Credit: Andrew Lee/COSMOS
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA in San Diego, researcher Mark Tuszynski and his colleagues have been studying the use of genetically modified neurons in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. In 2001, the scientists implanted neurons carrying extra copies of a gene that codes for nerve growth factor, or NGF, into the brains of patients.
NGF is a brain chemical that triggers the growth of neurons. In patients with NGF-enhanced neurons, Tuszynski has seen a marked reduction in the progress of Alzheimer's.
The advancement of the disease was slowed by a factor of three — making it one of the most promising treatment options in development.
Tuszynski's research may have more than therapeutic applications, however. Another study at the University of Rochester in New York has shown that NGF gene therapy can give mice better than normal memory.
If the same holds true in humans, the technique being explored as a treatment for disease could also be used to improve the normal functioning of human minds.
Other memory researchers have found similar results. Nobel
Prize-winner Eric Kandel, who did some of the pioneering work on the neural basis of memory, is working on drugs to treat Alzheimer's and Age-Associated Memory Impairment that also boost memory beyond normal levels in rats and mice.
At Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in New York, researcher Tim Tully has found similar results with drugs that target the same pathways. The mice in Tully and Kandel's experiments can frequently learn things twice as quickly — and at times as much as five times as quickly — as normal mice.
"Memory enhancers could become 'lifestyle' drugs to be used by anyone interested in learning a second language, in playing a musical instrument, or in studying for an exam," Tully speculates.
And the potential isn't limited to memory. U.S. military researchers have long sought drugs that could reliably keep pilots and soldiers awake without major downsides. Relatively new drugs like Modafinil (Provigil), which is generally prescribed to treat narcolepsy, may fit the bill.
Other researchers have identifi ed genes that affect our tolerance for pain, our degree of risk-taking behaviour, aspects of creativity, even the extent to which we bond monogamously with our partners or, conversely, pursue extra-marital flings.
All of these genes are now potential targets for drugs — drugs that could alter our relationships, our personalities and our mental capabilities.
The potential for enhancing or altering our minds has sparked an ethical debate. Should we employ pharmaceuticals and genetic techniques to push the human mind beyond its normal limits? To resculpt our personalities? Or would that cause more harm than benefit?
Lawyers, students, or others with an intense need to push their brains might use performance enhancers to the point of abuse, risking their health. The wealthy and well-to-do may have more access than the less well-off to drugs that enhance their lives.
Some of those drugs might boost performance in the workplace, thus widening the income gap between rich and poor and entrenching social inequalities. Yet there are four key reasons to allow the pursuit of mental enhancement.
First, it's extremely difficult to draw a line between healing and enhancing. The potential of memory enhancers is not an outgrowth of research focussed on enhancing memory.
Instead, basic scientific enquiry into how memory works, with a goal of helping the sick and injured, has pointed the way towards improving memory beyond human norms. Preventing research into enhancement would mean banning research that carries the hope of healing millions.
Second, enhancement itself has the potential to deliver very real benefits for society. Smarter, faster- learning doctors, engineers and scientists would be able to produce better products, deliver improved medical care and unravel the secrets of our world more quickly — they would grow our economies more rapidly, and ultimately better our lives.
Third, prohibition would bring its own complications. As drug prohibition has shown, bans on products that are in-demand create black markets. Those black markets have artificially high prices, further separating the rich and poor. They come with no safety regulations.
And within them it's difficult to conduct quality research to understand the long-term impacts of products on the health and well-being of consumers. Prohibition would drive enhancement underground, leaving society in the dark.
Finally, the debate over human enhancement is, at its heart, a debate over human freedom. Who should have the right to dictate what can be done with the human mind? Governments? Or individuals and families?
Western democracies are founded on the principle that individuals can be trusted to be free, and that governments are founded to protect that freedom rather than to restrict it.
In the end, if safe and effective mental enhancement techniques are developed, consumer interest will drive their adoption, whatever governments may say.
As Steven Hyman, former director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, has said, "If we can find medications which will enhance our performance, lengthen our life, decrease the stress ... no regulation in the world would keep them from general use."
Ramez Naam is the author of More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement, and one of the creators of the widely-used software packages, Internet Explorer and Outlook.
