The 20th century was a golden era for ethically dubious brain studies. In 1950, Dr Jose Delgado had a vision to control aggressive behaviour using a device surgically implanted in the brain known as the Stimoceiver. How science fictiony is that?!
Delgado's journey toward creating a peaceful human race started with a bully macaque monkey who had been terrorising his cage mates. After the Stimoceiver was implanted into the monkey’s brain, a lever was added to the cage. When pulled, the lever would activate the Stimoceiver and pacify the bully, much to his cage mates' delight, who learned quickly that the key to happiness in the cage was to pull the lever furiously.
Happy with his success, Delgado began testing on humans with most of his subjects (note: we did NOT use the word participants) being epileptics and schizophrenics. Heck, science couldn’t do anything more for them - might as well sacrifice them to science by sticking things in their brains. Although there were some mixed results, Delgado’s work did help some people, especially those suffering from chronic pain. His experiments showed the potential to spark euphoria, laughter, friendliness, and even anger in subjects, creating a new dimension of how the human mind could be influenced, modified, and inhibited by brain stimuli.
In 1963, things got really interesting. Delgado wanted to test the limits of the stimoceiver implant and what better test subject for a Spanish doctor looking to maximise aggression than a fighting bull? Working with his wife and several assistants over three days, Delgado tranquillized the bulls, fitted stereotactic frames over their skulls, and inserted stimoceivers into their brains.
Then into the bullring, he himself went (disappointingly, he missed a bucket-list-worthy opportunity to dress up as a Matador). When the raging bull charged, despite his outfit, Delgado had the upper hand. With the flick of a switch, the bull stopped in his tracks and turned the other way. This incredible demonstration catapulted Delgado into the public eye, but his research drew mixed reactions. Delgado’s desire to create a "psycho-civilized society" caused some discomfort, with critics fearing the implications of the technology in the wrong hands. Fair, considering the fascist regimes reigning at the time.
To complicate matters, Delgado found himself embroiled in controversies beyond his making. Unrelated research suggesting neurotechnology could quell the violent tendencies of African-Americans who riot in inner cities fueled public discontent, as did another experiment by a different researcher claiming sexual orientation could be modified with brain stimulation.
But Delgado remained indifferent to the storm surrounding him. At age 89 in an interview with Scientific American, Delgado described himself as a libertarian and a pacifist whose goal as a scientist was to liberate us from our biology, especially from mental illness and violent aggression.
Delgado ended his career by insinuating advances in knowledge and technology were inevitable. While ethics may offer a framework of restrictions, he believed that innovation would ensue nonetheless; clearly, he was a proponent of the “Move fast and break things” credo. However when the “thing” is a human brain, perhaps moving slowly is warranted.
Whether controversial or revolutionary, Delgado's work remains a testament to the power of asking "What if..."
previous episode mentioned:
SOURCES:
The Man Who Fought a Bull With Mind Control | Discover Magazine By Jack El-HaiMar 22, 2016
Tribute to Jose Delgado, Legendary and Slightly Scary Pioneer of Mind Control - Scientific American Blog Network By John Horgan on September 25, 2017
‘Matador’ With a Radio Stops Wired Bull by John A. Osmundsen - New York Times, May 17, 1965
Timothy C. Marzullo (2017) The Missing Manuscript of Dr. Jose Delgado’s Radio Controlled Bulls. J Undergrad Neurosci Educ. 2017 Spring; 15(2): R29–R35.
Paul A. Offit (2017) Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong. National Geographic
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[00:00:00] Rod: So what'd he do with his Stimoceiver? He implanted a Stimoceiver in a macaque, who had been known to terrorize the other macaques in their cage. He put a lever in the cage that when it was pulled, it would activate the stimoceiver in this bully and it would pacify him.
[00:00:12] Will: Is this for the other monkeys to pull?
[00:00:14] Rod: A female in the cage went, Hey, look what happens when I do this. And she quote, yanked it often and with gusto.
[00:00:23] Will: Oh my God. Oh my God. Imagine having a calm down lever for the cranky person at your workplace.
[00:00:29] Rod: The old dream of an individual overpowering the strength of a dictator by remote control has been fulfilled, at least in our monkey colonies.
[00:00:36] Will: Or just having a new dictator who can control our behavior with a lever. Yeah, I don't think we ended up in democracy of the monkeys at that point.
[00:00:50] Rod: 1935, John Fulton is a head of physiology at Yale and he gave a lecture in London. He and his colleague, a chap, he called Carlyle Jacobsen. They're curious about the role of specific areas of the brain and what facilitating tasks that required memory, what areas, you know, facilitate.
[00:01:07] Will: Where do you store your memories?
[00:01:08] Rod: Yeah. And to suss it out, they'd been experimenting on a couple of chimps, Lucy and Becky. One of the projects. So the task involved training Lucy and Becky to use sticks to get food that was out of their reach. So Lucy was pretty calm when she failed, she's like, Oh, don't worry about it. Keep plugging away until it works. No worries. She's resilient.
[00:01:26] Will: Pick herself up off the ground. But Becky?
[00:01:28] Rod: Becky was different. So I want to count by an author called Paul Offit. He says she would fly into a rage, pull her hair, defecate and throw her feces at the scientists.
[00:01:39] Will: You know, is the universal response of I don't like how things have gone.
[00:01:43] Rod: I've done it. Scientists have made me want to actually put in my hand and throw it out.
[00:01:46] Will: No, this is definitely I've been in meetings where that has been multiple people have done that.
[00:01:50] Rod: Yeah. It's a science communication technique. The real experiment, however, came afterwards when they removed the prefrontal lobes of the chimps. So after this intervention, Lucy forgot how to get the food. Like she couldn't.
[00:02:05] Will: Forgot puts a little bit more agency in Lucy. I would say potentially the remembering how to get the food was taken from her. Taken from her by knife. Like if you have half of your brain cut out saying, you forgot my name?
[00:02:19] Rod: You idiot. Becky still was shit at it too, but you know, even worse, but they said more interestingly, she didn't seem to give a shit. No more raging, no more poop throwing.
[00:02:27] Will: Oh, she calmed down. That was her poop throwing in that bit of the brain. That's where they still have poop throwing and that's the wholesome show.
[00:02:33] Rod: Think about it next time you're flinging shit, poke yourself really hard in the frontal lobe, see if you lose the urge. So Fulton, the main man, said destroying the prefrontal lobes of the violent quote, neurotic Becky made her calm and compliant.
[00:02:45] Will: Oh, okay. I don't like where that's going.
[00:02:48] Rod: Jacobson, the co conspirator said it was like she had joined a happiness cult.
[00:02:54] Will: For chimpanzees.
[00:02:55] Rod: So the work directly influenced someone we've talked about before. I was sitting in the audience of this 1935 lecture, Portuguese psychiatrist called Edgar
[00:03:03] so he, for those who don't remember, Nobel prize winning pioneer performing lobotomies on psychotic patients. So we'll put the link to that episode in the show notes. Fulton was, initially shocked that his method of pacifying chimps had been applied to humans. But then he became a fan of psychosurgery.
[00:03:21] Will: Was the thought that his method led directly to lobotomies or were there other things going on at the time?
[00:03:26] Rod: Well, there's probably many precipitants, but Moniz was clearly went, Oh, hang on. I've got an idea. José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado, who was one of Fulton's star mentees at Yale, never shared the enthusiasm for this cutting brains to fix people.
[00:03:43] Will: I'm on his side.
[00:03:44] Rod: Yeah. He thought, or his quote was, I thought Fulton and Moniz's idea of destroying the brain was absolutely horrendous. He preferred a more conservative approach to mental illness treatment. My idea, he says, was to avoid lobotomy with the help of electrodes implanted into the brain.
[00:04:08] Will: Welcome to The Wholesome Show. The podcast that will risk experimental brain surgery to try and control itself around the whole of science. I'm Will Grant.
[00:04:17] Rod: And I'm not Will Grant. I'm Riddle's Griffin G. Lamberts. So Jose Manuel Rodriguez Delgado, he was born in Spain. I know it's amazing from a name like that, that you would imagine.
[00:04:27] 1915 he was born, which is a while ago. So as a young man, he thought he'd follow in his father's footsteps to get into the essential world of ophthalmology. 1933 he goes to Madrid medical school, but when he got to the Madrid medical school, he quote fell under the spell of the father of neuroscience, 1906 Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine, Santiago Ramon y Cahal. 1936 Spanish civil war goes boom and Delgado signs up for the Republicans to fight against Franco, the fascist. So he served as an officer in the medical core. After Franco's troops crushed the Republicans, he was in prison for five months and then he got released and he went back to school. But despite that he was dog for years later throughout his life. He was dogged by rumors that he was a supporter of Franco and fascism
[00:05:15] Will: dogged by rumors in Spain that are you supported the winners? It's a weird thing to,
[00:05:20] Rod: just keep the word fascist and stuff in mind. Years later, a scientific conference, someone threw a pie in his face for being a Franco fascist fan, which he is not. Anyway, he graduates, MD and a doctorate of science. So Go Delgado. 1946, he gets a fellowship at Yale. 1950, he gets a full time gig at the department of physiology under the direction of John Filton, the former chimpanzee lobotomizer. So at this point, apparently Delgado was known as a bit of a tech wizard.
[00:05:50] And one source says, look, they actually reckon the key to his scientific success was his talent as an inventor. He started experiments that would quote capitalize on his talents as a builder of ingenious gadgets, implanting electrodes and radio receivers and things that would allow him to deliver electrical stimuli to brains.
[00:06:06] Will: It is a bit of a mind meld, you know, when suddenly someone with electronics gets interested in the brain. What about brains?
[00:06:14] Rod: AUtomatic light switch or mind control. So his early experiments were on, as you'd expect, an array of creatures, and he'd run wires from implanted electrodes that come out through the skull and the skin.
[00:06:26] And they'd be connected to these bulk electronic contraptions that would record data and could deliver electrical pulses. But that meant restricted movement in the participants, participant subjects, and also they're more prone to infections because they had wires permanently in the brain.
[00:06:41] Will: What sort of people are they experimenting with?
[00:06:42] Rod: These are animals. He designed these radio equipped, what he called, stimoceivers. They're about the size of a US quarter, so what's that, 10 cent piece in Australian currency? They can be fully implanted in the brain. You're looking at me like you're despairing. Don't be sad. This is a great story.
[00:06:55] Will: Why wouldn't I despair? Why wouldn't I despair?
[00:06:58] Rod: So, they can be fully implanted, and then they'll be powered by a battery pack you could strap to the head or wear around the neck.
[00:07:03] Will: Cool. So you don't have to keep them plugged into the wall.
[00:07:05] Rod: No. Also just as a side, he invented the implantable Chemotrodes that could release precise amounts of drugs directly into the brain. We're not going to get into those because there's a lot to his story. So what'd he do with his stimosevers? One demo. He implanted a stimosever in a macaque who had been known to terrorize the other macaques in their cage. Fuckwit monkey. He put a lever in the cage that when it was pushed or pulled, it would activate the stimsever in this bully and it would pacify him.
[00:07:31] Will: Is this for the other monkeys to pull?
[00:07:33] Rod: A female in the cage. Hey, look what happens when I do this. And she quote, yanked it often and with gusto.
[00:07:44] Will: Oh my God. Oh my God. Imagine having a calm down lever for the cranky person at your workplace.
[00:07:50] Rod: Delgado's quote, the old dream of an individual overpowering the strength of a dictator by remote control has been fulfilled at least in our monkey colonies. You know, that old dream
[00:08:00] Will: or just having a new dictator who can control our behavior with a lever. I don't think we ended up in democracy of the monkeys at that point.
[00:08:08] Rod: Another demo. Delgado programmed a chimpanzee called Patty using a stim saver, it would detect distinctive signals emitted by her amygdala. And so the amygdala, depending on who you ask, regulates anxiety, aggression, fear, conditioning, controls emotional memory or is involved in it and social cognition. And some cases stimulate the amygdala, you get evocations of fear and anxiety in humans, at least this is more recently. And certainly if you get lesions near it, it can block certain fear responses and things.
[00:08:37] So it's something in there emotions in your emotion in your I think it's your limbic system. So whenever this stim sever detected a spike or a spindle within the amygdala It stimulated another part of Paddy's brain to produce quote an aversive reaction aka painful or unpleasant sensation. So after two hours of this negative feedback, oh my God, Patty's amygdala produced 50 percent fewer spikes or spindles.
[00:09:02] Will: Okay. It's a calm down sort of.
[00:09:04] Rod: Yeah. After six days it had dropped by 99%. So she became quieter, less attentive and less motivated during behavioral testing.
[00:09:14] Will: Okay. We've just turned her off.
[00:09:16] Rod: Yeah. We're just like So Delgado hypothesized that this what he called automatic learning, which is I suppose not untrue, but the technique could be used on others or other monkeys or maybe people to stop panic attacks, seizures, and other brain disorders.
[00:09:32] Will: Okay. But, but you know, some sort of stimulation of the amygdala might then control the emotion. So that's doing something there.
[00:09:37] Rod: Yeah. At least, remove negative ones or something. hE did many other experiments, which he reckoned showed that functions traditionally related to the psyche, like friendliness, pleasure, verbal expression, et cetera, that these could be induced, modified and inhibited by direct electrical stimulation of the brain.
[00:09:56] And he spoke generally around these times about how he was able to play monkeys and cats like little electronic toys that would yawn, hide, fight, play, mate, and go to sleep on command. So that's fine. He's successful. So of course he put stimoceivers into people.
[00:10:13] He began to experiment with humans early 1950s. Most of his subjects were schizophrenics and epileptics. And I quote now defunct state hospital for mental diseases in Rhode Island. And he said, look, it's fine because he only experimented on patients science could no longer do anything for. You can't do anything else so let's plant things in their brains.
[00:10:31] Will: Yeah. Yeah. Other than look after them?
[00:10:33] Rod: That's a logical next step. Okay. 1952, it's suggested he became the first researcher to report on the effects of implantation of electrodes into human brains and the longer term effects thereof. It was claimed his devices would spark intense euphoria, anger, laughter, friendliness, and even a little bit of lust in some of his human subjects.
[00:10:54] So he wrote about results like this one where a female subject whose stimulation generated extreme terror afterwards. Oh god. But then she said When it wore off, she remembered her fear, but it wasn't really upset by the memory. Oh, okay. So I was like, Oh my fucking God, everything's, I've never been so frightened in my life. Oh, I remember being scared, but that's what it was. Raw, unbounded, not connected to anything fear, it sounds like I don't want to do this experiment anymore. No, I'll take my epilepsy and schizophrenia. Another one, a sullen 11 year old epileptic boy became chatty and friendly when he was zapped. Hey, he exclaims. You can keep me here longer when you give me these.
[00:11:31] Will: Oh, that's nice.
[00:11:32] Rod: And he also announced I'd like to be a girl.
[00:11:35] Will: Okay. Well, that was was that there before?
[00:11:38] Rod: No, it's not clear if he continued, but that's, that was part of the gig. And of course it wouldn't be a brain fiddling experiment on a show like this without mentioning some wrong, it wasn't too wrong.
[00:11:48] 36 year old female epileptic, normally very quiet and proper. She gets stimulated. She would giggle, make funny comments and hit on the researchers.
[00:11:57] Will: She made funny comments
[00:11:59] Rod: like what's brown and sticky, a stick. Let's bang.
[00:12:03] Will: She just hit on them.
[00:12:04] Rod: Well, you hit on your way. I hit on mine. Don't you do that? You walk in the bar and go, what's brown and sticky. Let's bang?
[00:12:09] Will: It's not a good enough joke in my books.
[00:12:10] Rod: How in the hell did you manage to get a wife?
[00:12:13] Will: It's the delivery, man. It's the delivery.
[00:12:15] Rod: Over the next couple of decades, he implanted electrodes into probably 25 odd subjects, the therapeutic benefits were mixed and it seems he would turn away more patients than he treats. It wasn't just like indiscriminately bagging the trodes in.
[00:12:28] Will: So people coming to him and saying, I want the electrodes?
[00:12:30] Rod: Well, yeah, this is one example. Young woman, her parents had a committed to a mental hospital cause she was so violent and promiscuous, which 1950s fuck knows what that means.
[00:12:40] Will: Let's just go with the, so violent could that could be a problem in the 1950s or now.
[00:12:44] Rod: Promiscuity, let's say there are ambiguities around that word.
[00:12:48] Will: And I get that parents can be arseholes about that, but also that most societies would recognize there's an upper limit to promiscuity that we accept.
[00:12:56] Rod: Like, if she's walking down the street with three dudes in her, you'd be like, I think you're being a bit promiscuous.
[00:13:01] Will: I think something, I'm not here putting boundaries on anyone, but yeah, like we, we certainly accept more than the 1950s, but not that
[00:13:08] Rod: I would do anything for love, but I won't do that. So the parents and the daughter apparently pleaded with him to implant electrodes, but he refused saying electrical stimulation was too unreliable.
[00:13:19] Will: Oh, it won't work for you, darling.
[00:13:20] Rod: No. But he reckons he got best results when he was treating people with chronic pain. Oh, okay. So, yeah, as you'd expect, there's a dude who's basically been smashed up in a car accident, chronic pain, didn't respond to drug treatments, so he got a stimoceiver, it relieved both his pain and the depression that it had been causing.
[00:13:36] Will: Oh, that sounds good.
[00:13:36] Rod: So he could go back to work and act kind of normal. So this is all great. But this isn't the stuff that catapulted him into public tension. What did? Just to remind, delgado, fascinated by aggressive and violent behavior wanted to really test the stimoceiver. Like, let's see how good it is. Wanted to use it on an animal. And let's not forget this critical. He's Spanish. Oh. Delgado says, I thought, which is the animal which is characterized by his aggressive behavior? The fighting bull.
[00:14:04] Will: We're going to turn up the fighting bull, get a more aggressive fighting bull?
[00:14:07] Rod: Yeah. You reckon you're angry now?
[00:14:09] Will: Oh my God. Fucking nut jobs. Oh, what a barbaric sport. Tell me more.
[00:14:12] Rod: So Spanish university supplied funds and a bull breeder in Cordoba, four bulls and a bull ring. 1963. So he and his wife and some assistants, a few days and over about three days, they tranquilized a bunch of bulls, fitted them with stereotactic frames over their skulls.
[00:14:30] Will: What's the stereotactic?
[00:14:31] Rod: Oh, it's, you can touch things in two dimensions. Okay. And so you put the stimulocebes in their brains. Now, before the demo, the most famous demo began, allegedly a bunch of bullfighters got this big bull called Lucero, got him really psyched up flicking their capes to him and getting him.
[00:14:48] Will: Yeah. I know. I know they've got the hats there. They're doing all the dance in front of the bull. Yeah. That's ridiculous. I am on the bull side here.
[00:14:55] Rod: Yeah. Many descriptions of what happened. Jack L. Hay, I'll give you that one. He's a guy writing in Discovery Magazine. This is how he describes what happened. The investigator, dressed incongruously in a sweater and tie and holding a small metal box, stands in a bullring.
[00:15:09] Will: Well, I get it. Sweater and tie in a bullring. No, this is ridiculous. The one time in your life as a man, as a non Matador, wear the outfit, like with the things, put a white lab coat over the top, like just to go Matador and scientists, but you know, commit to the bit.
[00:15:25] Rod: I agree. Commit to the bit, but he did not. So he taught us the ball with a gesture. I think he actually may have had a cape or something. So he's, you know, flicky flick, which makes balls rather peeved. Suddenly the bull turns and charges. He takes couple of steps back, presses the button, which sends obviously a signal to the stim receiver.
[00:15:42] Will: Did he press the dial up or dial down button?
[00:15:44] Rod: Just the button, the stimulant, the ping button, the bull halts in mid stride and then goes out and turns away.
[00:15:51] Will: Whoa. Turned off the bull.
[00:15:53] Rod: Yeah. It turned off the bull. So word spread of what he was doing. It isn't the only time he did it, but this is one of the big ones and Spanish television crew turns up hundreds of people gather to watch him do these tests with different bulls, you know, piss them off, run it in, push the button, turn them off, but the most significant media coverage come couple of years later.
[00:16:08] So he was showing slides and doing a lecture in New York and afterwards in New York times reporter comes up and says, can I have pictures, said sure. Next day, front page, New York times. The quote was the most spectacular demonstration ever performed of the deliberate modification of animal behavior through external control of the brain.
[00:16:27] Delgado says, look, the Stimoseva conquered the bull's aggressive behavior. Other experts felt differently. So like one year, a physiologist, university of Michigan guy called Valenstein, he said, he was able to stop muscle control. So just physically made it
[00:16:42] Will: Still angry, but it couldn't do it. Oh, that's wildly different, isn't it? It's furious inside his brain, but it's legs no longer work.
[00:16:49] Rod: Not like. Hey, I'm mad. Ah, whatever. Look flower. When he was asked in an interview years later about these objections, apparently Delgado shrugs. His experiment he says, naturally it could be interpreted in one way or another. Sure. But it stands by his claims. 2005. So years later, a team of physicians reported in brain research reviews that it was just a big publicity stunt. 2017 paper then said, look, little is available of the literature beyond the New York times article. Details of what actually happened, where he placed the actual electrodes, how the electronics worked, was it done once or over many times, no actual formal publication about it.
[00:17:28] So there's a lot of speculation. Some sources say the implant went into his, the bull's caudate nucleus. It may play a role in goal directed behavior. Choosing actions that are likely to lead to a positive outcome.
[00:17:40] Will: Yeah. That's killing the matador.
[00:17:41] Rod: May contribute to other cognitive functions as well as memory and movement
[00:17:46] Will: may contribute to other cognitive functions,
[00:17:48] Rod: other brain misc, other visual information, memory and movement come up quite a bit.
[00:17:53] Will: Oh, you don't see the red cape anymore.
[00:17:55] Rod: Yeah. And if you do, you can't move or you forgotten. Anyway, 1969 Delgado's invited to contribute to to a volume or a series of volumes that come out apparently regularly. There's at least 40 or 50 of them. It's called World Perspectives. So there's an editorial board, 12 of the world's most distinguished leaders in ethics, sociology, economics, spirituality, and science. Three of them, Nobel laureates. So the series editor was a renowned philosopher. His life was devoted to inviting leading scientists and thinkers to speculate on the societal and philosophical implications of their narrow fields, basically to extrapolate an idea in relation to life.
[00:18:35] Will: Yeah. So if you've downstimulated a bull, what does it mean for world peace?
[00:18:42] Rod: Not far off. So you get a volume in this series. Write a volume. So Delgado calls his volume, physical control of the mind towards a psycho civilized society.
[00:18:51] Will: Oh, okay. Cool. Okay. Okay. Okay, buddy. A psycho civilized society.
[00:18:57] Rod: Why have a red Cape when you can have a red flag?
[00:19:03] Will: All right. What's he reckoned?
[00:19:04] Rod: So leading psychologists at the time called the book quote, an invaluable and authoritative analysis of the nature of human nature, scientific American review. Thoughtful, up to date account of electrical stimulation experiments, but added that the research was somewhat ominous.
[00:19:22] Others would just freak the fuck out like they were just, Jesus Christ, because there was pictures of monkeys, cats, and two young women with stim receivers affixed to their skulls.
[00:19:31] Will: Just slow down there, monkeys, cats, and two young women.
[00:19:33] Rod: Not all in the same room.
[00:19:34] Will: You said it a little bit quickly.
[00:19:36] Rod: Is this one of those timing things again?
[00:19:37] Will: Categorically, sort of different.
[00:19:39] Rod: I don't see categories but there were pictures of lots of creatures, including two young women. These pictures never go well amongst people who aren't into that sort of thing. I didn't help also that Delgado asserts, humanity was on the verge of conquering the mind should shift its mission from the ancient dictum, know thyself to construct thyself, which is fine. His assertion kind of got people going, Oh dear. People said, look, his discussion of his scientific findings were basically modest and objective, which is cool. I didn't go crazy, but philosophical speculations were grandiose and went beyond the data, which is not excellent.
[00:20:15] Will: He was asked to, like they said, buddy, make a volume speculated on speculate beyond the data. That's the subtitle of the series, literally the thing they said, Hey, speculate beyond your data. I think people should do it. It's good fun.
[00:20:27] Rod: I agree. But that, of course, because he had a weight and, you know, the volume was within, was controlled by all these very august folk.
[00:20:33] Will: It also does, you know, if you know, you could be a person driven by counting the data or, you know, what's right in front of you. And that makes 99 percent of your work all fine. But if you are asked to speculate, then sometimes that does uncork the things inside you that should remain corked. But speculate wildly. Some people go straight to the wrong place.
[00:20:53] Rod: Oh I'm gonna stop . He made this assertion about constructing ourselves and conquering the mind, but his intent was benevolent and he wanted to encourage the development of a future psycho civilized human being
[00:21:05] Will: you know, it's weird who else's intent has been benevolent? Yeah. It's weird. It's weird. Very few truly evil people go, no I just want to break. I'm doing it for evil. Like I'm doing it for evil. A lot of the people that get into really bad places are like, no, my, my version is the right version.
[00:21:21] Rod: Mussolini was a cuddly man who loved flowers. Delgado said used wisely neurotechnology could help create a less cruel, happier, and better man. So he meant well, but it wasn't necessarily taken well. And basically he didn't clearly delineate between his science from his philosophy, which didn't help. And he was ripe for attack. It didn't help other things that were going on at the time. Like a book written in 1970 called Violence and the Brain, written by Frank Ervin and Vernon Mark.
[00:21:52] It explored the potential applications of neurotechnologies. These guys were brain implant researchers at Harvard and Delgado probably had collaborated a little bit with them. The authors, among other things, suggested that neurotechnologies might quell the violent tendencies of African Americans who riot in inner cities. So, you know, it's just a social service.
[00:22:12] Will: You know, could have left a quell violent tendencies. It's your examples sometimes. It's the examples that give you away.
[00:22:19] Rod: As every lawyer apparently learns in good question, know when to stop. How did you know the person bit so and so's nose off? And it's like, did you see them bite their nose off? No stop there. As opposed to how do you know he bit his nose off? I saw him spit it out. Don't ask the next question. Don't say the next thing. And this was the case here. So they said that. 1972 brain implant experiments of the psychiatric, oh, sorry, psychiatrist, Robert Heath, who was at Tulane university, he said that he had changed the sexual orientation of a male homosexual by stimulating his brain septal region while he had intercourse with a female prostitute. So I'm gonna put this brain plant in you, bang a lady, I'm going to zap you and you're going to become straight.
[00:22:59] Will: Did that get ethical approval?
[00:23:01] Rod: Yes, absolutely.
[00:23:03] Will: I just wondered about the funding as well.
[00:23:04] Rod: Exactly. Who funded it?
[00:23:06] Will: Okay. No, I look I can appreciate that there may have been people in that time who, who had tendencies sexual orientations that they didn't want.
[00:23:16] Rod: I don't know if this person didn't want them. I don't know.
[00:23:19] Will: Surely you have to be somewhat consenting to that experiment.
[00:23:22] Rod: Yeah, but you might've been poor and they said, I'll give you a hundred bucks.
[00:23:25] Will: I don't think they did that. Surely. Looking for poor gay people we can trick into being hetero by putting a wire in their brain while they fuck a woman that they don't want. I'm just imagining, I'm just imagining putting the poster up around uni to try and advertise that and you've got a little rip off. It's like, Oh, you had me at, looking for poor and gay and happy with an electrode
[00:23:45] Rod: gay. Poor. 100 bucks. All you've got to do, very small font, while we watch also in 1972, a psychiatrist, Peter Bregan, I'd read through this quickly and I thought, sounds like a Scientologist to me. He was a Scientologist. So he was against drugs, ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, and biological psychiatry as Scientologists are, that's part of the edict. That's the thing. So he gave testimony to Congress for some reason, and he lumped Delgado and the authors of the book who wanted to interfere with the inner city folk.
[00:24:19] And Heath, the guy who fixed a gay gentleman who was poor, he lumped them all together with proponents of lobotomies and accused them all of seeking, quote, a society in which everyone who deviates from the norm will be surgically mutilated. So all this was going on. And he also quoted liberally and very selectively from Delgado's book and others. And basically singled out Delgado as the great apologist for technological totalitarianism. Oh, and also. People have just become aware of the CIA's MK ultra experiments. So all this was going on while Delgado was doing what he was doing.
[00:24:57] Will: Yeah. Just thinking about the climate at the time, there was a whole bunch of people doing all sorts of experimental work that is in this direction. Yeah. So I can understand why people are like, Whoa, whoa Whoa, Whoa.
[00:25:09] Rod: Not a great time to be called out on this.
[00:25:10] Will: I don't want to be a bull that can just be turned off.
[00:25:13] Rod: So then of course, things got weird. So for example, just one example, a woman accused Delgado of implanting stimoceivers in her brain and sued Yale for a million bucks. He'd never even met her. Classic, you know, deep state, tinfoil hat, et cetera. In the midst of it all, Spanish minister of health said to Delgado, why don't you come back to Madrid and help me organize a new medical school? And he said, fuck yeah. He claims it wasn't because of what was going on in the controversy, but because the offer was too good to refuse.
[00:25:43] He said, could I have the facilities I have at Yale? And the minister said, no better. So he said, sure, I'll go back. So he goes back to Spain. Then also just coincidence. Shifts his focus from to non invasive neurostimulation. So he invents a halo like a device. It was described like a helmet or something that can do electromagnetic pulses, specific regions of the brain, which is pretty cool. He would test the gadget on animals, human volunteers, him, his daughter.
[00:26:11] Will: I mean, him is fine.
[00:26:12] Rod: He discovered he could induce drowsiness, alertness and other states in people. So it was basically a forerunner for
[00:26:18] Will: inducing alertness is not hard. Like, many techniques. Well, you know, and with slightly more invasive versions, you can induce alertness.
[00:26:27] Rod: And it seems to be that he was, his stuff was forerunner for transcranial magnetic stimulation. And we did a previous episode on that about five years ago. Anyway, that's in the show notes too. He and his colleagues also had some success in treating tremors for Parkinson's. So there were, okay. You know, the results, this wasn't just wild experimentation for the hell of it.
[00:26:45] So towards the end of his life, he did an interview with John Horgan, scientific American 2005. So he was 89. He died at 96, he's quite old. He described himself as a libertarian and a pacifist whose goal as a scientist was to liberate us from our biology and especially from mental illness and violent aggression. sweet old man by then.
[00:27:05] Will: I get the thinking that you're doing, but the whole liberate from our biology.
[00:27:09] Rod: Sweet old man, therefore intentions perfect. Yeah. But he did understand why people were often offended by his stuff. He said, look. They're thinking, how is it possible that I am mainly the result of chemicals in the brain?
[00:27:23] This is distasteful. I don't like it at all. This is him describing folks, but he's saying, look, if the research leads to better treatments for brain disorders, it's wonderful. So, you know, basically shut up. This is awesome. So across his life, he wrote, it seems about 500 articles and six books. His final book was 1989. It was titled happiness, 14 editions. He wasn't and hasn't been and isn't cited much, which people have, they've speculated why and Delgado also, he said, look, he doubts a lot of modern brain stimulation researchers would cite him because he's controversial. He doesn't think that's why he reckons it could just be ignorance because a lot of the modern databases don't include publications from the fifties and sixties, that's his call.
[00:28:04] Another source says, Oh, it's probably cause he was mostly publishing in Spanish journals. So no one read them. In the scientific American interview, he says he thought neuroscientists also could be too obsessed with linking specific cognitive mechanisms to specific neural regions.
[00:28:17] Yeah. So too obsessed with going the foot bones connected to the happy bone. And he said, people are trying to investigate where is the area of the brain essential to consciousness? That's a silly question because consciousness and cognition in general almost certainly stem from the workings of the whole brain. The whole brain is everything.
[00:28:34] Final thoughts from Jose Delgado when he was being interviewed again, can you avoid knowledge? You cannot. Can you avoid technology? You cannot. Things are going to go ahead in spite of ethics, in spite of your personal beliefs, in spite of everything
[00:28:49] Will: in spite of ethics. Thanks dude who signed up to a fascist regime.
[00:28:55] Rod: No, he didn't.
[00:28:56] Will: He did.
[00:28:57] Rod: He was anti.
[00:28:58] Will: Yeah. But what year did he go back to Madrid?
[00:29:00] Rod: 60s.
[00:29:01] Will: Yeah.
[00:29:01] Rod: Oh, he ended up dying in America though. He went back to the US. So it's okay.
[00:29:04] Will: Yeah. Franco was still in power in the 60s.
[00:29:07] Rod: It's just the classic call. The classic call is what are you going to do? Shit's going to happen anyway, so don't worry about it.
[00:29:13] Will: Fuck you. Shit's going to happen anyway. We choose the shit that's going to happen. Finish there.
[00:29:17] Rod: Bye bye.
