08-16-2005, 06:46 PM
SPACE,Aug 16 2005, 02:12 PM Wrote:There is an answer to every problem (with enough experiments; failures and successes). I believe many people would be willing to invest in a drug that increased their processing speed, memory formation as well as retainment, and possibly motor skills. Making for interesting stock options.:whistling:
These aren't options that your kids can see, if you are around in 2 decades many of them will be a reality for the average consumer.
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Your opening statement assumes that between person variation in mental processing speed is a problem. I would dispute that assumption. For the time being though, lets enforce another of your assumptions (an implicit one) that I will refer you back to my previous post for an argument against a bit later.
What amount do you think people would be willing to pay for such a compound? Personally I think you're opening a new door onto the social inequity of healthcare (but extrapolated to fictitious therapies). Clearly those with more money can obtain superior care, regardless of need. Is this ethical? I donât have an answer for that, but anyone else is welcome to try. Moving to the active discussion, is it ethical that the rich could improve their mental functioning while those unable to afford such medication would be left unenhanced? This line of medical advancement is a Pandoraâs box of potential abuses including misuse and addiction, but I don't know that we need to go much further in that line of thought. Let's go back some...
(here's that back-reference)
I've already cautioned that the introduction of new medication will always soon be followed with the introduction of the side-effects of that medication, whether they are short-term and transient (dizziness) or long-term and permanently debilitating (liver damage due to accumulation of drug). Any medication whether it targets a molecule in the body, or a specific receptor type will affect more than the intended reaction. You're implicit assumption is that medication that would improve human mental performance could be sufficiently refined to target a specific set of mental processes. I challenge that assumption with the following: the history of pharmacotherapy indicates that such tailoring is not possible. Whether we're talking about antibiotics, which also kill the healthy bacteria that everyone naturally cultivates for digestion, or mood stabilizers like lithium, which can be highly toxic if concentrations rise too high, not one example of a perfectly tailored medication is available, and I see no reason to believe that this trend will subside. Therefore you must take into account the potential side effects of a processing enhancer: [I had put together quite a list, but the specifics are not important here].
[This is where I'm running out of steam on the issue]
The potential for stock options is the wrong thing to consider here: the viability of the idea is much more important. I find it unbelievable that such drugs could be developed without succumbing to some of the "failures" that you mention. And even if they did, we then revert to the discussion about equity in use, etc.
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