Law, Science, & Technology: What Can the BRAIN Initiative Learn from the Human Genome Project?

In April 2013, President Obama officially announced the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, with approximately $110 million in funds slated for fiscal year 2014 directed through the NIH, DARPA, and NSF.  Descriptions of the Initiative emphasize the convergence of numerous technologies as playing a part in the trajectory of the research agenda.  The White House Fact Sheet states that “great promise for developing such technologies [to treat neurological and psychiatric disease] lies at the intersection of nanoscience, imaging, engineering, informatics, and other rapidly emerging fields of science.” 

Parallels are already being drawn to the $3.8 billion, 10-year Human Genome Project (HGP) begun in the 1990s, culminating in the publication of the complete sequence of the human genome in 2003.  President Obama himself noted in his February 2013 State of the Union address that “every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy.”  While the HGP had many successes, it also fueled many subsequent legal and ethical controversies, many of which took years to play out and some that remain hotly debated today.  This presentation will explore several emerging legal and ethical concerns relating to the Initiative, grounding them to lessons from the HGP.

Professor Jordan Paradise, Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law researches and publishes on the legal, ethical, and societal implications of emerging science and technologies such as genetics and nanotechnology. She joined the Seton Hall University School of Law as an Associate Professor in 2009. She teaches Food & Drug Law, Administrative Law and an Advanced Writing seminar.