Oxytocin Could Be Weaponized, Expert Warns
August 20, 2009
Malcolm Dando's op-ed piece in Nature this week has gotten attention for his warning that biologists seldom understand the military implications of their research.
Analee Newitz on io9 quotes Dando using oxytocin sprays as an example of this:
Red Orbit has another article about Dando's op-ed.
In writing my book about oxytocin's role in human emotion, I spoke to most of the top oxytocin researchers. They were well aware about people's self-experimentation. Sue Carter of the University of Illinois said at that their clinic, which treats kids with autism spectrum disorder, many parents told her they'd tried over-the-counter oxytocin sprays, or else asked about it.
Awareness of the issue of self-dosing and entrepreneurial companies using biology research for profit and/or military weapons development isn't much use, of course. Biologists have to do the basic experimentation; the best way they can protect their research is to patent whatever they can.