A Dutch Life

Interesting article of the use of drugs to enhance your brain function.

“Whatever company comes out with the first memory pill is going to put Viagra to shame,” said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe.

Makes me want to make a joke about those that already think with their Viagra, but this is a family blog.

While I suspect that the effect of these drugs today on a healthy brain is pretty minimal, this area will most certainly develop, and will throw up a huge range of ethical dilemmas.

Two ways of development strike me instantly. The first being the way of the sporting world, where those who take performance enhancing drugs are considered cheats, and when found punished by their sporting bodies.

The second would be the path followed by cosmetic surgery, where at first, those that had any “enhancement” went out of their way to hide the fact, but which has now become so socially acceptable as to be almost mundane.

I suspect drugs that enhance the brain will follow the second path.

However, what holds just as much interest for me, is just want impact the drugs these turn into in 10 or 20 years will have on the advancement of science.

This is a great example of what makes predicting the future so incredibly difficult.

If, and this is not to say it is even possible, we were to discover a drug that improved our ability to do X with our brain by X percent, and its use penetrated broadly enough, then it would follow that it would result in accelerated scientific progress.

It has just reminded me how much more potential lies in the human body, and that the ever more rapid advancement of technology is not only achieved through new technologies, but by using some of the old ones better!

Drugs to build up that mental muscle – Los Angeles Times