There is a growing trend to take prescription stimulants (Adderall and Ritalin for example) in order to enhance cognitive performance – perhaps in attempt to obtain better grades or increase learning capacity. Nature has been reporting on developments in this controversial area and providing a forum for discussion. In a Commentary article (Nature doi:10.1038/456702a; 7 December 2008 – free to access online until 18 December) Henry Greely and co-authors, who include Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature, say that society must respond to this demand. The authors call for:

—a presumption that adults should be able to use drugs for this purpose

—an evidence-based approach to evaluate the risks and benefits

—legal and ethical policies to ensure fair and equitable use

—a research programme

—broadly available information about risks and benefits

Do you agree with the authors that new methods of improving our brain function should be welcomed, to improve quality of life and extend lifespans? Will safe and effective cognitive enhancers benefit the individual and society? Or should these drugs remain illegal for these purposes? A range of opinions is expressed in a lively Nature Network discussion. One example: “Not only would the rich continue to get richer and healthier, but they’d have the ability to get “smarter” as well. If we’re not careful, we won’t only end up with further social stratification— we’ll see speciation!” Another: " I do agree with the authors that the topic will not disappear, and needs to be confronted. I do not pretend to know what policies are best….As a scientist I do not relish my peers or younger colleagues taking such drugs for the extra edge in career success. I do not relish getting “confidential” advice from a tenure review committee member that next time I should try taking a daily dose of X." And another example: “The majority of mind-altering drugs discovered by humanity have side effects of one form or another. I would be very wary of using any of the current family of available drugs on a long term basis. In which case the call for evidence-based research in the Nature piece will have not inconsiderable ethical issues. These would presumably need to be both double blind and long term.”

Please join the Nature Network forum discussion and add your own views to questions such as “why? What’s wrong with leaving your good old brain to do its thing without enhancement?” Previous Nature Network discussion responding to the question ‘would you boost your brain power?’, based on an earlier Commentary article by some of the same authors, can be found here, and the results of Nature‘s reader survey on the use of neuroenhancing drugs can be read and analysed here.

Initial media reports about the Nature Commentary’s proposals are summarized at The Great Beyond, in which Philip Campbell is quoted as stating: “The article, while libertarian in spirit, is absolutely not saying: ‘use these drugs, everybody’. My advice is to avoid taking such drugs unless you have been prescribed them. It is a serious felony to sell such drugs off-prescription in the US; in the UK, Ritalin, for example, is a class B drug, so that un-prescribed possession is punishable by prison and a fine. Furthermore, these drugs have undergone no clinical trials for use by healthy people. And they do have side-effects.”