Behavioral Brain Surgery Criticized

By Fraser Kent

Remov-

Staff Writer WASHINGTON ing part of the brain to improve or change behavior was stronly criticized here yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The procedure could be easily abused because there are no adequate controls "on what is basically an experimental surgical procedure," said Dr. Herbert G. Vaughan Jr., professor of neurology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.

Nor are there adequate data to support claims of success, he said.

He said the procedure has been used:

• By a Mississippi surgeon to treat depression and aggressive antisocial behavior in 31 children, one of whom underwent six operations. None was used to treat a psychotic condition that would not respond to conventional therapy, he said.

• By a Tulane University specialist to give a homosexual psychopath an interest in girls, by implanting electrodes into the brain's pleasure center and then stimulating that area while showing him erotic heterosexual pictures.

To treat alcoholic patients by removing a lobe of the brain. Dr. Vaughan refused to name the four or five surgeons he said had attempted this procedure.

OTHERS AT the meeting were critical of attempts to change behavior with drugs or psychotherapy without a patient's consent, though it might have benefits to the patient and to the public.

even

The transquilizers introduced in the 1950s have extended the number of emotional problems that are now treated medically, said Dr. Gerald L. Klerman, professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Their use was first directed toward neuroses, but the pills are now being

popped to treat everyday stresses and tensions, he

said.

That trend will be accelerated "if American society develops in a nonrepressive political direction," predicted Dr. Perry London, University of Southern California psychologist. "Drugs will be removed from prohibitive control and will be legalized, possibly

under medical controls."

AMONG THE drugs Dr. London saw as available in such a permissive society were those used to improve memory, working and sex"and ual performance, probably to commit suicide."

Alternatively, drugs may be used "by benevolent government agencies to control deviant behavior" in those who don't volunteer for help

prisoners, for example, Dr. London said.

.

"All of us want economic planning, social welfare or containment of random violence," he said. "We are talking about a utopian so-

cicty, but there is no such utopia which does not re-ple, strict freedom. Social planning is the planning of restrictions conduct."

on individual

Dr. Klerman said: "As more effective drugs be come available, the right to the pursuit of happiness may be redefined to guarantee an absence of guilt, anxiety, tension, depression

and insomnia."

BUT WHAT kind of people would develop in such a calm existence?

"To what extent are personal virtues, maturity, sympathy and responsibility dependent upon having experienced psychic pain, suffering and anxiety?" he asked in reply. "Is it true that those who don't suffer are somehow less than human?"

Most of those on the panel expressed concern about an increasing abuse of behavior-changing techniques by government agencies to control dissidents. However, they also repeatedly suggested more controls by society to protect individuals against "attacks on their behavior."

Dr. Vaughan, for examsaid a national registry of each case of psychotheraPy, shock treatment and electrical stimulation of the brain "would be the minimum protection" of patients, while also providing needed information on how well the procedures work.