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.

Comments

No, it's not drug abuse.

[fyngyrz]

...poll published in Nature showing unprecedented levels of cognitive performance-enhancing drug abuse by top academic scientists...

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. :(

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Laws are made when a majority who are elected, hold the same philosophical beliefs create and vote for them.
What planet do you live on? Laws in the US are made when a group of lobbyists bribe *ahem* I meant, give campaign contributions to a sufficient number of politicians to ensure passage of the law.

If you don't like the laws, participate in the voting and hope your candidate of choice wins. That is what society is.
Sounds like you actually believed all that crap in Government Class in High School.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[TubeSteak]

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. Are you an idiot?
Drug abuse, by any definition of "abuse" has nothing to do with (informed) consent.

There is a range of usage patterns.
Some might say it's perscription drug abuse if used other than as perscribed.
But generally speaking, drug use becomes abuse when there are negative health/social consequences.

Under your idiotic definition, a fully informed heroin junkie isn't abusing drugs.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[B'Trey]

Horsefeathers. You (that is, society) assumed that burden on its own. It doesn't place any obligations on me. It's as if I decided to come over and mow your lawn for you. You'd probably be delighted that you didn't have to do it yourself anymore.(1) But if, six months later, I came banging on your door and demanded that you stop allowing your kids to play in your own back yard because they were leaving toys laying around that made it harder for me to mow the grass, you'd most likely tell me to take a hike.

If you don't want to pay the cost associated with my behavior, then don't pay it. If I overdose on drugs, let me lay there and die if I don't have insurance or can't pay the bill myself if you so choose. But your actions in assuming responsibility for my debts don't give you any legitimate authority over my behavior.

(1)Unless, of course, you're one of those weird people who enjoys mowing the lawn, but we're assuming for the sake of the analogy that you aren't that warped an individual.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[B'Trey]

This doesn't make any sense. Even if someone is woefully addicted, it's not like they take drugs by accident-...

Who claimed they did? I intentionally drove my car to work. Did I commit automobile abuse? So why, if I intentionally take an illegal drug, did I commit drug "abuse?" If I take a prescribed pain pill, I'm using a drug. If I take the exact same drug for the exact same condition but I purchased it from an illegal source, it's drug abuse. The point is that, generally speaking, we've allowed legislatures to define what is use and what is abuse, and that we attach moral judgments to those terms. There is no legitimate moral or rational justification for the dividing lines that are drawn, and we shouldn't allow ourselves to mindlessly follow the legislatures judgments on what constitutes use and what constitutes abuse.

Would you suggest that we call what child molesters, who might not be able to help themselves, do as "illegal children touching" instead of "child abuse"?

You're conflating different meanings of the word, or at least different ways to interpret similarly formed sentences. Child molesters are abusing children because they are harming the children. The abuse that is occurring is from the point of view of the child. Are you arguing that drug users are causing harm to the drugs? If not, then your analogy falls apart.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you are aware that drug prohibition is not preventing that from happening, because it does happen. However, without drug prohibition, the chances for overdose would be significantly reduced, through proper measurement of doses, quality of access, and so on. Ibuprofen overdose isn't a very big issue for the community, because most people who are over dosing, are not doing so on purpose, and the people who do overdose are likely committing suicide. I'm sure an argument similar to your own was used during the days of alcohol prohibition, and it's certainly a concern, but not a major one. History also shows us that death due to overdose goes down, after a prohibition is lifted. People were getting worse than overdose from the poorly made cocktails that were getting made in Joe Average's bathtub, because Joe Average doesn't know nearly as much about producing alcohol as Smirnoff.

But, let's just assume that it's a huge issue. Let's assume that ending drug prohibition would cause MORE overdoses, even though logically it would be less. Explain the situation with marijuana. No human being will ever be admitted to a hospital because of a THC overdose from smoking too much pot. It's just not possible to overdose on it, because you'll pass out long before it will reach toxic levels. That's not the issue, of course, the issue is freedom. Concern for public welfare isn't the real reason, otherwise we'd go back to having alcohol in the list of prohibited drugs, and tobacco would get thrown in as well. We'd get mandatory exercise, and every McDonald's would get bull dozed and replaced by a salad bar. All at government expense.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[fyngyrz]

Not when it affects those in society. Ie, if you overdose and cannot afford health insurance, are rushed to the ER and tax payer money pays for your treatment and recovery, then it is our business.

No. You're placing the blame on the wrong party. The person who overdosed didn't cause you to pay for their care. The legislators who put the law in place that says you have to pay for their care are the ones who connected the action of the drug user to your wallet. Your blame, and your reaction, can only be correctly directed at the legislators.

If a law is made that says every time I eat a cheeseburger, you must pay fifteen dollars, this in no way indicts me as a bad person for eating cheesburgers, nor does my eating cheeseburgers affect you for any reason that you can legitimately lay upon me. The problem is the law; the making of it, the enforcement of it, the support of it, if any, that you have extended. In the meantime, I should continue to have the liberty to go on eating cheeseburgers as I choose. You, on the other hand, need to do something about your legislators.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[loteck]

We can't afford the lobbyists required to get it changed.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[Some_Llama]

"I'm not living in America, but I had to ask: if that's what's happening then why is nobody trying to change it?"

People ARE trying to change it, the problem is with a general populace that is fat, happy and placated with endless hours of entertainment and blasted with pro-law propaganda continuously (that ironically they pay for) and a government run by special interests (tobacco lobby, alcohol lobby, energy lobby, textile lobby (cotton), prison lobby, etc).

there have been more than a few states that have decriminalized marijuana but federal laws still mandate incarceration, often with mandatory minimum sentencing. Changing laws on a federal level is almost impossible due to the heavy lobbying efforts of those mentioned previously.

It's getting to the point where the legal system is collapsing on itself with 1/10+ of the population incarcerated and drug use still as rampant as ever.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[ahodgson]

Or smoking. Or drinking. Or eating unhealthy food. Or not exercising enough. Who gets to draw that line?

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[d34thm0nk3y]

I would heartlessly argue that someone who's rushed to the ER because they were partying too hard and spending all their money on drugs instead of health insurance shouldn't be treated with the bill paid by society's safety net the same way as, say, a homeless person hit by a car should be treated.

I would agree so long as the provision is against ALL unhealthy habits. A fat person with no insurance should not get treated either.

But that would never happen so let's stop singling out drug users.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[Roger W Moore]

So who decides whether you should be treated or not? How does the ambulance decide whether to not to come in the first place? What happens if you abstain from drugs but have a heart attack at a party where someone is taking drugs and the medical crew jump to the wrong conclusion? You cannot have sensible medical coverage based on acceptable causes. By the time you find out that you are treating an irresponsible idiot you've already treated them and trying to make that decision before you treat them will lead to people with "acceptable" problems being denied access to treatment.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[Rival]

I'm not sure whether to mod this interesting, insightful or funny (in a sarcasm sense.) It all depends on how (or whether) people correlate disagreement and judgment. Regardless, I think the parent ought to be modded up, as it asks some deep questions.

Personally, I believe that classifying any decision or action as right or wrong is a false dichotomy. Any decision or action can be broken down into pieces that may be judged right or wrong (some dependently and some independently of each other,) and doing such an analysis is both recursive and geometric. Where to "draw the line" on such an analysis is what makes such judgments subjective. How to weigh each facet during the analysis is what makes the process philosophical, moral and ethical.

That being said, while I agree that any judgment we make will be both subjective and philosophical, I believe that that the concepts of right and wrong themselves are based on absolutes. Obviously this is a belief, albeit one shared by a number of religions and philosophies. I don't want to start a debate, though, so I'll make a technological analogy.

Assume that people are processors, and that these processors do not know their internal logic. Any given processor thinks that it is generating correct output for a given set of inputs, but different processors generate different results for same set of inputs. The question is, how can the results of any particular processor for a particular set of inputs be verified?

Well, the processor cannot reliably test itself, as the faculties performing the test are suspect. Other processors cannot reliably model the internal logic of the flawed system, as it is not known. Since different processors generate different results for the same set of inputs, their reliability is unknown. The only option is to use a set of other processors to generate output from the same input. This may generate a consensus of what the correct output should be. (Depending on the distribution of flaws in subcomponents of the processors, the standard deviation of the results may vary significantly for different input sets.) Any consensus that is reached would be analogous to cultural morality. But any judgment by a processor, even if it includes as an input a given consensus, must be subjective.

So how can any results be absolutely verified? As I see it, there are only two ways. The first would be to have a reference processor that is known good, and compare results generated by the reference processor. The second is to have a reference document outlining the correct results.

Obviously, different religions claim to have reference processors and/or reference documents. Which of these (if any and to what extent and/or in what combination) to believe is where religious and philosophical differences occur.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[bckrispi]

The insurance companies, apparently.

Re:No, it's not drug abuse.

[osu-neko]

Some people do. It must be subjective. Hmm :p

Because different people don't agree on the subject, it must be subjective? It follows from that that the age of the Earth is subjective. Different people believe it's anywhere from six thousand to five billion years old.

It does not follow from the fact that different people hold different views on something that it's subjective. It could be subjective, or it could be some people are just plain wrong.

And what about...

[EricR86]

Caffeine anyone?

Off-label

[Raindance]

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.

Re:What's the problem?

[pclminion]

What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to suggest that attention-enhancing drugs actually make people DUMBER? I tried using them once. It was probably the most productive night of academia I've ever had. I wouldn't do it again, but what business is it of yours?

Suppose the fellow goes home at night and has a few too many glasses of scotch. Suppose he has threesomes with sluts. Suppose he does any number of things you don't personally like. Are you gonna take away his funding for that, too?

Re:Who judges the victims

[mosb1000]

It is unfair to force people not to abuse their bodies. If we as a society can't stomach the thought of letting them die, it is our decision to help them, not them forcing our hand to do so.

You can't be compassionate but then attach strings (I'll help you, but only if you don't abuse drugs). People almost always have some hand in what fate befals them, and almost never have complete control over it.

It is an exercise in futility to try to judge who is worthy of charity by setting regulatory standards and making sweeping moral judgements.