blog.bioethics.net

"Academic Doping" is Just Plain Dumb (as Something to Fear)

The first media story I read about Dr. Vincent Cakic's Journal of Medical Ethics paper about the ethical concerns about academic doping I was able to shrug off as just one more enhancement story.

But after reading the 5th or 6th this week about Dr. Cakic's mind-boggling take on "academic doping", the most ridiculous argument made yet this year in an ethics paper had gained so much traction (in the media, at least) that it was time someone said that there is nothing new in his pill bottle.

I began to wonder if this is what neuroethics had degenerated to when I came across a summary of Dr. Cakic's argument in the Times Higher Education supplement, which quoted the author as saying, "As laughable as it may seem, it is possible that (urine testing of students) could very well come to fruition in the future."

Laughable? It's downright, dumb. First, what kinds of substances should we be testing students for when more than 4.4 million children in the US are diagnosed with ADHD and more than 50% taking some kind of drug like Ritalin, Concerta, Focalin or Provigil? Dr. Cakic are you ready to take urine samples of more than 2 million children? Get out your dipsticks and a whole lot of

Where do we draw the line between the children who "need" to be taking these medications and those who are taking perhaps slightly too large a dose or maybe really aren't quite ADD-enough to justify the medications they take and are simply enhancing their brains?

In other words, how will we know when we are dealing with a student who needs Provigil or Ritalin and one who is simply engaging in "cosmetic neurology", as Cakic calls it? Moreover, who are we (I'm using the royal "we" here) to tell college aged students or older high schoolers that they can't be in control of the functioning of their brain when we allow them to be in control of the functioning of their reproductive systems and other "cosmetic" aspects of their lives?

Is Cakic really advocating that schools should become like police states and prior to large standardized testing periods everyone has to go pee into a cup to ensure that everyone is neurologically au naturale? And what about the rest of the school year? Should students be subjected to random drug checks to ensure that their grades aren't jacked up by some pharmacological support?

The analogy that Dr. Cakic draws between doping in sport and "academic doping" is a false one. Olympians claim to be the very best in their sport through training and practice--and agree to a particular set of standards of what it means to be an Olympian who trains to achieve greatness of the human form sans enhancement. (However, even those boundaries of what is "natural" versus what is allowed through "enhancements" such as supplements and the like is being pushed further and further of late.)

Our children, however, do not claim to be "academic olympians". But thank goodness for people like Leon Kass and Dr. Cakic for offering another naive intuitionist account to guide us all for figuring out the difference between the morality of Princeton Review and the sin of Ritalin.

Summer Johnson, PhD