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Gene Therapy Turns Slackers Into Workaholics
DrLudicrous writes "According to a recent Reuters article, scientists have been able to cause monkeys to stop procrastinating by blocking the development of a dopamine receptor in the brain. The net result- the monkeys turned into workaholics. An article has appeared in the online version of Nature. Apparently, monkeys, just like human beings, tend to slack off on tasks until the very last minute. They become quite adept at judging how long they have till they absolutely must complete these tasks. The original article appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. An additional blurb appears here courtesty of Science Blog." NIH has a press release.
And then go rent Modern Times.
KFG
Which begs the question...
Nope, it prompts the question, not begs the question. You would be begging the question if you declared that the million workaholic monkeys would come up with a cure for cancer more quickly because clearly they would work more per day.
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
In "A Deepness in the Sky", the evil-doers (not to be confused with axis-of-evil members) were able to "focus" people they enslaved to make them hundreds or thousands of times more productive workers. This article made me think of that so I posted it.
Even though the terms gene therapy are being bandied about in conjunction with this story, there is no such thing as a slacker gene.
What the experiment did here was essentially introduce a learning disorder into the primates, using a method to inhibit a dopamine (specific kind of neurotransmitter) generating process in a localized area. This made it impossible for the primates to connect the visual stimulus indicating the number of tasks remaining and the introduction of a reward - hence the completion criteria becomes effectively decoupled through this dissociation and they have no clue when they will be rewarded.
This does not translate well into humans, which have several other cues that can connect activity with the expectation of reward. The induced learning dissability would have to cover these as well, and would have a disastrous societal effect; no effective expectation of reward also translates to reduced expectation of punishment.
Alternatively this same behavior could be produced in the workplace without the chemistry by having managers arbitrarily provide discipline and praise. This technique has been known for some time, and even quantized into a specific practice (though without conscious concession to this premise as the genesis for the method) in the awful book "The One Minute Manager," whereby an environment is constructed to remove personal validation of the employees and place the entirety of that role on the manager, who is then free to act illogically (or semi-logically, personality and cluefulness depending) in their delivery of the same.
Any spoon would be too big.
Not so fast. The hominid branch of evolution is placed within the "tree" of apes which is placed within the tree of monkeys, to be more specific on the branch of "Old World monkeys". Since hominids arose from within the monkey "tree" it is correct to call us "evolved monkeys". Our most recent common ancestor (that still is around today) is the chimps (with all the chimp speciecs on the very same branch). The most recent common ancestor to humans-chimps are the gorillas and outside that clade, the orangutangs (yes there are actually two species of orangs).
r ch/JME98_47p718-727.pdf
For some research: http://www.biol.lu.se/cellorgbiol/phylogeny/Resea
Life is what happened when Good Intentions met Harsh Reality (the brother of the more infamous Chaos).
"Monkeys split off into homanids, whcich spurred a few failed attempts (neandrathals, hom-habilis, etc) and then finally us."
Yes, but meanwhile monkeys also evolved away from that branch point. It is theoretically possible that our common monkey ancestor still exists, unchanged, as a modern species. But it's not likely.
Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology; Ain't got time to make no apology
The American Psychiatric Association invents diagnoses to perpetuate an industry geared to helping people with these newly discovered and (conveniently) medicinally treatable "diseases." They invent problems. This is discussed in depth in Making Us Crazy By Herb Kutchins, but alternate forms of therapy have been discussed for decades (see Jean Piaget, for example). Undeniably, some severe conditions like Schizophrenia are treatable within the Psychiatric paradigm. Most more pedestrain difficulties--bipolar, depression, ADHD, homosexuality (oh wait, the DSM finally stopped classifying that as mental illness in the 3rd edition!) are best treated with cognitive behavioral therapy. Change the behavior and you change the brain chemistry. Psychotropics are terribly harmful and do nothing to address the underlying behavior that's causing the difficulties.
It's not inflamatory or wild speculation to say that if this discovery with monkeys makes its way to a human treatment, that it will thrust upon every bored 10 year old who's lacking challenge.
This message has been brought to you by a person who was diagnosed with ADHD at 15, took ritalin in high school at 16, and who finally, through behavioral changes in his 20s, was retested at 27 and can no longer be diagnosed with ADHD.
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
"Is there some FDA rule that says that a drug designed to improve attention span MUST be only used by people with attention span difficulty?"
Nope, get a doctor to prescribe it to you and you can legally take it. A whole lot of drugs are prescribed for things that they are not approved for. The approval only determines what the drug can be marketed for. (Pfizer just got sued over this, I think it was neurontin, but they have so man drugs, it is hard to remember)
One thing to notice: what drugs affect the same dopamine receptor? Amphetamine, Methamephetamine, Ritalin, Cocaine, etc. What are the effects of these drugs? Initially anyway, they all improve concentration, focus and the ability to work, just like these monkeys seem to experience. Are there side effects? Gee, duh. This research won't result in a capitalist nirvana any more than handing out Meth to employees would.
Hey troll-boy, calm down. I said that Ritalin turned me into a zombie. I didn't say, "Ritalin will turn you into a zombie, it's wrong for everyone and ADD is bullshit." Read the post before you give a kneejerk response to it. I said that in many of the cases in which Ritalin is prescribed, it is either unnecessary or improperly prescribed. This is true. Doctors hand it out like candy. That doesn't mean that it doesn't help people, it simply means that in many cases, people with a prescription for Ritalin shouldn't have one. Look at the constantly rising number of prescriptions to Ritalin and tell me: are we breeding more and more children with attention deficits, or are we growing more and more eager to correct any perceived difference in learning style, no matter how small, by prescribing a catch-all drug that may not even be the correct prescription?
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