endangered Minds
Susan Linn, EdD, Instructor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School; Co-founder,
Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children
Jonathan Rowe, Director, Tomales Bay Institute
Gary Ruskin, Executive Director, Commercial Alert V.
Susan Villani, MD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins Medical
School
http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/neuromarketing.cfm
__________________
"principiis obsta - resist the beginnings; remedies come too late, when
by long delay the evil has gained strength"
"thinking makes beautiful"
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Last edited by abdulhakeem : 02-05-06 at 10:51 AM.
Source Accessed 8/24/07 http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/1201-01.htm