Memories, who needs em?

[swestrup]

In a very controversial experiment, biochemists have been testing a drug that is designed to help fight Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome by reducing the emotional imprint of recent traumatic experiences. While I can see many very good psychological uses for such a thing, I can also imagine people really messing themselves up if such a drug was ever widely available. Still, I can only imagine that widespread access to this, and far more powerful, neural tinkering tools are inevitable, as the cost of automatic drug synthesis machiens continues to fall.

Comments

[auriam.livejournal.com]

Well, a memory isn't always helpful. Sometimes, especially with PTSD and depression, re-experiencing bad memories causes such negative results in the present that it interferes with life.. for most people, though, they seem to be able to carry on despite traumatic experiences. Perhaps if we find that there are memory-suppression or weakening mechanisms that aren't present in PTSD sufferers, people will be less inclined to say it's "unnatural" to artificially compensate. Unnatural, unethical - these are arguments that may be compelling to some, but not others - and why should we impose the "ethics" of one person on another? Each should be able to determine harm to himself alone - same with drugs; if it's your own body, you should have the choice.

Then there's the problem of "what if the ethics of the researchers doesn't permit them to do the experiments?" - well, fine, they can step aside and let others take over. Finally, I think there's something a little off about the medical philosophy - there's an unspoken "ethical" rule in medicine that says you only *cure*, not *enhance*. But really, what's the difference?

[swestrup]

I'm not really worried about the average person using this stuff -- although I admit that there is a slight worry about it becoming as prevalent as ritalin.

I'm more concerned about the sort of person who, for example, gets nervous when meeting new people and always (in their own mind) acts a fool. If they treat each one of those incidents as a traumatic experience and medicate it, they may never manage to alter their behaviour so as not to be so nervous.

Anyway, its not a major worry of mine. I just think its an indicator that far more interesting drugs are not far away, and some of them may have rather scary social consequences.

[ims.livejournal.com]

As such a person I'm inclined to think that this is exactly the sort of thing such a drug might be useful for. Yes, with the drug one might not learn (depending on to what extent it wipes out the memory), but without it the situation gets progessively worse, not better, anyway: having felt like a fool in the first encounter one is more nervous in the second and so almost certainly acts more like a fool leading to more nervousness and so on.

When I think about it I have used such a trick. I had as an undergraduate (and still to some extent have) a problem that even if I think an essay is good when I hand it in, I start picking holes in it in retrospect, generally to the point it's painful to think about within three days. But I discovered a mental trick (I'm not quite sure how it worked) of forgetting about the essay as soon as I handed it in; in at least one case it worked so well that I really had forgotten the essay entirely when I got it back a week later. I suppose this means I really learnt nothing from the experience of writing the essay, but it did let me finish my BA.... (Alas, the technique was far from perfect, and I had to withdraw from my first attempt at an MA because not only couldn't I write essays any more but I couldn't even do the reading for them....)

[sps.livejournal.com]

Goodness, the thing that worries me is the obvious military application. If you will have no memory, what reason will you have to question orders to commit an atrocity? I'm sure the nuttier elements in the US army are already delighted by this development.

Post-traumatic stress syndrome is there for an evolutionary reason: to teach us not to make war.

(Of course it has victims; evolution is all about the victims. But that doesn't exempt it from ethical issues.)