Freaky science facts, & ethics

Here's an eerie study, to come out of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Michael Kosfeld and colleagues had people play a bargaining game that involved one person handing over money to another person, in which the giver didn't know the other person, never met them, and had to choose to either trust the other person and give them the money or not. They gave some people three whiffs of a nasal spray containing oxytocin, and some not. The ones who had sniffed oxytocin were much more likely to hand over their money to strangers. You can read about it here. Oxytocin is the brain hormone that is released when people form attachments to others: it floods both mothers' and babies' brains during nursing, it is released during orgasm, and release can be stimulated by stroking and touching.

On the one hand, I read this and think, "That's really interesting! We're really getting a look at how certain chemicals influence social emotions and behaviour!" But a half-second behind that thought, another one arrives: "What happens when marketing people get their hands on this?" I can picture a future in which used-car dealerships are flooded with oxytocin-aerosols, in which hidden canisters release little puffs of oxytocin into shopping center aisles, to put shoppers in a more trusting mood. I think we can say with some certainty that marketers will do this. Kosfeld argues that oxytocin can't be used to con people because "it takes nearly an hour to reach the brain and have any effect." But that doesn't mean shopping centers wouldn't try to saturate the atmosphere with it to simply produce an atmosphere of trust and increase the likelihood of people falling for sales pitches after they've been in the shopping center for a while. (Then again, maybe this would just make people fall in love with other shoppers. "Something about the way she reached for that box of laundry powder... I just knew we were soulmates." Who knows?)

So where is the forum where we discuss the ethics of new findings like this? I'm not saying Kosfeld shouldn't do the research, shouldn't publish it, shouldn't tell the press about it. But where in the modern world do we have a discussion about the ethical implications of such research? Where do we discuss passing regulations to say that people should not be exposed to such chemicals without giving their explicit consent? Regulation has to keep pace with science.