The article that I read was entitled “Why boost brains?”. It looked at the emerging possibility for drugs which improve brain function. Specifically it discussed the issue of what restrictions should be placed on these brain boosters or should they be legal at all.
I think that these cognitive enhancers should be legal but that their use must be carefully monitored and that they need to stay out of mentally competitive areas such as the school setting. If they were allowed in schools, it would no longer be the students who worked the hardest who would succeed. Instead it would be those who could afford the medication needed to make their brains work better. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if I am in an airplane, I want that pilot to be functioning the best that he can because my life as well as the lives of everyone else on that plane is in his or her hands. If studies prove that pilots can function better by using brain boosters then I want them to use the drugs.
At this point there are no studies that definitively prove that the drugs work and more studies need to be conducted to ensure that the changes that are seen in the people who have tested the drugs are not just the result of the placebo effect. If the drugs are proven to work they could have very important ramifications for many people but we need to ensure that they do not give the people who can afford them an advantage over those who cannot; there is already enough of an achievement gap between the economic classes.
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I heard a story about this too. The situation was a college student who took brain enhancing drugs (Ritalin?) to pass her college entrance exam, I think it was to Harvard. It was her life dream to go to there.
ReplyDeleteNo one would have known she took the drug if she wouldn't have been interviewed by the media and said she took brain enhancing drugs. She didn't think it was a big deal or legal issue. The college denied her entrance into the college.
I agree with your last statement as it relates to the student. She potentially gave herself had a great advantage over other students who couldn't afford the drugs. The process for college entrance is supposed to be competative. She cheated to get that advantage.
I find this interesting for a number of reasons. If there are chemical brain booster that can help us be sharper or smarter why would it be unethical to use them? against what standard would you say they are unethical? The concept of a level playing I would argue is mythology, people have all types of advantages, (money, connections, stable family, culture etc), so why should the taking of a medication that helps you be any different.
ReplyDeleteFrom a consequnetialist standpoint I would say that the taking fo "brain boosters" assists me, my family, my future income, my contribution to society, so that makes it moral, from a duty or deontological perspective it helps me fulfill my duty to maximize my potential, etc. so what makes it unethical or immoral.
I am not saying that there are not already many ways in which the playing field is not fair but if we allow people to gain an even greater advantage through the use of money we will create two separate educational classes, those that use the enhancers and those that do not.
ReplyDeleteIt is from a societal point of view not an individual point of view that this is immoral. Some of the best and the brightest minds have come from the lower classes but if they cannot afford the drugs to compete with those who are not naturally as smart but who can afford the medication we may not have the advances in society that we could have. The drugs will make the brain work better but they will not take the place of natural ability and original ideas.
This is a very interesting discussion. Do you think that taking a brain boosting drug to increase your cognitive ability is any different than taking steroids if you are an athlete?
ReplyDeleteI think that they are on the same level. Both of them allow people to do things that they are not naturally able to do. Just like steroids, brain boosting drugs could help people that really need them. I can envision situations where people with decreased brain function take brain boosters in order to help them live normal lives just like steroids can help people with other physical developmental disorders live normal lives.
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