Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy - a commentary in Nature that says, "we call for a presumption that mentally competent adults should be able to engage in cognitive enhancement using drugs". Farkesque debate here. [more inside]
posted by daksya on Dec 8, 2008 - 57 comments

20 percent of academics surveyed by Nature are abusing neuroenhancers.
Calling R.U. Sirius...
posted by mecran01 on Apr 10, 2008 - 78 comments

Prozac seems to be societies new legal LSD. In the 60's acid could cure anything. If you were feeling down, tune in turn on and drop out and everything will be good. Timothy Leary was a huge part of this whole "acid culture", but as Hunter S. Thompson so eloquently put it "He crashed around America selling consciousness expansion, without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all those people that took him seriously." In the end the acid culture failed, but we have yet to learn the lesson that everything can not be cured with a magic pill or some powder, you can't just add some water and cure societies problems like making instant soup. Could this belief in drugs that Tim Leary promoted during the 60's have lead to the overmedication of children today? Those old acid heads that have since become working stiffs that have kids still believe in the back of their minds in "better living through chemicals" and allow doctors to over prescribe their kids chemicals such as Prozac and Ritalin. Do you think that there could be a connection between this overmedication and school violence?
posted by bytecode on Sep 1, 2001 - 61 comments

Recreational use of Ritalin is something we have known about for at least seven years. Yet many adults still find it acceptable to medicate young people, then have the gaul to respond in shock when, given the chance, many young people will opt to medicate themselves.
posted by ZachsMind on Jun 18, 2001 - 21 comments

NHS to ban Ritalin for under-fives? See, I agree with this, but it's politically divisive. The commission on clinical excellence has made a couple of controversial decisions to restrict the prescription of expensive new drugs: Allegra for flu, beta-interferon for MS, and now Ritalin. When there's such demand for the latest and greatest drugs, fuelled by the marketing budgets of the pharmaceutical companies, how do we balance the hopes and wishes of patients against the economic restrictions and clinical scepticism of the authorities?
posted by holgate on Sep 4, 2000 - 4 comments

Speaking of Prozac... Did Prozac and Ritalin cause the Columbine disaster? Are these drugs causing kids to kill? The people of "A White Rose" seem to think so. You be the judge.
posted by SuperGoat on Mar 22, 2000 - 3 comments