Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Thanks are due to Ewa Jozwik for editorial assistance on this article, as well as to three anonymous reviewers for the American Journal of Bioethics.
Address correspondence to Brian D. E-mail: brian. Sometimes it may even be beneficial , since adversity can lead to personal growth, self-discovery, and a range of other components of a life well-lived. But other times, love can be downright dangerous. It may bind a spouse to her domestic abuser, draw an unscrupulous adult toward sexual involvement with a child, put someone under the insidious spell of a cult leader, and even inspire jealousy-fueled homicide.
How might these perilous devotions be diminished? But modern neuroscience and emerging developments in psychopharmacology open up a range of possible interventions that might actually work. These developments raise profound moral questions about the potential usesβand misusesβof such anti-love biotechnology.
In this article, we describe a number of prospective love-diminishing interventions, and offer a preliminary ethical framework for dealing with them responsibly should they arise. Keywords: love drugs, neuroenhancement, anti-love biotechnology, domestic abuse, pharmacology, ethics, wellbeing.
References may be found in the writings of Lucretius see Fitzgerald , Ovid Ovid and May , Shakespeare [] , and many others, and are tightly linked to the notion that love or infatuationβunder certain conditionsβcan be just like a serious illness: bad for one's physical and mental health and, in some cases, profoundly damaging to one's overall well-being.
