Art Caplan has authored a new opinion piece on Bioethics.net on the issue of “chipping” human beings. From the piece:
There has been a great deal of fingerpointing, second-guessing and recrimination over the decision by the President to exchange five former Taliban leaders for the American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl. “You’ve just released five extremely dangerous people, who in my opinion … will rejoin the battlefield,” Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and likely Presidential candidate told Fox News. Senator John McCain, R-AZ, told ABC news and many other outlets that he would never have supported the swap if he’d known exactly which prisoners would be exchanged given their former high roles in battling the U.S. in Afghanistan.
Put aside for a second whether the five Taliban leaders that were flown to Qatar for Bergdahl are now too old and too long removed from Taliban affairs to resume anything close to their old roles. Presume, instead, they will eagerly resume where they left off prior to their capture, attacking Americans and others they see as hindering Taliban goals for Afghanistan. Is it possible that the U.S. did something to these men before letting them go in the swap—surreptitiously implanting them with microchips so that they could be tracked or traced?
Read the full article.