"We are in the midst of a cultural revolution sparked by science," declares SEED Magazine. In this month's issue SEED highlights 18 icons and iconoclasts whose radical ideas are inspiring a vivid dialogue that is deepening our understanding of ourselves and the world around us." Among the chosen leaders is CCLE's Richard Glen Boire (click here for Richards' insightful Brain Waves articles). The following is an excerpt from the SEED piece:

[DAVIS, Calif.] The phrase “intellectual property” evokes an alphabet soup of legal arcana and technobabble from most lawyers, but to Richard Glen Boire, the concept has a much more literal meaning. As director and chief legal counsel of the nonprofit Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics (CCLE), Boire acts as a full-time legal watchdog on issues pertaining to “freedom of thought”—or as he puts it, “protect[ing] the individual’s right to privacy, auto-nomy, and choice with respect to his or her own brain chemistry.”

Richard backs up his thought leadership with immense energy and activism. For example, in 2002, U.S. government prosecutors sought to forcibly drug a defendant, Dr. Sell with antipsychotics so that he would be “fit to stand trial.” Sell refused the drugs, sparking a legal battle that spiraled all the way up to the Supreme Court—where, Boire filed the first-ever freedom-of-thought brief on his behalf. The Supreme Court ruled in Sell’s favor in June of last year.

Affirming Richard and Wrye's more recent work is Reason's Jacob Scullum who recently remarked, "The U.S. Supreme Court once declared that 'the most tyrannical government is powerless to control the inward workings of the mind.' That is no longer true, the CCLE concludes: "Pharmacotherapy drugs now give the government that power."

As an advisor to CCLE, I couldn't agree more with distinguishing Richard. I am always stunned by his deep knowledge of constitutional law, neurotechnology and the human spirit.