Access

Commentary

Nature 456, 702-705 (11 December 2008) | doi:10.1038/456702a; Published online 10 December 2008

There is an Correction (18 December 2008) associated with this document.

naturejobs

More science jobs
Post a job for free

Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy

See associated Correspondence: Williams & Martin, Nature 457, 532 (January 2009)Oliveira, Nature 457, 532 (January 2009)Chatterjee, Nature 457, 532 - 533 (January 2009)Young & Colpaert, Nature 457, 533 (January 2009)Burnap, Nature 457, 533 (January 2009), Nature 457, 533 (January 2009), Nature 457, 533 (January 2009)

Henry Greely1, Barbara Sahakian2, John Harris3, Ronald C. Kessler4, Michael Gazzaniga5, Philip Campbell6 & Martha J. Farah7

  1. Henry Greely is at Stanford Law School, Crown Quadrangle, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305-8610, USA.
    Email: hgreely@stanford.edu
  2. Barbara Sahakian is at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, and MRC/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, Cambridge, UK.
    Email: jenny.hall@cpft.nhs.uk
  3. John Harris is at the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, and Wellcome Strategic Programme in The Human Body, its Scope, Limits and Future, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
    Email: john.harris@manchester.ac.uk
  4. Ronald C. Kessler is at Harvard Medical School, Department of Health Care Policy, 180 Longwood Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5899, USA.
    Email: kessler@hcp.med.harvard.edu
  5. Michael Gazzaniga is at the Sage Center for the Study of Mind, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106-9660, USA.
    Email: m.gazzaniga@psych.ucsb.edu
  6. Philip Campbell is at Nature, 4 Crinan St, London N1 9XW, UK.
    Email: nature@nature.com
  7. Martha J. Farah is at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut Street, Room B51, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6241, USA.
    Email: mfarah@psych.upenn.edu

Top

Society must respond to the growing demand for cognitive enhancement. That response must start by rejecting the idea that 'enhancement' is a dirty word, argue Henry Greely and colleagues.

Today, on university campuses around the world, students are striking deals to buy and sell prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin — not to get high, but to get higher grades, to provide an edge over their fellow students or to increase in some measurable way their capacity for learning. These transactions are crimes in the United States, punishable by prison.