
Brain-boosting drugs for healthy people - dilanj
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/wireStory?id=6412215
======
mdasen
At a point, this just goes to the competitive nature of our society. From a
moral standpoint, if who we are is a product of our environment and our
genetics, then we ourselves aren't anything that isn't predefined. Someone who
is lazy is a product of their genes and environment in the same way that
someone with a disease is the product of their environment and genes. So, what
makes asthma (which I have) something that I'm applauded for overcoming with
medicine while obesity is something people are generally frowned upon for
overcoming with medicine? Well, the fact that we want to ascribe the later as
a choice - the choice to eat.

Einstein didn't believe in free will. However, he said that holding people
responsible for their actions was a pragmatic approach for society to take
(presumably because such action changes the environment that we are all in).

There are huge struggles because people don't want to accept that they have
less free will than they ascribe. As such, the goal is to hold people
responsible for faults that you don't have and find excuses that let you off
the hook for any faults that you have. There are organizations that create
campaigns to get society to accept their fault as something that should be
compensated for. Short attention span? That's ok because it's medical. Stupid?
Lazy? Those are things that are the fault of the individual.

It's really hard. If you can medicalize your faults, you get legal protection
for them. If you can't medicalize them, you're personally responsible for
keeping them in control. That creates a huge incentive for medicalization of
everything in the human condition. And we're all worried about being left
behind in this Red Queen's Race.

~~~
wheels
As for free will, Einstein was particularly offended by some of the
consequences of quantum mechanics which seemed to remove determinism from the
most elementary of particle interactions.

If fundamental interactions are in fact deterministic at this point, we
haven't learned how to predict their consequences, which has led to the many
interpretations of quantum mechanics. Einstein was fond of "hidden variables"
since it held out some hope of quantum mechanics at some point being
deterministic once again:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory>

His interpretation is, however, not widely accepted. In other words, "free
will" may be an emergent property of quantum interactions.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/thou-art-physic.html>

<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/03/righting-a-wron.html>

free will is probably a further side effect of the same biological processes
that gave rise to what we view as self-awareness: recursive thinking.

------
randomwalker
I find it disturbing that this is even controversial.

First, the notion that there is an optimal "healthy" state is make-believe. We
all get old and die, so in a sense we are all terminally ill. We should have a
right to improve our minds and bodies as long as there is room for
improvement.

More to the point, brain types fall on a spectrum. ADHD is just one extreme.
Equating "median" with "healthy" is a fallacy. Consider this: is synesthesia a
disease? It can make life very hard, but it can also make patient extremely
creative. Imagine a world where synesthesia is the normal condition -- non-
synesthetes would be considered retards!

If there were a drug that could turn you into a synesthete, should the drug be
illegal?

Second, we all already take a brain-boosting drug: caffeine, which is both
undeniably effective, and has a wide spectrum of side effects. Other drugs
like modafinil have almost zero side-effects in comparison, but they are
prescription-only because they don't have a history of social acceptability.
"Used historically" = "safe" is an even bigger fallacy.

Third, you can't prevent people from taking brain pills by not funding
research (if the research doesn't happen in the U.S, it will happen in other
countries.). All that this policy will achieve is encourage a black market and
unsafe usage.

The whole thing reminds me strongly of that Kurt Vonnegut piece posted here
yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=388642>.

~~~
mynameishere
A hallmark of conservativism is to recognize that 90 percent of our behavior
is much the same as occurred 2000 years ago, but many, many innovations came
and went in between (Heroin: Cure for morphine addiction). What happened to
them? They were tried, and they were discarded by the credible professions.

Maybe these drugs are good. "Maybe". Most drug tests occur over a matter of
months, rather than a lifetime. Caffeine has been tried over centuries, and
that fact has value, because within those centuries are lifetimes and
generations. Every new drug is roulette, and you know it.

 _modafinil have almost zero side-effects in comparison,_

See, bullshit

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil#Side-effects>

~~~
kragen
If I understand correctly, that page says that 34% of modafinil takers
reported headaches, compared to 23% of non-modafinil takers, 11% reported
nausea (vs. 3%), 7% reported nervousness (vs. 3%), and 5% reported insomnia
(vs. 1%). What do you think the numbers for caffeine would be? Caffeine
withdrawal is a major cause of headaches, and caffeine is a major cause of
nervousness, insomnia, tachycardia, hypertension, dizziness, etc.

I'm not saying caffeine is some kind of dangerous drug; I'm just saying that
"almost zero side effects in comparison" is at least plausible given the
Wikipedia page.

~~~
mynameishere
Caffeine has this other advantage: That certain beverages that contain it are
culinarily exquisite. Same with ethanol (praise god).

~~~
kragen
Modafinil is effective in small enough doses that you could put it into just
about any beverage you like, just like amphetamine, piracetam, and so on, and
unlike ethanol. You may enjoy quaffing toxic organic solvents like ethanol,
but I don't particularly fancy the idea myself.

~~~
silentbicycle
You can't really put piracetam in "just about any beverage", both because of
the taste and the sheer _quantity_. That would be like trying to hide a
tablespoon of ground-up mothballs in your orange juice. (Aniracetam or
oxiracetam, maybe.)

~~~
kragen
Oops! I was speaking from ignorance. Thank you for the correction!

------
DenisM
There could be nasty side-effects twenty years down the road, so I'd rather
abstain.

It would totally suck to be forced to take those drugs to remain cometitive,
so I hope they will keep those drugs in limited circulation until their safety
can be proven beyond doubt.

~~~
jaxn
You trust the FDA to tell you what is safe and what is not?

~~~
DenisM
No, where did you get that from???

I hope that FDA keeps those drugs unavailable for next 40 years, and during
that time hundreds of organization and individual doctors around the world
will be able to test the long-term safety.

~~~
Shamiq
That's an interesting notion.

What incentive does a drug company have into spending millions of dollars
researching and developing a product to _maybe_ reap benefits 40 years in the
future? In a similar situation, I would move onto something more lucrative in
a reasonable time frame. It's conceivable to imagine an industry completely
stifled by having extremely high barriers to market entry.

Additionally, imagine being forced to use research that is at least 40 years
behind the curve (undoubtedly it'll be more), when the new is available.

I understand you may have been exaggerating -- but this is still a good point
to bring up.

~~~
DenisM
Well, not everything on earth should be done by the private businesses. This
one can be financed by the public, knd of like the nuclear bomb and stuff.

Legal mind-enhancing drugs are a great danger to society. They will put
everyone in the position where they _have_ to take those drugs, or risk
perpetual unemployment. If side effects surface decades later they will
cripple entire population of the country because no one will be able to
abstain. The same level of danger is not present in any other drug - there is
currently no pressure to take drugs on anyone but small group of competitive
athletes.

~~~
jamesbritt
"Legal mind-enhancing drugs are a great danger to society. They will put
everyone in the position where they have to take those drugs, or risk
perpetual unemployment."

Replace "drugs" with "education", and ask what should be done. Ban learning?

~~~
DenisM
By contrast to drugs, "education" has thousands of years to prove it's long-
term medical safety. Different drugs have proven to have all kinds of nasty
side-effects to a point where it is normal to hold them all suspect by
default.

~~~
jaxn
Sometimes you have to take risks. There is some question as to whether cell
phones have long term medical risks, but I bet you use a cell phone (for
increased productivity no less).

------
ars
"Steps to keep the benefits from making socio-economic inequalities worse."

Not impressed - they would rather everyone be equally "stupid" rather than
some people be smarter than others? These drugs do not take away from anyone,
they only add.

------
jimbokun
"But she said she was concerned that wider use of stimulants could lead more
people to become addicted to them. That's what happened decades ago when they
were widely prescribed for a variety of disorders, she said.

"Whether we like it or not, that property of stimulants is not going to go
away," she said."

So, substances with a known history of addictive behavior. This is what we
call burying the lede (quote from page 3 of the article). As important as the
other considerations are that were brought up, this seems to trump them.

Do we know how addictive? Addictive like caffeine, or crack, or somewhere in
between?

~~~
chris11
I don't know how addictive stimulants can be if used properly, but stimulants
like ritalin can be abused.
[http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Pharms_Methylphen...](http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Pharms_Methylphenidate.shtml)

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auston
Modafinil seems to be an interesting way to augment your mental ability - No
short term effects, except for a slightly increased heart rate. [see link for
experiences]

<http://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Modafinil.shtml>

The _long_ term effects would be a concern of mine if I was going to take it
though.

------
cjenkins
Are use of drugs like these prevalent in the startup world? I can imagine it
has to be pretty tempting. Plus there's the added incentive that you already
(should?) have pretty productive people and stacking another multiplier on top
of their productivity would be hard to turn down.

Or is it the case that working in a startup is already motivating enough that
there wouldn't really be much of an additional benefit?

------
pmorici
Isn't this akin to advocating for the legalization of steroids only here were
talking about a thinking muscle instead of a moving one?

~~~
dejb
No because unlike sport, which is artificial competition for entertainment,
mental work is real productive work that benefits society. Increasing our
mental abilities can make the the world a better place, the same cannot be
said of steriods and sporting ability.

Another difference is that steriods at the level taken by athletes use is
demonstrably harmfull for their health, this is not necessarily true for
mental boosters.

~~~
josefresco
"which is artificial competition for entertainment, mental work is real
productive work that benefits society"

Uhhh, professional sport isn't 'real' work? I would would say without a doubt
every single processional athlete probably works much harder then your typical
white collar worker (due to the fact that they are not typical athletes) As
far as "productive" goes, each pro organization is staffed with hundreds of
people all doing 'productive' work which is possible because of the athletes
that work for the corporation.

~~~
dejb
I have nothing against professional athletes. In fact I admire them a lot. But
let's face it, sports is a zero sum game from the perspective of skill level.
What real difference would it make to the world if all the world's athletes
were 10% less fast/strong/coordinated etc...? Would people still be interested
and entertained by sports - of course they would. In watching sports people
like to see a contest of the best but the absolute standard of the best
doesn't really influence that value. This is even more the case in sports
participation. People like to feel they can compete at a particular level but
it is all relative.

Now contrast this with mental abilities. If people can solve medical problems
then they can prevent deaths and enhance health. If they can solve technical
problems they can make peoples lives easier and allow them to achieve more. In
general mental skills can make the world a better place. Not a zero sum game.

------
bbhoss-synsol
I'd like to see an incident where caffeine has caused such severe cutaneous
and dermatologic reactions as modafinil has. If such drugs were deregulated,
we would certainly see the number of victims of these horrible reactions go
up.

~~~
blurry
Caffeine has caused much worse, including death:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Overuse>

