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Brain Enhancement is Wrong, Right?

By Patrick

A commentator in another thread recently mentioned drug abuse for intellectual inhancement. The NY Times ran a story about the ethical implications of this phenomenon today, and it is worth a read.

The piece asks some interesting questions. Is there a meaningful distinction between substance abuse in athletics and academics (because unlike athletes, intellectuals' successes drive social progress)? Is there an ethical distinction between a scenario in which an employee chooses to use, say, Adderall, and a scenario that person is asked to use Adderall by their employer? Will we someday put asterisks after Nobel Prize winners' names?

One comment in particular caught me off guard. A graduate student interviewed for the article said, "You can usually tell who?s using [stimulants] because they can be angry, testy, hyperfocused, they don?t want to be bothered."

Ummm . . . right.

Who has been spiking my coffee?

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on March 09, 2008 (boomark / email).