But it is possible to enhance your mental capacity. Just think of how many cups of coffee a day you drink, and how hard it would be to wake up without it and it is easy to see that some of these substances are already very much in use and culturally accepted (apparently coffee is second only to oil as the world's largest commodity!). Caffeine is just a mild substance that slightly improve our wakefulness. Other drugs, like Ritalin, improve concentration skills in a much more significant way. It is given to people with ADHD, but it would improve anyone's concentration just as much. So we should start thinking about policy issues on these mental enhancing drugs. Should everybody have the right to take a drug like Ritalin?
I recently went to a talk at the Wellcome Collection in London about exactly this issue. The speakers were James Rowe, a neurologist from University of Cambridge, Bennett Foddy, researcher of bioethics at Oxford, University, and Simon Wessely, psychiatrist from Kings College London. They were all in agreement that we are a very far way from making people geniuses but that it is important to make clear policies already now. At best, they can give us a nudge. And it turns out, that people who are already smart are the least affected. Rowe explained the ethical problems very nicely. People are pretty clear on the rightness of using mental enhancing drugs when it comes to treating people with psychological disorders. In this case, the drugs would only give back what an illness has taken away. Most are just as clear on the wrongness of taking mental enhancing drugs for opportunistic effects, like using them for winning 'Who wants to be a millionaire'. Using drugs for opportunistic purposes can be equalled to using doping in the sporting world. The difficult part comes when addressing the middle grounds. Is it okay for a surgeon to use a concentration improving drug before going into surgery? How would the patient feel, or better yet, how would you feel as a patient, if you knew your surgeon was taking drugs, before conducting your surgery? How about university students? Couldn't you argue that by taking a concentration improving drugs that students would get the maximum out of their degrees, if it helps them learn more? On the other hand, as universities are a competitive place, where people with the best degrees will end up with much better possibilities on the job market, is it really fair that people willing/able to take drugs get an edge? Plus a million other situations in which you could argue equally for and against using clever pills. Those are the tough questions and the ones that need to be addressed. I think everybody should think about them as it could influence our society at some point. There is no clear answer. I have thought about it for the past week, and I'm still very conflicted. And I don't think I will ever come up with a clear answer.
So would do you think, clever pills, right or wrong? Would you take them? Would you be fine with your children, friends, colleagues, competitors taking them?
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