Enhance Your Kids with Drugs, Machines, and Perfect Genes
"Dr. P. You've got to give me a prescription for Ritalin."This request was coming from a patient on vacation from his first year in college.
"But, William, you don't have ADHD!" I protested.
"True, but I need it to boost my grades. Lots of my friends are using it to study for tests and getting better grades than I because of it. It's not fair. Help me, Dr. P!"
As a parent, is there anything you wouldn't do to cure your child of an illness or to fix a problem in his life? Pretty easy question. Here's a harder one: What might you be willing to do to enhance your child's normal abilities and good health? That's what William was asking of me: not to cure a disability but to improve on his natural talents.
Should I say yes? This is no idle question. As a 21st century parent, you will likely be confronted with decisions not unlike the one William posed to me. For example, how about these for your kids:
Medications without significant side effects that:
- Greatly improve memory
- Increase IQ by 20 points
- Enhance creativity
- Strengthen the immune system to fight off illness
- Keep you happy all the time
- Avoid the need for sleep
- Improve coordination to excel in sports and other physical activities
Computers with nanotechnology that can:
- Hook up to the brain so it can access gigabytes of information
- Allow text messaging, almost telepathically, from brain to brain
- Allow one to download information directly into the brain (why study?)
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Sound far-fetched? Not at all. Take it to the bank: all of these (and much more) will be available human enhancements in the next generations (some sooner, some later, as discussed in a fascinating book I just read*).It really cuts to the question: what is your view of "human nature"? Should it be unchangeable, something we fiddle with at our peril? I yam what I yam! Or is human nature something we can and should seek to improve? Should we embrace the fate of mankind as evolving into some sort of fabulous amalgam of machines and chemicals and flesh and blood?
More immediately, is it your responsibility as a parent (and, by extension, mine as a doctor) to enhance your child's potential in any way possible?
I foresee a future with two types of kids: the enhanced and the ordinary. The enhanced will make use of all new technologies and body altering drugs and genetic engineering to boost their functioning. They will hit 100 home runs in Little League, get all A's in school, and look gorgeous. The ordinary will be, well, like you and me (I struck out with the bases loaded).
Attention, mom and dad, the future will be here before you know it! Which group will you choose for your kids: the enhanced or the ordinary? And what do you think I should do about William and his Ritalin? The future is now.
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* Book cited:
"Radical Evolution " by Joel Garreau
Broadway Books, 2005
Original cartoon by Jack Maypole, M.D.
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Labels: 21st Century Kids, technology
