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Is Non-Prescription ADHD Medication Use Ever Ethical?
derekmead writes "College students' voracious appetite for study drugs like Adderall is widespread enough that it was one of the main topics of a marquee lecture on neuroethics at Society for Neuroscience's 2012 conference called 'The Impact of Neuroscience on Society: The Neuroethics of "Smart Drugs."' It was excellent stuff by Barbara Sahakian, faculty at Department of Psychicatry at the University of Cambridge. Her focus is on prescription drugs for diseases and conditions like Alzheimer's, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and depression, with the fundamental goal of understanding the neural basis of dysfunction to develop better drugs. Specifically, she wants to create drugs with no risk for substance abuse which means drugs that have no effect on dopamine. The true goal then of her research, fundamentally and briefly, is to repair the impaired. But doing so brings us to the discussion of how much repair is ethical when the repair can be disseminated to people who don't actually need it. Divisions abound on what is to be done. Some experts say that if people can boost their abilities to make up for what mother nature didn't give them, what's wrong with that? Others say that people shouldn't be using these drugs because they're designed for people with serious problems who really need help. So another question for the ethicists is whether cognitive enhancers will ultimately level the playing field or juice the opposing team."
I'd be probably be flipping burgers if it weren't for unpresecribed Adderall.
Instead, you're posting on Slashdot.
I submit that this indeed is the crux of the issue. One road leads to productive citizenship, the other to a wasted, debauched life. You are the poster child for the evils of drug use.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you need that defined, "not you."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Why should they be banned? Why can't you simply make the information available and allow individuals decide what is best for them? Why does anyone get to dictate to anyone else what they can put in their bodies?
Stop moralizing over non issues. Simple criteria. If someones decision to do something with their own body does not cause significant DIRECT harm to another person, then it is only up to the individual in question to decide. The consequences of the choice are theirs as well.
Everyone would get along so much better id we all just learned to mind our own business.