This week’s article made me question about people’s decisions towards pills to “enhance” their mental and physical ability to fulfill their “desires”. Should we accept and provide neuroenhancers to everyone that lacks ability to control themselves and work hard? Do drugs help restore an individual’s personal concern in life? How should we treat individuals with different desires? According to “Neurochemical Selves” by Nikolas Rose, the author suggests that we have become “neurochemical selves” because we have inhabited a deep interior of psychological space. Our thoughts, emotions, and behavior, are all mapped onto our brains. Thus, our neurons determine our actions and state of being. If our neurons function at a weak state then possibly the influence of drugs would help support its functionality. “Becoming neurochemical selves, these drugs promise to help the individual him or herself, in alliance with the doctor and the molecule, to discover the intervention that will address precisely a specific molecular anomaly at the root of something that personally troubles the individual concerned and disrupts his or her life, in order to restore the self to its life, and itself, again” (Rose 211). Nowadays, a simple “quick fix” to a problem with our bodies is something that everyone wants because it’s so simple and has a faster response to enhancing our bodies.
One common type of neuroenhancers that is becoming more prevalent on school campuses is Adderall, a stimulant composed of missed amphetamine salts, commonly prescribed for children and adults who have been given a diagnosis of ADHD. In “Brain Gain,” by Margaret Talbot, the author makes a good point that our society is becoming “even more worked and driven by technology than we already are, and where we have to take drugs to keep up; a society where we give children academic steroids along with their daily vitamins” (Talbot 9). The idea that some people need to take neuroenhancers to keep up with their busy lives expands a greater range of inequality, making it even more challenging to those who are socially and economically strained compared to the rich. According to Greg Crapanzano he argued that neuroenhancers “create an unfair advantage for the users who are willing to break the law in order to gain an edge. These students create work that is dependent on the use of a pill rather than their own work ethic” (Talbot 8). It’s like individuals as such are not aware or could care less about the consequences of taking drugs such as Adderall. People may resort to drugs for the wrong reasons, but who is to blame these pharmaceutical companies selling and profiting off of these drugs? These companies earn a lot of money because people do believe that these drugs can help proclaim their self-image, in which some cases it does.
On the other hand, these articles illustrate how the body is perceived and represented. In the Lock and Scheper-Hughes article, we’ve discussed how conceptions of a “healthy body” are “emphasized on how individuals balance themselves in the natural world” (12). We are challenged to balance between this Cartesian dualism of the mind versus the body, mental versus physical, subjectivity versus objectivity, culture versus nature, or individual versus society. But to keep in mind, “In the field of health, the active and responsible citizen must engage in a constant monitoring of health, a constant work of modulation, adjustment, improvement in response to the changing requirements of the practices of his or her mode of everyday life” (last page of Neurochemical selves). Therefore, from what we have read in most of our readings, it is the individual’s choice and their own responsibility to decide their own lives.
By taking ourselves out of the equation and understanding how institutions regulate our behaviors can provide a better understanding of why students may choose to take neuroenhancing drugs like Adderall. There are social pressures of succeeding in school. No matter what class you’re in, the grade you receive determines how the school may categorize you as either “outstanding” or “needs improvement” category. Thus, how are we suppose to treat or accommodate individual’s with different needs?
According to Martha Minow, a Law Professor at Harvard Law School
In conclusion, we shouldn’t judge someone because they act/behavior differently. I think it is an individual’s responsibility to understand another person by being in their shoes or experience what they are going through because it can broaden their knowledge and understanding to this dilemma of difference.
References:
Minow, Martha. “The Dilemma of Difference.” Academic Discourse: Readings Orlando
Rose, Nikolas. 2007. Neurochemical Selves , IN Princeton : Princeton University
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
Talbot, Margaret. “Brain Gain: The Underground World of ‘Neuroenhancing’ Drugs.” The New Yorker, April 27, 2009 .
No comments:
Post a Comment