Slashdot Mirror
MIT Finds Cure For Fear
Doom con runs away writes "MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience. They did this by inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5, which facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context."
Because I saw some MIT guys talking to GIRLS!
President Bush introduced a bill this week to eliminate all research funding at MIT.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It is also called Liquid Courage. Drinking enough alcohol leaves me with no fear as well...
Why would you want to cure fear? Fear keeps me from giving in to a friend's bet and swallowing a live hamster. But seriously, unless you could target certain fears to help people with crippling phobias, this seems dangerous.
I am terrified at the implications of this!
I hope to see commercials advertising fear-curing pills within the next few years so I can rush to the pharmacy with a prescription. In fact I think we should charge ahead with this and eliminate fear everywhere by putting it in the water with the fluoride. I see no downside or risk!
...the Darwin Awards suddenly recieves a flood of new entries.
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Fear is a useful mechanism in preventing humans from doing things that have potentially bad consequences for the person.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Aside from treatments for shell-shocked war vets, I wonder if this could be used to treat more mundane fears as well such as phobias and social anxiety. That could be a boon to many, many people; social anxiety may sound wussy, but it is a misery-inducing and debilitating condition.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Fear is what keeps us from doing dangerous things. Fear is an important part of our survival system. Targeting contextual fears could be therapeutically useful, but I think "cure" is the wrong word. The ultimate word on fear, though, comes from Jack Handy:
Fear can sometimes be a useful emotion. For instance, say you were an astronaut on the moon and you fear your partner had been turned into Dracula. The next time he goes out for moon pieces, WHAM!, you just slam the door behind him and blast off. He might call you on the radio and say he's not Dracula, but you just say, "Think again, Batman!"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Everyone seems to be hopping on the "but fear is useful!" bandwagon - but I'm not sure it is. Fear, the emotion, is an instinctive reaction to danger, whether that danger is real or simply perceived. I don't see that it's necessarily bad to replace the gut response with a rational response.
That is, I doubt the drug will remove awareness of danger, simply the emotional reaction to it. While supersoldiers leap to every SF fan's mind, imagine what this could do for everyone who's got any kind of irrational fear. Fear of flying, fear of public speaking, fear of talking to girls, the whole list of phobias. Even in situations where fear is justified - wartime combatants, for example - I don't know that fear is helpful in comparison to the ability to rationally assess threats.
Regardless, in society at large most people most of the time aren't afraid of real threats, they're afraid of imagined (or at least, disproportionately perceived) threats.
Besides which, even the real threats faced by a significant percentage of people in modern industrialized society strike me as predominantly not susceptible to the "fight, flight, or freeze" response.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I see from all the comments that nobody actually read the article.
The 'cure' doesn't eliminate any and all fear. It doesn't address situational fear at all.
What it 'cures' is LEARNED fear responses. It's specific application to, for example, soldiers would be
for PTSD.
And even if there was a way to get read of all fear reactions, you'd still have a BRAIN and the ability
to choose not to do things that you reason are too risky.
Seriously, read the article. It's interesting.
Sheesh.
And I share the concerns about the abuse of this potential drug.
But there are mental illnesses that deal with crippling fears, where extreme fear of seemingly insignificant things can prevent a person from interacting with society in a meaningful way. For those people, this drug could bring relief, and a chance for a normal life. But control is paramount, and I'd need to see a LOT of clinical trial and years in the open market before it gets into military use. Fear will keep you alive on a battle field, but crippling fear will get your unit killed. Not only that, but being in a war zone isn't 24x7 guns blazing and shells falling. It's minutes of near death experiences followed by minutes, hours, days, even weeks of no activity. Knowing that at any second an explosion could rip you to shreds, or small arms fire could light you up. That is the stress that kills, the constant fear tearing at the back of your mind. Some people have even described the start of an attack as a relief, as they no longer do they have to sit in anticipation of the attack. If this drug could help prevent soldier from locking up in high stress moments, and relieve the pressure from the tedium of war, then I could have a solid benefit for the military.
If on the other hand, it takes away their fear of bullets, reprisal, and other control mechanisms... then it is nothing we want to give to anyone with a gun.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
As I read this article, it isn't about making something fearless or preventing fear...it's more about increasing the rate at which a learned fear response decays in the absence of reinforcement. Essentially, the brain has built in mechanisms to "cure" fear on its own, given enough time without reinforcement of that particular fear. Inhibition of this enzyme--oddly enough one linked with plasticity and neural development--makes that process easier/faster.
If I understand correctly, then they are right in saying this would be potentially wonderful for treating cases of PTSD where the fear response does not significantly decrease even at points in time far removed from the initial trauma, but I don't think we have to worry about inhibition of this enzyme erasing people's ability to feel fear or leading to fear-based weapons systems. Those things are almost certainly possible (lesions on the amygdala are thought to tame animals by destroying their ability to feel fear), but I don't think they'll appear as a result of this study.
fear is good. It stops us from doing stupid things.
Like posting without RTFA.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The first post is more correct, as the drug might actually apply in a situation involving girls. The drug treats learned fear, not the innate fear of combat. It will be used to help control post traumatic stress disorder. Arguably, fear of women is a learned fear similar to PTSD.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...I just use my Tremor Totem. Easy :D
I actually clicked into this story, pressed 'ctrl+f' and typed 'I for one', just to find your exact comment.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1