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China's Controversial Brain Surgery To Cure Drug Addiction
kkleiner writes "A small handful of doctors in China are using a highly controversial procedure to rid people of drug addiction by destroying a part of patients' brains. The procedure involves drilling small holes into the skulls of patients and inserting long electrodes that destroy a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This area, often referred to as the "pleasure center" of the brain, is the major nucleus of the brain's reward circuit. Is it worth being cured of addiction if, losing the addiction, we also lose part of who we are?" The practice has been officially banned, but apparently continues nonetheless.
Couldn't control his drug issues. His birth mother was addicted.
Now he is gone. Would he have been better served to still be here w/o some "reward center". I don't know. I will never know.
When it comes to a real problem a change in personality wouldn't be such a problem, but losing dopamine forever? Never to feel positive emptions again ever? I don't care who you are that's not worth it. Surely the reason people get addicted to begin with is they don't have enough dopamine and serotonin in their life for whatever reason.
Are you truly who you think you are when you are addicted to drugs?
Are the pleasures a drug-affected brain feels to be equated with other forms of pleasure?
It would be one thing to wipe-out part of a healthy brain (thereby permanently altering it) like this but it might be another matter to make such a permanent change to a brain that has already had permanent, and negative, changes made by "modern chemistry". Of course, the presence of any pre-existing damage from drugs also raises questions of true consent. Not sure how I feel on this one, but given that this is on brains already affected by drugs the morals and ethics are a bit cloudier than they might otherwise be. Personally, I find the idea of depriving a person of the ability to experience pleasure both creepy and dangerous. Should we expect future headlines about "zombie" violence in China?
Dr. John Adler, professor emeritus of neurosurgery at Stanford University, collaborated with the Chinese researchers on the publication and is listed as a co-author. While he does not advocate the surgery and did not perform it, he believes it can provide valuable information about how the nucleus accumbens works, and how best to attempt to manipulate it. “I do think it’s worth learning from,” he says. ” As far as I’m concerned, ablation of the nucleus accumbens makes no sense for anyone. There’s a very high complication rate. [But] reporting it doesn’t mean endorsing it. While we should have legitimate ethical concerns about anything like this, it is a bigger travesty to put our heads in the sand and not be willing to publish it,” he says. cite.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
From the time I was 12 until the time I was 48, I spent most of every day thinking about sex, and wanting it desperately, and sometimes even getting it. Then one day my sex drive...faded. I couldn't get it up any more, I couldn't get it off any more, and underneath all that, I didn't care about it so much any more. That incessant, gnawing hunger was gone.
I miss it terribly.
I've been to my doctors, and they've poked and prodded, and run this test and that test, and prescribed this pill and that pill, and with time and the right pills, some of it has come back, but it's not like it used to be.
I never got all that much sex, but it turns out that wanting it, and sometimes getting it, was a big part of what kept me going. Now that it isn't there, I've had to rethink some pretty basic things, like why I get up in the morning, and why I bother to do my job, given that I can't get what I really want any more.
No need to Godwin yourself. Checkout what the Canadians were up to (with a little funding from the CIA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron#Project_MKULTRA
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
They did work out well in the past. It's easy to call treatments of the past barbaric without perspective. Often those treated with labotomies would have spent the rest of their lives in strait jackets or worse if not for the treatment. If your drug addiction is going to kill you in the next 6 months is this treatment really that terrible? Granted, governments always take this sort of thing too far "he's addicted to MMOs!" etc...
21st Century Lobotomies are mostly pharmacological and some are just as irreversible as the surgical.
This is possibly the single worst thing that the Nazis did. They turned the world away from eugenics, because they were so cold hearted and calloused toward an entire race.
In and of itself, eugenics is a good thing. I would love to see it advanced. The research could lead to the cures for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, possibly even make our entire race stronger and smarter. The possibilities are endless.
But, because eugenics were so horrible abused by one group of people, against another group of people, we refuse to even look down that road.
I don't suppose that science will advance on that frontier unless and until a significant portion of mankind has left mother earth. I just hope that by then, the researchers haven't forgotten the atrocities committed by the nazis. The memories must be preserved, or mankind risks repeating those same atrocities.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Explain the reelection of George W. Bush and Barack Obama then.
In the last few elections, it's been worse than just picking the lesser of two evils. It's more like having to choose between Satan and Cthulu. You know you're screwed either way. One will only corrupt you and steal your soul, the other one will drive you insane, turn you into a gibbering eldritch abomination and unravel the fabric of reality. I voted for the minor third party candidate Kodos. Who did you vote for?
1.Netcraft confirms:In Soviet Russia all your base welcomes a beowolf cluster of CowboyNeal overlords. 2.? 3.Profit!!1!
They did work out well in the past. It's easy to call treatments of the past barbaric without perspective.
Not to mention the basic ideas of lobotomy are very much alive, I knew a guy with very severe epilepsy attacks. I think the surgery he had was something like this:
Multiple subpial transaction
This is used when it's not possible to remove the part of the brain that's causing the seizures. The surgeon will make a series of cuts to help separate the damaged part of the brain from the surrounding area. This stops seizures from moving from one part of the brain to other parts of the brain.
He was in his 30s and that enabled him to finally move out of his parent's house, get a bit of education and a driver's license. It didn't come without downsides but overall he was much, much better off than before.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, in this case, the patient is just doing it to themselves depending on the situation.
What I understand about meth and brain chemistry is that over time a meth addict is saturating the pleasure center of their brain. The structures that pick up the neurotransmitters actually become damaged or less effective over time.
This is why a lot of meth addicts will say the only way they can feel happiness is with the drug. Recovered meth addicts often complain that they have very serious issues feeling happy anymore.
How long that takes to heal, I dunno.
The end result of disabling the pleasure center may be inevitable. At least doing it in the beginning may be a way to get them stop completely and literally save their lives and increase the overall quality from a health standpoint alone. They may become emotionless, but can still live otherwise.
Just my two cents. I'm not a doctor. Just know some very unfortunate recovered drug addicts that have more in common with Vulcans now than humans.
I'm not in favor of forced sterilization, but at least the person would have other reasons to go on living.
But I must be missing something here, because shouldn't the question be:
Is it worth it to cure addiction if you utterly destroy everything that makes life worth living?
How could any rational person think this is a good idea?