Academic Steroids: The Ethics of Brain Enhancement

Do academics "juice-up" their teaching and research with performance enhancing drugs?

Actually yes, but how does this compare to steroid use in competitive athletics? Pretty closely, according to this New York Times article:

SO far no one is demanding that asterisks be attached to Nobels, Pulitzers or Lasker awards. Government agents have not been raiding anthropology departments, riffling book bags, testing professors’ urine. And if there are illicit trainers on campuses, shady tutors with wraparound sunglasses and ties to basement labs in Italy, no one has exposed them.

Yet an era of doping may 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 like 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 like Adderall, a stimulant, and Provigil, which promotes wakefulness, to improve their academic performance. The former is approved to treat attention deficit disorder, the latter 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 has also caught fire on the Web site of The Chronicle of Higher Education, where academics 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 chase down a home run record, or win the Tour de France?

Some argue that such use could be worse, given the potentially deep impact on society. And the behavior of academics in particular, as intellectual leaders, could serve as an example to others.

In his book “Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology 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.

Having been around the block on a lot of these issues, let me be perfectly honest: A couple of cups of coffee, some Tylenol, and a dose or two of ephedrine will get go a long way toward boosting cognitive ability, or at least academic stamina, which is almost a prerequisite to get through a graduate program these days.

But I obviously don't advocate it, and now with the growing and widespread abuse of presciption ADHD and other medications among youngsters and college students, it seems academics have an even greater responsibility to set standards of propriety and rectitude.

While Derek Jeter and Eli Manning are obviously the most important role models for millions of young, aspiring athletes in the United States, I'd argue that classroom professors in the long-run are the most important influence on a young adult's life after the parents.

I've never even entertained the idea that one of the high-powered lectures offered by one of my research professors was power-boosted by a hefty dose of Methylphenidate, or some other stimulatory medicine.

I certainly wouldn't expect my students to think such thoughts about me when I enter the classroom, and I don't want my own boys selecting classes in college on the basis of tox-screening stats instead of research reputation.