Hughes quoted on virtue engineering of marriage

Executive Director James Hughes was interviewed for an article in the McGill Daily on the use of neurochemicals to enhance marital bonding and fidelity.

Drugs and marriage go together like a horse and carriage

McGill Daily Nov, 2006 | 96(21)

By Arun Jaganathan

Our ability to control and even enhance human behavior is becoming stronger with advances in medical technology. We have common chemical solutions to everyday problems. Caffeine frequently fuels us while we work into the wee hours of the morning. Some stage performers use beta-blockers to keep a lid on their nerves. But could we use drugs to keep a marriage together?

According to James Hughes, a bioethicist at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut some drugs could help jump-start a failing marriage by heightening bonding and trust. Oxytocin helps increase trust, and vasopressin in particular seems to have a role in improved sexual health in marriage.

“The partners [who] try to improve their relationship should probably take doses of vasopressin while having sex, since it appears to increase the likelihood that a person will associate dopamine surges with a particular partner.”

Oxytocin and vasopressin are structurally similar peptide hormones, differing in only two amino acids. Studies have shown that high levels of these hormones influence social behaviors and reduce fear in relationships. The distribution of vasopressin receptors also seems to differ greatly between monogamous and polygamous species, suggesting vasopressin’s potential as marriage counseling tool.

“Using hormones and neurochemicals as an adjunct to marital counseling is simply a hypothetical application, although it could be applied today,” said Hughes.

However, actually administering a regimen of drug therapy in marriage counseling could be ethically challenging.

“It should be done consensually,” said Hughes. “No other possible problem comes to mind since the two chemicals have no known negative side effects.”

But bioethicist Thomas Murray has several concerns.

“The transhumanist movement puts enormous faith in technology and in humankind’s ability to, literally, re-manufacture ourselves – to remake ourselves by our own hands,” said Murray, President of the Hastings Center, a bioethics institute in Garrison, New York. “Our technological powers are increasing. But it is not so clear that our wisdom is growing at the same pace.”

Murray fears that drug therapy could diminish or change the intrinsic value of relationships.

“Transhumanism, in my view, needs to be on guard lest it neglect the significance of relationships, or come to see them as just one more thing to be ‘managed’ by remaking ourselves,” said Murray. “I noted on the web site of the World Transhumanist Association a comment that roughly 90 per cent of the Association’s members are males. The author commented that perhaps women were more concerned about relationships. The author may be right.”

Hughes presented this possibility at the TransVision conference in Helsinki last August. This conference, organized by the World Transhumanist Association, gathers scientists and ethicists together to discuss “virtue engineering,” the potential use of technology to enhance social and moral behavior, particularly within relationships. James Hughes is executive director to the World Transhumanist Association, a non-profit international organization that advocates the ethical use of human enhancement technologies.