Scientists are abusing mental performance enhancing drugs.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20080409/poll-scientists-use-brain-boosting-drugs

by tx • 18 years ago

20 57 18 years ago

dws• 18 years ago

Where did you get "abusing"? That word appears nowhere in the article.

tx• 18 years ago

What else you call it when a healthy individual takes pills, sometimes a combination of, that are manufactured for ADD patients?

giardini• 18 years ago

"using".

randomhack• 18 years ago

"Abusing" is a subjective opinion in this case.

as• 18 years ago

Mental enhancement?

Scientists aren't athletes. Discovery isn't a zero sum game. If we want to go by med labels, I think we should remember that rationality isn't the great driving force of American drug law.

mrtron4• 18 years ago

I am sure that the vast majority of us use/abuse drugs. To what extent is the only question.

For example, after years of avoiding it, I have quickly settled in to the caffeine routine. Coffee in the morning, occasionally a soft drink in the evening. While this is hardly risky behaviour, it is drug use.

I personally would consider using different drugs more regularly. Jet lag really can be a killer, so I would take something when travelling if there was a good option I was aware of.

Personally I am strongly against certain drugs being prescription and unavailable to informed individuals. It makes it seem like these drugs are entirely safe when prescribed by a doctor and unsafe if people get them through other means. I have some heavy painkillers that were legally acquired but not prescribed by a doctor, and I use them in a very safe way for my occasional intense back pain. I know many people on the same pain killers who take them in an irresponsible way as prescribed by their doctor.

It is a topic that I think we need to try and avoid looking at it with such a narrow vision. I also think a lot of illegal drugs are no more dangerous than legal drugs, but that is another topic.

jmzachary12• 18 years ago

"For example, after years of avoiding it, I have quickly settled in to the caffeine routine. Coffee in the morning, occasionally a soft drink in the evening. While this is hardly risky behaviour, it is drug use."

But it's not illegal drug use. You are lumping together taking an aspirin for a headache in with taking ADD drugs illegally to enhance mental focus. Having a coffee is not drug use, despite it having caffeine.

It doesn't matter if you think a lot of illegal drugs are no more dangerous than legal drugs. If you compare the effective and lethal doses of pot and booze, you'll find booze is much deadlier. What matters is the rule of law.

mrtron4• 18 years ago

Using illegal as a matter of consideration is ridiculous. Illegal in what country? Why is the drug illegal? Taking aspirin for a headache IS the same as taking ADD drugs.

Having coffee specifically for the caffeine boost IS drug use.

What I am saying is that the rule of law doesn't matter, and as you suggest with the pot/booze example it is often backwards. Booze is much deadlier and more dangerous for personal use than pot, no question when you consider lethal dose.

Legality of drugs would be a small afterthought if I considered taking something like ADD for concentration. 99% of the consideration would be my personal health and safety including long term side effects.

sdurkin4• 18 years ago

But is there a good reason not to prescribe these drugs to anyone who wants to use them for extra mental focus?

It seems to me that if they are safe for use long term, there's no good reason to ban them.

pstuart• 18 years ago

The only thing about the rule of law here is not getting caught. These laws are about controlling the population, not protecting them.

Here is where your "illegal drugs" thinking goes: http://www.reason.com/news/show/124947.html

crxnamja• 18 years ago

also read that scientists that drink beer are dumber and produce worse research...

gojomo• 18 years ago

That widely-reported study was well-skewered here:

http://life.lithoguru.com/index.php?itemid=119

May still be true, I don't know, but the study fodder that created the headlines a while back was flimsy.

dgabriel• 18 years ago

This is nothing new. http://amphetamines.com/paul-erdos.html

kleevr2• 18 years ago

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/

kleevr2• 18 years ago

http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/makingchoices/index.htm

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

"But a third of respondents said they would feel pressure to give such drugs to their children if other children at school were taking them."

Apparently a third of the respondents are big dorks.

sdurkin4• 18 years ago

This is an interesting argument. From a libertarian standpoint, I have the freedom to take whatever actions I want, so long as those actions don't interfere with the freedom of others.

Now, science is not a zero-sum game, but school is. There are a limited number of spots in top universities, and the pressure to get one of those spots is enormous.

So if my peers are all using study drugs, then I would be compelled to use those drugs to remain competitive. So their use of the drugs would interfere with my freedom of choice.

comatose_kid2• 18 years ago

I guess I don't really understand the point. What ever happened to learning for its own sake?

Jesin2• 18 years ago

Ahh, but would their use of drugs interfere with your freedom of choice more than a flat-out ban would?

jmzachary12• 18 years ago

"So if my peers are all using study drugs, then I would be compelled to use those drugs to remain competitive. So their use of the drugs would interfere with my freedom of choice."

Not only that, but the playing field among you and your peers returns to parity except the cost is that everyone needs to take study drugs to keep up.

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

"So their use of the drugs would interfere with my freedom of choice."

You are not entitled to particular choices, but are free to choose among what others may have made available.

It's no violation of rights that you don't get the choice you might prefer. If I get to the movie's five minutes before you, and take a seat you may have wanted, I'm not violating any of your rights of free choice because I parked my ass in a chair before you could.

LPTS5• 18 years ago

Let's be honest.

Our culture has a completely hypocritical attitude towards drug use. The people who make the drug laws are either idiotic or spineless politicians, the people who enforce them are sadistic bullies, and the people who support the system are uninformed morons, latent Fascists or nosy busybodies.

In fact the entire drug war is actually a proxy for a cultural conflict between conformist and nonconformist elements in society. It's common for conforming bullies to be enabled to abuse nonconforming weird kids by school authorities. The drug war is that at a huge scale.

A few commonly seen fallacies include that use does not mean abuse. Use can be beneficial (see Carl Sagan, Steve Jobs). Abuse is not always a net negative (see, Paul Erdos, the rock and roll hall of fame). Addicts can function fine in society (cofounder of hopkins).

If some scientist looking for a cancer cure wants to take speed or provigil to help them work, more power to them. Do you want to tell families suffering from Alzhihmers that their cure was delayed because the best researcher was arrested for taking ADD medication to hold the complexities of the disease in her memory as she worked on a cure? How much time should a cancer researcher, using a mental performance booster and trying to find a cure be put in jail?

In fact, I would argue that, for brilliant scientists working on saving lives, the obligation to dedicate themselves fully to their work in much more pressing then the obligation to follow idiotic, racist, superstitious laws. In fact, much scientific progress came from scientific people breaking dumb superstitious laws and societal conventions. See, for example, early researches in anatomy, which the church treated as unholy, or early research in astronomy. So if researchers (particularly researchers who save lives) want to do this, it's part of a long, illustrious tradition of ignoring irrational rules to get science done.

But then I care more about progress and a cure for these things then the particulars of what metabolites are in the urine of the researchers that found it. Maybe I'm deviant confused and unethical that way.

ericwaller2• 18 years ago

It's a much less noble cause, but I've made a similar argument in regards to professional athletes using steroids.

Sure steroids can seriously screw up your body, but some of these guys are making millions of dollars a year for their physical performance. There's nothing immoral about letting these guys trade long term health for shorter term physical performance and loads of money.

pg2• 18 years ago

The difference with athletes is that they're playing already circumscribed games. Since everyone has to obey artificial rules, there's no harm in making the rules prevent damage to the players. In fact it's hard to think of a sport that doesn't already have rules of this type.

Winning in games is by definition relative. But winning at ideas is absolute. The faster you find a cure for cancer the better.

I'm not advocating using drugs to help you think better, btw, but there's more of a case there than in sports.

Scientists are abusing mental performance enhancing drugs.

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