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Ethics and social policy in research on the neuroscience of human sexuality

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 1031–1033 (2004)Cite this article

The potential benefits of neuroscientific research into sexuality are great, but neuroscientists must participate in debates over the social, forensic and therapeutic implications of their findings. If serious research in sexuality is to be supported by the public, researchers must continue to earn society's trust with responsible and thoughtful presentation of their work.

The history of sexuality research over the last century or so is not admirable; neither, for that matter, are large swaths of the history of neuroscience. When the two have come together, the results have been particularly troubling. For a century after the development of sexology in the late 1800s, for example, medicine almost uniformly defined culturally unacceptable sexual behaviors as pathological, and often as brain disorders. Suggested remedies for activities such as masturbation, homosexuality or fetishism included castration or hysterectomy, hormonal therapies, electroshock and other forms of 'heterosexual rehabilitation.' The Nazis experimented with psychosurgery for homosexuality, whereas post-World War II approaches included the more 'humane' aversion therapy. Antonio Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize for his development of the prefrontal lobotomy, which Walter Freeman in the US tirelessly promoted until it became a medical technique recommended not only for schizophrenia, but also for 'hereditary defectives' and 'moral degenerates.' (Between 1936 and 1956, doctors performed more than 60,000 psychosurgical procedures in the US1.) Of course, history is also filled with laudable science, groundbreaking discoveries and thoughtful therapeutic applications. But given the abuses, it is not just squeamishness that makes people wary when scientists claim to be uncovering empirical truths about our sexual nature.

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  1. Department of Psychiatry and Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 19104, Pennsylvania, USA

    Paul R Wolpe

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Wolpe, P. Ethics and social policy in research on the neuroscience of human sexuality. Nat Neurosci 7, 1031–1033 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1324

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