April 1, 2003 1:41 PM

Richard Glen Boire is defending Dr. Charles Sell before the US Supreme Court. The government wants to drug Sell to make him competent to stand trial.

Boire on cognitive liberty:

It's the right to determine your own thinking processes, which also means resisting attempts by others, including the government, to manipulate the electrochemical state of your brain. In Sell's case, the government wants to alter his thinking by forcibly drugging him. It's a scary notion with deep implications for the modern status of freedom of thought.

The law needs to account for the plethora of new drugs and technologies making it possible to augment, modulate, and surveil thinking. The question increasingly is: Who has the power to do this, the individual or the government? We contend that the power should rest with the individual.

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