Ritalin: the next brain-booster?

Healthy people should be able to take the anti-hyperactivity drug Ritalin to boost brain power. Bioethics expert Professor John Harris, of the University of Manchester, said if the drug was safe for children, adults should also be able to take it. Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said many students were already using the drug - which is illegal without prescription in the UK. US experts said there were too many risks for it to be more widely used.

Ritalin, also known as methylphenidate, is given to children with ADHD - attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Many doctors say it can help children control their behavior and perform better at home and school. There is increasing evidence that healthy adults, especially students, are using it to enhance their mental ability.

Professor Harris said Ritalin's benefits included enhanced study skills and concentration. He said it was "unethical" to stop healthy people from taking the drug and that there was evidence it was safe to use. And he added: "Safe always means safe enough and since no drugs are free of side effects, that always means the consumer has judged the risks of adverse effects worth taking, given the probable benefits." Professor Harris said that if it was safe for children to use Ritalin over a long period of time for a condition that was not usually life-threatening, there was no reason to prevent healthy adults using it too. He said it was "not rational" to be against human enhancement and likened using drugs to enhance brain power to the use of "synthetic sunlight" - firelight, lamplight and electric light. "Before synthetic sunshine people slept when it was dark and worked in the light of day. "With the advent of synthetic sunshine, work and social life could continue into and through the night, creating competitive pressures and incentives for those able or willing to use it to their advantage."

Professor Anjan Chatterjee, of the University of Pennsylvania, said there were too many risks in taking Ritalin unless a person was actually ill. He said the US Food and Drug Administration had labeled it with a "black box" - the most alarming of possible warnings - because of its high potential for abuse, dependence, risk of sudden death and serious adverse effects on the heart. “ It is not acceptable to recommend that healthy people take drugs to enhance performance ”

Professor Anjan Chatterjee, University of Pennsylvania Professor Chatterjee questioned whether children at top schools would take Ritalin in "epidemic proportions" and if people such as pilots, police officers and on-call doctors would be pressurized into taking the drug to perform better.

Bonnie - while it may seem obvious that Dr. Harris is a mouthpiece for Big Pharma, he has no known ties to the industry. So this is what our society has come to? As an ethicist, has he taken into account the ramifications of this conclusion? What is crazy is that he is not the only scientists to come out and say this.

Did Dr. Harris look at the long-term data on stimulant medication? He couldn't have, because until recently there has been very little. There are cases of sudden, unexplained deaths of adolescents that are now being linked to ADHD medication. And Dr. Harris wants to make this available to entire population?

I have never gotten in the way of innovation if I believe it is for the greater good, but as I blogged in April, I feel confident that making attention deficit medicine as readily available as caffeine will not advance us as a society.