Empathogens

Should we use drugs to make someone a better person? Can science create pharmaceuticals that make people more empathetic, loving or caring? Or will we use new neurotechnology methods to do this. A British psychiatrist has raised the possibility of using drugs to make people more moral in a recent interesting paper. (thanks to Mind Hacks) Here's an excerpt.

I should state clearly that there are different ways in which one might construe pharmacology as enhancing morality,and that these vary from what could be called a ‘Promethean’project (e.g.specifically designing drugs that target and increase a pro-social feeling and behaviour such as ‘kindness’) to the more prosaic situation, encountered clinically, where a beneficial consequence of pharmacological treatment is the well-being of others (e.g.a man prone to psychosis, who can be violent when ill, takes his medication reliably, thereby reducing his risk too thers).

This psychiatrist is certainly not the first to bring this up. The philosopher David Pearce has argued for some time that we should use drugs to make people nicer to each other.

"...our genetically-enriched descendants are likely to view us as little better than psychopaths. For the role of key receptor sub-types of the 'civilising neurotransmitter' serotonin, the 'hormone of love' oxytocin, and the 'chocolate amphetamine' phenylethylamine, needs to be radically enhanced. When naturally loved-up and blissed-out on a richer cocktail of biochemicals than today, our post-human successors will be able, not just to love everyone, but to be perpetually in love with everyone as well.

Pearce goes on to mention the drug MDMA, which usually makes people feel more empathetic and loving towards each other.

Happily, in the future it will be possible to mimic, and then magnify out of all recognition, the kind of altruistic devotion to each other that might have arisen if were we all 100% genetically-related clones. Hints of a capacity for universal love can be glimpsed fleetingly today on the empathogen 'hug-drug' MDMA (Ecstasy).

In the past I've mentioned about using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to alter consciousness in patients with asperger's disorder. People with asperger's may have deficits in empathy. Deficits in empathy may also be common to other disorders such as schizophrenia, narcissistic and anti-social personality disorders. TMS may be able to enhance a person's empathy levels, especially when targeted at more frontal brain regions. I have no doubt that this theoretically might be possible. It does bring up issues like brave new world. However, most of this discussion is not forcible alteration of brain functioning. The British psychiatrist mentions the possiblity of using drugs to improve people who are violent. Whether this will actually happen, however, is a completely different story.