One of the arguments against the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) was that it actually increased the risk of a nuclear war. I think you can make a similar argument here....if the effects of nuclear weapons are mitigated, doesn't that make people more likely to use them?

What I am saying is that it is no where close to 'neuroengineering'. Sure we can consider the implications of the day we can directly modify brains and behavior, but that day isn't today, or even anywhere close, and that this technology doesn't really make it significantly closer.

But I don't dispute it is a great research tool,and a very clever application previous research.

It is an interesting take on an old technique. Instead of using direct electrical stimulation to stimulate the brain, he uses virally-transcoded neurons to respond to different wavelengths of light....then pipes a fiber optic cable into a mouse brain. To do what? To make it run in circles.

It's a proof of technology, but nothing more. Engineering the brain would imply we understand how it works, which, more or less, we still don't. Not really at a cellular level, not really at a systems level, not even really at a gross level either. We know an order of magnitude more than we did even a decade ago, but we are no closer to altering behavior than we were when the lobotomy was invented...the first 'neuroengineering'.

I think it is much more likely that we will first have engineered modules, either synthetic neuronal or otherwise, that will process independently and then 'plug into' our pre-existing sensory input pathways, rather than direct brain modification.

First, you CAN have cancer of the cervix after hysterectomy...not all hysterectomies involve removing the cervix. Second, if you have a hysterectomy for cervical cancer, you still need screening: See this PubMed Article Third, the literature for screening after hysterectomy for benign disease is still evolving. See this PubMed Article

OP is a troll, I would say, and the title is alarmist and misleading. Evidence based medicine has been around for a while, the trouble is it is very expensive and difficult to perform, and just as hard to implement.