Building a better mouse...

Most people are interested in improving their intelligence or, maybe more so, improving the intelligence of their children. Some are willing to go very far indeed, and there doesn't seem to be much worry over how ethical it might or might not be.

If a wealthy person hires the best tutors or employs an agency like Sylvan to improve their child's grades or intelligence, it is doubtful anyone would find that unethical. What if this same person pays a doctor to prescribe Ritalin for a healthy child to take before taking the SAT exam? Is that unethical? Is it more or less ethical if the parent is poor but saves the money and buys the Ritalin on the street? Is one kid more 'entitled' to have an edge than another? Ritalin has been shown to improve concentration in normal people, enough to raise SAT scores by 100 points.

Is it ethical for the U.S. Army to give Modafinil to soldiers? Modafinil can keep a person awake and alert for 90 hours straight, with none of the jitteriness and bad concentration that amphetamines or even coffee seem to produce. If there are no side effects and no detriments to the soldiers' health, what's the problem? We don't have to fight the enemy fairly do we?

We don't have to use drugs to make us smarter or more effective, there are other god-given ways, but they take a little work. Take eggs, for example. Eggs are rich in choline, which your body uses to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Researchers at Boston University found that when healthy young adults were given the drug scopolamine, which blocks acetylcholine receptors in the brain, it significantly reduced their ability to remember word pairs. Low levels of acetylcholine are also associated with Alzheimer's disease, and some studies suggest that boosting dietary intake may slow age-related memory loss.

Music lessons will help your child be smarter. Six-year-old children who were given music lessons, as opposed to drama lessons or no extra instruction, got a 2 to 3-point boost in IQ scores compared with the others. Similarly, Rauscher found that after two years of music lessons, pre-school children scored better on spatial reasoning tests than those who took computer lessons.

The benefits of exercise is known to most of us, improving most areas of functioning, not just the brain but especially the brain.

Then there's 'use it or lose it.' A very interesting study was done with a bunch of nuns who were 80 to 100 years old. How did Sister Matthia and the others cheat time? The study (Snowdon's) has found several common denominators. The right amount of vitamin folate is one. Verbal ability early in life is another, as are positive emotions early in life. Activities, crosswords, knitting and exercising also helped to prevent senility.

If we are smart enough to invent technology or drugs will will increase our brain capacity, shouldn't we? It would just add to the 'survival of the fittest' theory, right? Evolutionary theory suggests that if we are smart enough to invent . As noted psychologist Corneliu Giurgea stated in the 1970s, “Man is not going to wait passively for millions of years before evolution offers him a better brain.” Is there any danger that we might change a nation of achievers to a nation of drug takers? To get ahead... to have an edge, that's what counts, isn't it?

Many “smart” drugs are in clinical trials and could be on the market in less than five years. Some will help Alzhimer patients, but some will end up enhancing the brains of normal people. What's the harm in that?



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