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Many Scientists Using Performance Enhancing Drugs
docinthemachine is one of several readers to send word of a new poll published in Nature showing unprecedented levels of cognitive performance-enhancing drug abuse by top academic scientists. The poll, conducted among subscribers to Nature, surveyed 1,400 scientists from 60 nations (70% from the US). 20% reported using performance-enhancing drugs. Among the drug-using population, 62% used Ritalin, 44% used Provigil, and 15% used beta-blockers like Inderal. Frequency of use was evenly divided among those who used drugs daily, weekly, monthly, and once a year. All such use without a prescription is illegal.
It is "drug abuse" when drugs are used without the informed consent of an individual; it is simply "illegal drug use" (and very likely legislative abuse of personal liberties at the same time) when an adult makes an informed choice about drug use that doesn't comply with the current law.
People need to move away from the mindset where media pompously and wrongly attributes polar positions such as "right and wrong" and "use and abuse" to be a 100% lexical replacement for "legal and illegal." Anyone with any sense at all knows better than that. A significant number of the laws on the books in the country I live in (the USA) are inherently wrong, outright un- or anti-constitutional, or something even worse. Using them to define what is "right" leads directly to behaviors that are despicable — or worse.
One can be cynical and simply say that this is because our legislators aren't very good at their jobs. Both from the standpoint of making good law in the first place, and also in the sense that they seem to be almost incapable of admitting they made a mistake and taking bad law off the books. Personally, I think it's because they're not very good at liberty — and very good indeed at lawmaking.
There's an old saw that goes, "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence", but I think in the case of bad law, we are indeed looking at malice aforethought. It seems to me that these people have agendas that can only be construed to be "for the people" if you slept through history class and have never read any of the founding documents with any interest. Like most Americans. :(
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We prescribe these drugs to millions of kids who most likely have nothing "wrong" with them, and people have a problem when some adults do the same thing?
This isn't athletics. The point isn't fairness. The point is advancing the science. I have serious doubts that these drugs are actually helping anybody do research who didn't already have some kind of problem, but it's none of our damn business, either.
Caffeine anyone?
The blurb makes it sound as if all this use is illegal. I would imagine most isn't: most of these people will have prescriptions but are using them for off-label purposes. Which is legal.
It isn't necessarily illegal to possess or use prescription medicine without a prescription unless it is a controlled substance or there are state or other laws that come into play. It is illegal to dispense it without a presecription.
Inderal is not a controlled substance.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You say those without a prescription are doing it illegally. Well, how many are legally taking these medications as prescribed by a physician?
Inderal is a cheap beta blocker ($4 for a month's supply) commonly used for the treatment of hypertension and various heart diseases. It can also be used on an as-needed basis for stage fright.
Adult ADHD may be treated with Ritalin. If people are prescribed these medicines, then no foul.
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taking drugs for enhancement is actually self-defeating, psychologically and philosophically. you can cut at the issue with two simple questions: how much of what you do is you? how much of it is the drug?
philosophically speaking, you lose some of your identity when you self-enhance. if you don't buy my argument, i have two words for you: barry bonds. the guy was a great athlete and probably would have made a huge impact on baseball without steroids. now you tell me what his legacy is. what would his legacy be without steroids? you say he would have achieved less physically? ok, but at least whatever he achieved be his own, and not due to a drug, which therefore tarnishes his legacy and diminishes it, to something less than what he would have achieved without steroids
the issue may seem trivial or laughable, but its not. because you not only alter how the world sees you and your accomplishments, you also alter your own self-perception, permanently and negatively. when you alter how you view yourself, you alter your sense of identity, your individualism, your sense of self-regard and your will. if you shortchange yourself, if you tell yourself that some of what you do or did is because of a drug, instead of your own creativity, perseverence, hard work, charm, etc., then you permanently diminish your own sense of self-regard. on this issue alone, enhancement through drugs is not worth it. because it's one thing to cheat and never get caught. its another to cheat, never get caught, but always know yourself that you are a fake. or even if steroids for sports or brain enhancement for science work were 100% socially acceptable: you still have to deal with how you have altered how yourself view your own accomplishments as being a product of something that is not 100% your own
i am not talking about habituation or addiction, i am talking about altering the perception of self, and belittling your own contributions. it's a psychological and philosophical trap: you eventually wind up seeking the drug to BE yourself, rather than to ENHANCE yourself. show me someone who says "no, i can always keep those two issues separate," and i'll show you someone who is low on the self-awareness scale and is in fact most vulnerable to this subtle weakening of self-regard and self-identification
get drunk, smoke marijuana, hey whatever. taking drugs for recreation is actually an act of blotting out the self, destroying oneself temporarily, for the sake of freeing the id and having pleasure. and therefore, this is behavior that is not what i am arguing against in this comment and therefore i am not your typical "just say no to drugs" prude
what i am saying is that if you do any drug to heighten yourself, you achieve the opposite: you denigrate and diminish a sense of self. it is psychologically and philosophically unavoidable. drugs do not enhance life, they blot it out. for recreation, this is fine. but in any aspect of yourself where you should be emphasizing your own contributions, enhacing yourself, you wind up in the end doing psychological harm in the realm of self-regard, removing oneself from your own calculation to yourself about how much you matter and how much you yourself change in this world, rather than some drug
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But then again, life's not fair.
So if life's not fair, why ban "cheating" with drugs? Cheating is part of being unfair.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I think that is best single argument I have ever heard against state interference in people's behaviour (aka. the 'nanny state'). Interesting, thanks.
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Nobody trying to convince me how amphetamines help them think more clearly should miss that many punctuation marks.
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One person achieving without enhancing therapies what someone else needs enhancing therapies to achieve does not lessen the achievement of either party.
All it means is that twice as many people are capable of achieving the same goal. In this case, it's performing highly complex and detailed scientific analysis.
Isn't that a good thing?
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Even if you say that, when they get an emergency patient, they're much too busy saving that person's life to investigate whether it's all their fault and they should be left to die.
Honestly, I still prefer it that way.
Who makes that judgment? Is it the EMT responding on the scene? Is the the ambulance driver? Does the doctor decide when you are on the operating table?
You are going to ask people whose profession is to help fix people and save lives to determine who is worthy of being saved, and who isn't? This is the horribly unethical problem that is the notion of being "uninsured" in the first place. You want to compound that with subjective life style judgments?
So, a gay person with AIDS is treated by a fundamentalist doctor who believes sexuality is a lifestyle choice, and thus, AIDS treatment costs are an unnecessary burden on the tax payer. This is truly the extreme of what the US already has in place with HMOs who are constantly crunching numbers, as opposed to doing everything in their power to help people get better.
Sure, what you say is a wonderful idea. Freedom of choice, my body, and all that. But this thing is called society for a reason. If you really want to destroy yourself, do it outside the realm of society. But of course, these junkies don't hold such noble notions of personal responsibility, so you can't expect them (nor society) to act in accord with such notions.
So if someone uses drugs and contracts a communicable disease as a result, you would not have society treat them, and let them continue to spread the disease until someone catches it who can't be blamed for taking unnecessary risks? Do you see the problem here? It is in society's best interest to address the health problems of individuals even if they got those problems through objectionable behavior. You can address the behavior in other ways, but trying to punish individuals by not taking care of the sick actually punishes the whole society. You're asking society to pay a bigger price in the long run just so you can feel good about having taken a punitive (and, as you yourself acknowledge, somewhat mean-spirited) stance.
My poke is not at illegal immigrants.
My poke is at the *business* hiring them which is making me pay for part of it's cost of doing business so it has higher profits. That's the main thing corporations do-- find ways to push their costs outside of their company onto society as a whole.
If businesses were required to pay fair wages and we didn't provide free health care and schooling, the illegal immigrant problem wouldn't really exist. It would be more like back in the 50's when it was background noise (and teenagers did the work of illegal immigrants) as opposed to the 4 million that crossed the border last year alone (850k were caught and sent back.. the rest are here now)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.