http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/neuromarketing.cfm
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The Latest in Consumer Brainwashing--Neuromarketing
Commercial Alert Asks Emory University to Halt Neuromarketing
Experiments <http://www.commondreams.org/news2003/1201-01.htm>
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 Instituteıs 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
brainıs activation responses in order prod desires for particular products. This new field is called ³neuromarketing.² It seeks, in the
words of Forbes magazine, to ³find a buy button inside the skull.² 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,² the New York Times reports, ³is 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. Emoryıs quest for a ³buy button² 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. Emoryıs 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 Hospitalıs Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine to conduct
its neuromarketing experiments. The BrightHouse website boasts of having the ³most-advanced
neuroscientific research capabilities and understanding of how the brain
thinks, feels and motivates behavior.² This knowledge of the brain enables
corporations to ³establish the foundation for loyal, long-lasting consumer
relationships,² 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 Universityıs 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 ³chief scientist² 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 ³Neural activity related to drug craving in cocaine addiction,²
and ³Imaging the roles of the amygdala in drug addiction.² Dr. Kiltsıs research interests include ³drug craving induced
by mental imagery of drug use-related scenes,² 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 Thatıs 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 ³buy button² 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 nationıs 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 Emoryıs 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 Universityıs 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 ³create, preserve, teach,
and apply knowledge in the service of humanity.² Last year, Emoryıs Board of
Trustees affirmed that this includes a ³commitment to use knowledge to
improve human well-being.² The Emory School of Medicine has a particular responsibility
under that declaration. Its own mission statement commits it to ³advance the
detection, treatment and prevention of disease processes.² 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 Universityıs 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 |