There was an article in the NY Times a few weeks ago which I have tried (and have now officially failed) to ignore. Brain-enhancing drugs is the new hot ethical question in academia. The use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes bothers me, but I didn’t react in quite the same way to hearing about the Tour de France and Major League Baseball and the Olympics as I did to reading about supposedly intelligent people enhancing their noggin function with chemicals.

The more I looked into it, the less intelligent I felt—this has been going on for quite a while in academic settings. Where the hell have I been? I do not enjoy the confusion of simultaneous opposing emotions: feeling cheated/lied to by the folks I thought were in possession of elevated intelligence, along with acute pissed-offedness at not even knowing this crap was available until it was too late for me. Seriously, I could have gotten so much more shit accomplished while I was in school. Probably an additional degree for one thing. Although, the side effects are extreme crankiness, intense focus, and generally just wanting people to go away so you can work, and I was already like that without any drugs in my system. So it’s probably for the best that I didn’t partake.

I can’t really come up with any solid argument against the use of brain-enhancing chemicals other than it just doesn’t seem right. People smoke cigarettes and drink caffeine so they can keep studying, and isn’t that basically the same thing? Possibly cheaper and more socially acceptable, but more or less the same idea. It sucks that humans are so obsessed with perfection that we will go to extreme measures to be the biggest and best athletes, the skinniest and most beautiful models, the smartest and greatest-thinking academics. Being great at a human level isn’t good enough anymore. We all have to find artificial ways to make ourselves super human.

I can understand why; I totally empathize with the level of intense focus you can achieve when everything in your life tunnel-visions down to one goal and all the rest just falls to the wayside. But I’m also a pretty black-and-white girl: I tend to categorize my world as right or wrong and there isn’t a lot of grey. I know I sound like I’m eight years old, but it just doesn’t seem fair. And, seriously, how pathetic if we have one more human endeavor category with an extra section for the asterisks: Fastest Athlete* (performance-enhancing drugs); Hottest Movie Star* (plastic surgery); Skinniest Model* (diet pills and eating disorder); Most Brilliant Scholar* (brain-enhancing drugs).

And, to further my confusion, let me ask this: is all medical assistance and/or enhancement bad? I adore penicillin and vaccinations and vitamins and all the life-saving and –advancing techniques that medical research has come up with. And I can almost guarantee that there was at least one old guy back in the day who saw doctors and their pills as the epitome of modern evil and would have none of it. That guy probably only considered old men who lived past the age of forty to be in the non-pussy category if they had lived that long without medical intervention or enhancement of any kind. Which would mean that by his lights, if I live to a ripe old age, I should have an asterisk on my headstone: Super-Old Lady* (went to the doctor, big fan of Western medicine).

Maybe all the enhancement stuff is just the way things are heading and we should assume everyone is doing it, that we’re all advancing a level of superness thanks to modern science, and we should just get used to it. It can’t be all bad to have a bunch of enhanced brainiacs running amok in the academic world, thinking a real lot and coming up with lots of new, exciting, and profoundly creative and advanced ideas. If they use their powers for good it should all work out great. (This is me being optimistic).

Knowledge Enhancement:

‘Era of Doping’ on the Horizon in Academia?
Is Your Professor Juicing?
Would You Boost Your Brain Power?
Pumping Up Your Brain With Legal Drugs
A Possible Target For Memory-Enhancing Drugs
The Doping Dilemma
Performance Enhancing Drugs in the Boardroom?
A Timeline of Performance-Enhancing Drugs in Sports
Fallout From BALCO Probe Could Taint Olympics, Pro Sports
CBC Sports: 10 Drug Scandals
Are They All Dirty?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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