The Future of Brain Boosting
You supervise an employee who has always been a fairly average performer, someone who gets the work done but never with great speed or acuity. Lately, however, his performance has been ramped up. He seems sharper, more focused, even more confident. His colleagues and clients notice, and you’re considering putting him on the management fast track.
One day you say to him, “Gee, I wish I could bottle whatever’s gotten into you.” He astonishes you by saying, “You can. I’ve been taking the latest smart drugs. My doc had no qualms about prescribing them, and he’d probably do it for everybody in the office.”
For now, this scenario is only science fiction. But it may not be for long.“The age of smart drugs is dawning,” the Los Angeles Times recently reported (Healy, 2005). Some of these drugs are already being tested on human subjects.
And the process of social acceptance may have already begun. A growing number of high school and college students are legally or illegally taking prescription drugs – usually those geared toward treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – in order to try and boost their academic performance, especially their scores on admission tests. “It used to be on the fringes completely, but now it’s seeping into the mainstream,” said admission consultant Steven Roy Goodman (Zamiska, 2004). The jury is still out on whether these particular compounds actually boost mental performance, but other drugs are just around the corner.
The real target market for brain boosters is likely to be the older generation. As the Baby Boomers move past the half-century mark, they’ll become eager to stave off the effects that aging sometimes has on memory and other mental powers. Some brain boosting drugs may be invented in an attempt to treat Alzheimer’s. Companies are spending billions on research in this area and are testing over 120 different Alzheimer’s-targeted compounds (Zachary, 2004).
Then there’s the narcolepsy drug modafinil, marketed as Provigil by Cephalon, which seems to boost acuity in healthy people without many negative side effects. “In my mind, it’s the first real smart drug,” said Cambridge University psychologist Barbara Sahakian (Healy, 2005). But it probably won’t be the last. With the rapid advances in scientists’ understanding of how the brain works, some experts predict that “cosmetic neurology” will be a huge business in the near future (Fauber, 2004; Zachary, 2004).
Certain memory-enhancing drugs could even be out of their clinical trials in just a couple of years, “if we're lucky,” according to Nobel laureate Eric Kandel of Columbia University Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Carmichael, 2004). “It’s not a question of ‘if’ anymore. It’s just a matter of time,” according to geneticist Tim Tully, founder of Helicon, one of the companies striving to create such drugs (Healy, 2005).
No one knows what the long-term physical effects of such drugs might be. What happens to your emotional and mental state, for example, if you can no longer forget certain things as easily as you once could? And no one is sure about how these drugs would affect the greater society. Jerome A. Yesavage of Stanford University writes that “if cognitive enhancement becomes possible in intellectually intact individuals, significant legal, regulatory, and ethical questions will emerge” (Hall, 2003).
A group of professionals called neuroethicists have begun pondering the implications. Among the questions raised is how such drugs might affect those in the workplace. Martha J. Farah, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that in the future employers might press employees into taking such drugs (Guterman, 2004). Such pressure could be subtle rather than direct. Employers might, for example, be willing to pay the full cost of prescriptions for these drugs or consistently promote workers who take them over those who do not. Organizations might also find that conflicts emerge between those who are willing to take such drugs and those who disdain them as part of some dystopian Brave New World.
On the other hand, such drugs could have many beneficial effects. They might help keep truck drivers and night-shift workers alert and thereby safer. They may help older employees stay in the workforce longer, allowing organizations to avoid the knowledge drain that accompanies the retirement of large groups of experienced workers. Or such drugs may become tools that most people use only occasionally, such as when they’re trying to learn a new language or when there’s a project deadline looming.
The truth is, like so many other technologies that have come before, such drugs will probably be used for both good and ill – at least, that is, until science delivers a pill to make us wise as well as smart.
For a Newsweek article called “The Quest for Smart Drugs,” click here.
For a PDF version of an editorial called “Slippery Slopes, Wonder Drugs, and Cosmetic Neurology,” click here.
For a Tallahassee Democrat article called “Is It Wise to Say ‘Yes’ to Smart Drugs?”, written by Melissa Healy, click here.
Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include:
Carmichael, Mary. “The Quest for Memory Drugs.” Newsweek, December 13, 2004, p. 42.
Fauber, John. “Cosmetic Neurology Is on the Way.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, September 28, 2004, p. 1.
Guterman, Lila. “Gray Matters.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 25, 2004, p. A22.
Hall, Stephen S. “The Quest for a Smart Pill.” Scientific American, September 2003.
Healy, Melissa. “An Rx for the IQ.” St. Petersburg Times [Los Angeles Times], February 1, 2005, p. 3E.
Zachary, G. Pascal, et al. “Seven New Technologies that Change Every Thing.” Business 2.0, September 2004, p. 82.
Zamiska, Nicholas. “Students Turn to ADHD Drugs to Hike Crucial Test Scores.” Chicago Sun-Times [Wall Street Journal], November 14, 2004, p. 2.
One day you say to him, “Gee, I wish I could bottle whatever’s gotten into you.” He astonishes you by saying, “You can. I’ve been taking the latest smart drugs. My doc had no qualms about prescribing them, and he’d probably do it for everybody in the office.”
For now, this scenario is only science fiction. But it may not be for long.“The age of smart drugs is dawning,” the Los Angeles Times recently reported (Healy, 2005). Some of these drugs are already being tested on human subjects.
And the process of social acceptance may have already begun. A growing number of high school and college students are legally or illegally taking prescription drugs – usually those geared toward treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder – in order to try and boost their academic performance, especially their scores on admission tests. “It used to be on the fringes completely, but now it’s seeping into the mainstream,” said admission consultant Steven Roy Goodman (Zamiska, 2004). The jury is still out on whether these particular compounds actually boost mental performance, but other drugs are just around the corner.
The real target market for brain boosters is likely to be the older generation. As the Baby Boomers move past the half-century mark, they’ll become eager to stave off the effects that aging sometimes has on memory and other mental powers. Some brain boosting drugs may be invented in an attempt to treat Alzheimer’s. Companies are spending billions on research in this area and are testing over 120 different Alzheimer’s-targeted compounds (Zachary, 2004).
Then there’s the narcolepsy drug modafinil, marketed as Provigil by Cephalon, which seems to boost acuity in healthy people without many negative side effects. “In my mind, it’s the first real smart drug,” said Cambridge University psychologist Barbara Sahakian (Healy, 2005). But it probably won’t be the last. With the rapid advances in scientists’ understanding of how the brain works, some experts predict that “cosmetic neurology” will be a huge business in the near future (Fauber, 2004; Zachary, 2004).
Certain memory-enhancing drugs could even be out of their clinical trials in just a couple of years, “if we're lucky,” according to Nobel laureate Eric Kandel of Columbia University Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (Carmichael, 2004). “It’s not a question of ‘if’ anymore. It’s just a matter of time,” according to geneticist Tim Tully, founder of Helicon, one of the companies striving to create such drugs (Healy, 2005).
No one knows what the long-term physical effects of such drugs might be. What happens to your emotional and mental state, for example, if you can no longer forget certain things as easily as you once could? And no one is sure about how these drugs would affect the greater society. Jerome A. Yesavage of Stanford University writes that “if cognitive enhancement becomes possible in intellectually intact individuals, significant legal, regulatory, and ethical questions will emerge” (Hall, 2003).
A group of professionals called neuroethicists have begun pondering the implications. Among the questions raised is how such drugs might affect those in the workplace. Martha J. Farah, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that in the future employers might press employees into taking such drugs (Guterman, 2004). Such pressure could be subtle rather than direct. Employers might, for example, be willing to pay the full cost of prescriptions for these drugs or consistently promote workers who take them over those who do not. Organizations might also find that conflicts emerge between those who are willing to take such drugs and those who disdain them as part of some dystopian Brave New World.
On the other hand, such drugs could have many beneficial effects. They might help keep truck drivers and night-shift workers alert and thereby safer. They may help older employees stay in the workforce longer, allowing organizations to avoid the knowledge drain that accompanies the retirement of large groups of experienced workers. Or such drugs may become tools that most people use only occasionally, such as when they’re trying to learn a new language or when there’s a project deadline looming.
The truth is, like so many other technologies that have come before, such drugs will probably be used for both good and ill – at least, that is, until science delivers a pill to make us wise as well as smart.
For a Newsweek article called “The Quest for Smart Drugs,” click here.
For a PDF version of an editorial called “Slippery Slopes, Wonder Drugs, and Cosmetic Neurology,” click here.
For a Tallahassee Democrat article called “Is It Wise to Say ‘Yes’ to Smart Drugs?”, written by Melissa Healy, click here.
Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include:
Carmichael, Mary. “The Quest for Memory Drugs.” Newsweek, December 13, 2004, p. 42.
Fauber, John. “Cosmetic Neurology Is on the Way.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, September 28, 2004, p. 1.
Guterman, Lila. “Gray Matters.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 25, 2004, p. A22.
Hall, Stephen S. “The Quest for a Smart Pill.” Scientific American, September 2003.
Healy, Melissa. “An Rx for the IQ.” St. Petersburg Times [Los Angeles Times], February 1, 2005, p. 3E.
Zachary, G. Pascal, et al. “Seven New Technologies that Change Every Thing.” Business 2.0, September 2004, p. 82.
Zamiska, Nicholas. “Students Turn to ADHD Drugs to Hike Crucial Test Scores.” Chicago Sun-Times [Wall Street Journal], November 14, 2004, p. 2.