Trauma Pill Might Help Ease Emotional Pain

FrenchyinOntario writes "Canada's Globe & Mail is reporting that scientists are currently testing a 'trauma pill' that might help the victims of rape, the battlefield and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) forget or perhaps simply never store the memories of what happened to them the way they are stored normally immediately after the traumatic event, when the brain overloads itself with stress hormones. It's theorized that the pills could eventually be handed out to victims of Katrina-like disasters as well as returning war veterans. Critics wonder what kind of an effect it would have on a victim not to work through the pain like people have traditionally done."

Comments

Eternal Sunshine?

[montyzooooma]

Could do with a really big dose of this to blot out the last decade or so.

Re:Eternal Sunshine?

[Galactic Dominator]

Actually they have already made this. Been around for years, comes in a bottle which I highly recommend to all my friends. Called Jack Daniels.

Do you want your memory altered?

[PrinceAshitaka]

Would you really want your memory erased with a pill? The emotional stress of a memory is just as important as the events. I guess it is true that ignorance is bliss, but I think the people in this community have chosen to forgo that bliss for the truth, that is in many cases harsh. This looks to me just like another way to escape reality. I can only speak with limited authority as I have never experienced something that I would consider absolutely horrible. I think however In the long run I would like to be able to remember. Why not just give them some heroin to ease their pain?

Someone much smarter than me once said that we must remember the past so that we do not repeat it. Do we really want our soldiers to be able to just take a pill after a battle so that they will not remember? Wouldn't it be better if they remembered, suffered, and convinced people not to go to war in the future? There is nothing really in the article that says that the memories would be totally erased but messing with memory formation is pushing the limits what I want done to me.

Re:Do you want your memory altered?

[utexaspunk]

the reason rape is not considered a horrible awful thing in those other cultures is likely that the women are not treated with respect as intellectual equals in the first place, and thus their opinion with regard to whose penis gets to go inside them is not considered valuable. Naturally, if you have a woman who is raised to believe that her opinion is valuable and that she should be equal with men she will be scarred and indignant if another man forces his will upon her. It's as violent of an act as any. Would you be scarred and indignant if another man came and forced himself upon you?

You can't have a culture that considers women equals with men where any man can do what he wants with a woman regardless of how she feels about it, because equality necessitates that it also be a culture where a man can do what he wants with a man regardless of how he feels about it, and you wouldn't want that.

First major use for them...

[marcushnk]

Will be to put them into pez dispensers and give them out for free to IT support staff around the world.

Paging Dr. Pangloss

[NSash]

"Critics wonder what kind of an effect it would have on a victim not to work through the pain like people have traditionally done."

People said the same thing when anaesthesia was invented. There were those who worried that people would suffer from missing out on the "transformative experience of pain." Guess what? It turns out that biting a stick while a surgeon sawed off your leg wasn't that crucial to enriching the human experience after all.

These criticisms don't have any rational basis. People who have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder aren't better adjusted than other humans -- quite the opposite. Irrational fear of change runs deep, it seems.

New Scientist had good coverage of this last year

[The Rev]

This might be a "re-press". I've not read TFA but this was covered in depth in New Scientist on Decemeber 3rd 2005.

The NS article had some very interesting moral and ethical questions too.

You want to pass a polygraph after comitting a murder. Could taking these pills before committing the crime help that? If this were the case, could the presence of metabolites of the drug in your system be used to incriminate you?

Do we really want to raise an army where the soldiers experience no guilt whatsoever no matter who and how many they kill? Soldiers are members of society too. Do we really want that kind of future society?

The philosophical argument is interesting too. Memories are a fundamentally defining attribute of the human experience. What happens to us as human beings when we choose to modify that?

There's no doubt that trauma patients in A&E benefitted from receiving these kinds of drugs. Their experiences and states of mind after the fact were demonstrably better than those who didn't get the drug.

I can totally see scenarios where this could have great value.

I'm just saying that it could be a very sharp double-edged sword.

Thoughts?

Finally

[JumperCable]

Finally there is a solution for dups on slashdot!

Re:It'll Turn 'Em

[permaculture]

It's almost as if this could be used for evil, as well as good.

What's science today coming to?