In the chronicle of higher education yesterday there was a short snippet about academics taking performance enhancing drugs and if you have a nice proxy server you can read the longer article or the commentary in nature (you can also find the Volokh Conspiracy article that brought it to my attention). Now I was quite pleased with the reasonable approach taken in the Nature article. In particular I thought the following paragraph hit things right on the head.

Rather than individuals purchasing substances over the Internet, we believe it would be better to ensure supervised access to safe and effective cognitive-enhancing drugs, particularly given potentially dangerous drug–drug interactions. Such regulation must be evidence-based and a product of active dialogue between scientists, doctors, ethicists, policy-makers and, importantly, the general public. This may necessitate a new form of regulation because the remits of the existing health and drug agencies are for the regulation of medicines for treatment, not for enhancement.

If a new class of compounds (so far most ‘cognitive enhancers’ are effectively less euphoric versions of amphetamines) really is developed that appeals primarily to educated wealthy people rather than being associated with lower socioeconomic classes such a change in our regulatory outlook might actually occur. True, I’m skeptical that more than a modest cognitive enhancement effect is possible from drugs (they can’t fundamentally rewire the brain) but accepting the careful use of drugs as enhancements has the potential for massive increases in utility. While I doubt drugs are ever going to make us all geniuses there is no reason to believe that future pharmaceutical research can’t produce mood enhancing drugs with only mild side effects. The benefits to depressed people alone of not stupidly insisting that depression is always a disease (rather than an unfortunate extreme end of a distribution) and researching medications that might make everyone a bit happier would be huge¹. More broadly I’m sure that everyone has noticed that some people tend to be more happy and energetic than others (and studies have suggested these people are more productive as well). The benefits to society of a compound that could shift everyone’s baseline amount of happiness up to where it naturally lies for these bright happy people would be greater than any other change since the industrial revolution.

However, in the chronicle article we find a much less enlightened view from one interviewee.

The notion raises hackles in some parts of academe. “It smells to me a lot like taking steroids for physical prowess,” said Barbara Prudhomme White, an associate professor of occupational therapy at the University of New Hampshire, who has studied the abuse of Ritalin by college students. Revelations about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball have stirred public interest recently, and she sees parallels between athletes and assistant professors. “You’re expected to publish and teach, and the stakes are high. So young professors have to work their tails off to get that golden nugget of tenure.”

Now I’ve always thought it was kinda silly to keep performance enhancing drugs out of sports² but there at least it’s merely a game and fairness is a principle concern. In academics, however, we are supposedly actually producing something of worth. We don’t try and tell academics they can’t spend more time on their work because other people have children to take care of or family obligations. It’s not about being a fair competition but about maximizing academic output. True, perhaps one might reasonably worry that these performance enhancing drugs don’t genuinely lead to more performance in the long run, i.e., they are a way of gaming the system, but short of that I see no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed.

Also I found it amusing the way everyone seemed to assume that it was unacceptable for students to take these sorts of drugs during exams yet no one tries to stop people with ADD from taking ritalin or amphetamine during exams and often even give them extra time. Of course ADD is a real issue but it falls on a continuum and the same drugs that help concentration with ADD have been shown to boost everyone’s scores on the SAT.