Overclock Your Brain

With some students now using Ritalin not to treat ADHD but to make them more alert before a big test, the time is ripe to address the line between therapy and enhancement.

How will we be able to say yes to therapy but no to enhancement? Professor Caplan asks. He balks at the idea of telling someone "you can take a pill if you have dyslexia, but you can't take a pill if you're just a poor reader. It's very tough. It won't work."

Others see no need for making an ethical distinction between therapy and enhancement. "There's better and worse. More life is good. More smarts is good," says James Hughes, who teaches health policy at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and is author of the forthcoming book "Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future."

Thanks to Paul of GeekPress for the link.