SURVEY QUESTIONS DRUG'S INFLUENCES ON ACADEMIA......
An era of doping might be looming in academia, and it has ignited a debate about policy and ethics that in some ways echoes the national controversy over performance enhancement accusations against elite athletes such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.
In a recent commentary in the journal Nature, two Cambridge University researchers reported that about a dozen of their colleagues had admitted to regular use of prescription drugs such as Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former drug is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter treats narcolepsy, and both are considered more effective, and more widely available, than the drugs circulating in dorms a generation ago.
Letters flooded the journal, and an online debate immediately bubbled up. The journal has been conducting its own, more rigorous survey, and so far at least 20 respondents have said that they used the drugs for nonmedical purposes, according to Philip Campbell, the journal's editor in chief. The debate also has caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academic's and students are sniping at one another.
But is prescription tweaking to perform on exams, or prepare presentations and grants, really the same as injecting hormones to hit home runs or win the Tour de France?? Some argue that such use could be worse, given the potentially deep effect on society. And the behavior of academics in particular, as intellectual leaders, could serve as an example to others.
HEALING vs. IMPROVEMENT....
In his book " Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Bio-technology Revolution," Francis Fukuyama raises the broader issue of performance enhancement: " The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods." He and others point out that increased use of such drugs could raise the standard of what is considered " normal " performance and widen the gap between those who have access to the medications and those who don't --- and even erode the relationship between struggle and the building of character.
" Even though stimulants and other cognitive enhancers are intended for legitimate clinical use, history predicts that greater availability will lead to an increase in diversion, misuse and abuse," wrote Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the University of California at Irvine. " Among high school students, abuse of prescription medications is second only to Cannabis use." But others insist that the ethics are not so clear, and that academic performance is different in important ways from baseball, or cycling.
" I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading, because in sports it's all about competition, only about who's the best runner or homerun hitter," " In academics, whether you are a student or a researcher, there is an element of competition, but it's secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you've got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus."
|
