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.

Comments

[rst]

continuing our current laissez- faire approach [toward brain boosting] risks running afoul of public opinion, drug laws, and physicians' codes of ethics.

Public opinion - the public can shove any opinions on my drug habits up their asses.

Drug laws - the government can shove any opinions on my drug habits up their asses.

Physician's codes - the physician can do no harm to the patient. I think it's arrogant to presume that a performance enhancer could or should be a prescribed entity. My coffee isn't.

Improved brain imaging, or mapping, is yielding new techniques such as "brain fingerprinting," which purports to be able to locate memories within the brain, raising troubling possibilities for invasion of privacy.

Maybe one day an enlarged or active medulla oblongata might get you bumped to the top of the no-fly list.

[Mo]

I have considered this for work. Part of it is because I suspect I may have Adult ADD, but I don't want to go all the way. Quite frankly, I like the way I am (scatterbrained), but the lack of focus affects my work. So I figure why not pop a pill to help out when I need it, big project or presentation. Before I would ever go through this I would have a conversation with my doctor and move forward from there. One thing I am grateful for is that I can have an intelligent conversation with my doctor regarding these things and not just be told stock answers. That, I believe, is the key.

[Jon H]

The problem here is a dumb writer.

The article says: " The drug Ritalin, first given to control hyperactivity in children, now is routinely used by healthy high school and college students to sharpen their thinking before taking exams"

But this isn't backed up by any facts whatsoever.

By the way it's worded, it looks like the author assumes that Ritalin is only used for "hyperactivity" in "children". Which suggests that the author is unaware of the existence of ADD, attention deficit *without* hyperactivity.

The author also appears to be unaware that ADD/ADHD aren't just for "children", but often continue into adulthood. Which means that there are non-hyperactive highschool and college students with ADD who would benefit from Ritalin.

So the writer is just assuming that any high school or college kid must be "healthy", and that if they are taking Ritalin, it isn't because of ADD, but only to tweak up their scores.

So this bit is demonstrating the writer's ignorance of the subject.

I myself wasn't even diagnosed with ADD until the summer before my senior year of college. I was never, ever a behavior problem. My grades just slowly slid until I graduated high school with a 2.25 GPA, but without doing anything that would have suggested to the guidance counselors that I was having problems. (Like if my grades plummeted from A's to F's in one semester, or I started skipping class, and they thought I was on drugs or something.)

Speaking from experience, Ritalin at the test won't help a student if they haven't been paying attention in lectures and have been slacking off on homework. If you don't know it, you don't know it.

There may be students who obtain Ritalin from a friend, in the mistaken belief that it's a "smart pill". But I doubt it helps them much.

Frankly, I wouldn't give my ritalin away, because your supply is strictly controlled. No refills. New *written* prescription every month, hand-delivered to the pharmacy. Can only get a month's worth at a time.

Blah.

[Lisa Simpson]

No way am I taking pharmacological or medical advice from Christian Scientists.

[Kevin Carson]

If you want something to help you on a test, BTW, try washing down a few lecithin gelcaps with vinegar-water. The choline in the lecithin combines with the acetic acid to make the neurotransmitter acetylcholine.

[Ironchef]

I would take as many (mental) performance-enhancing drugs as I could get my hands on. My body, I'll assume the risk. Even considering testing for adult ADD to qualify as well, since I have such a short HEY WHAT'S THAT OVER THERE? . . .

[Josh]

As Jon H said, the writer is a moron. Popping a pill before a test will not help you in the least. In fact, most of the medications used to treat ADD are stimulants, so you would probably just get a bit jumpy and nervous. Ritalin requires a steady dosage over time to be effective, and will not do much at all for people without ADD.

[speedwell]

Jon H writes:

"The problem here is a dumb writer.

"The article says: " The drug Ritalin, first given to control hyperactivity in children, [....]"

"But this isn't backed up by any facts whatsoever."

First given when? My mom had been taking Ritalin for her narcolepsy since I was small--we'll call that 35 years--and I'm sure it was not a new therapy then. That's before ADD got trendy. I wonder what else this reporter didn't bother to check. Here's one of MY sources:

"First marketed as a treatment for: chronic fatigue, depression, psychosis associated with depression, to offset the effects of other medications, and to treat narcolepsy." http://personal.monm.edu/WTHOMAS/Thesis/Thesis3.htm

[Kevin Carson]

I've got a bumper sticker that says "Hugs Are Better Than Drugs--Except for Ritalin"