Neuropharmacology and the End of Education

As a young kid I used to fantasize about being able to learn in my sleep. I don't recall the specifics about the technology that enabled this feat, some sort of nocturnal hypnosis or perhaps a miracle drug. The emphasis of this fantasy was not on the means but the end, the technological payoff—I no longer needed to attend school in the daytime.

As a thirtysomething who, a quarter of a century or so later, is still in school, I have to laugh. At myself.

According to neurologists, my childhood fantasy, which I suspect is a common one, is looking increasingly plausible thanks to advances in neuropharmacology. Ronald Bailey's essay in Reason, “A Day at the Brain Spa: Coming soon to a mall near you,” reminds us that new biotechnologies will raise a host of ethical dilemmas concerning the use of drugs to improve our mental abilities. At issue is whether or not drugs that positively affect the brain’s functioning should be readily available. He mentions, for example, a poll indicating that parents are presently split 50/50 about whether or not it would be ethical to give their child performance-enhancing drugs to help him or her become a better piano player.

The central ethical quandary is the same one that comes up in discussions about steroid use by athletes: is it cheating to enhance one’s ‘natural’ abilities with a drug or some other ‘artificial’ supplement? As my scare quotes are intended to suggest, the debate revolves around timeless philosophical questions such as ‘what does it mean to be human?’ and ‘what is and is not natural?’

Personally, I would like to see the debate shift from discussions about where to draw the line that divides the natural from the artificial human to more basic economic issues concerning who can afford have access to the latest biotechnologies. As steroid use in professional sports suggests, people will try to enhance their abilities by any and all available means. Regulations may hinder drug use, but will never stop it altogether. Rather than fretting about whether it is fair for some performers, ball players, musicians, whomever, to gain a competitive edge via chemicals, I’d like to see people show greater interest in more mundane cases, e.g., the people who lack basic health care due to the vagaries of the free market.

While we should certainly be concerned about the prospect of a society in which those with capital can transform themselves into a master race, it seems to me that in the long run regulating new biotechnologies will not solve anything. If we’re truly concerned about fairness and equal opportunity for all (and I'm wise enough to know that in the U.S. at least, we're not) we need to see that state-run institutions, such as public schools and welfare programs, have adequate funding and resources.

Incidentally, my favorite line in Bailey’s essay concerns the possible obsolescence of graduate education: “I suspect that pharmacological enhancement will be more popular than, say, graduate school, since most of what will be involved is taking a pill with one's morning coffee.”

If anyone out there knows were I might obtain a ‘scrip for some PhD pills, please shoot me an e-mail. I've a dissertation to write, dammit.

But, then, who needs English professors and who wants to read when you've got postmodern neuropharmacology?

Put away that tattered old copy of Brave New World. I'll see ya at the brain spa...