On 12 October 2009 the memorandum “Das optimierte Gehirn – Chancen und Risiken des Neuroenhancements” was presented to the public in Berlin. It contains advice on how to responsibly use pharmaceutical drugs for the enhancement of cognitive performance and emotional well-being in healthy people. These recommendations were worked out by an interdisciplinary team of authors who collaborated in a research project from 2006 to 2009, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The expert group deliberately decided to make their research results accessible to the wider public by publishing the memorandum in the November edition of the popular journal “Gehirn&Geist”. Currently, public debate on pharmaceutical neuroenhancement is dominated by media reports on “brain doping” which tend to focus on the risks of drug consumption.

The team of authors challenges this overly critical approach by rebutting many of the standard objections against pharmaceutical means to improve cognitive abilities or the emotional state beyond what is considered “normal”. At present, the best reason not to use prescription drugs like Ritalin^Ò or Prozac^Ò for enhancement purposes probably is the lack of evidence both for their effectiveness and their long-term safety in healthy people. This was established by the medical experts of the working group in a systematic review of the research literature the most important results of which are summarised in the memorandum. If safe and effective neuroenhancement drugs were available, there would be no sufficient reason to ban their usage. However, their widespread consumption may quite well lead to undesirable social consequences like an exacerbation of inequality which would require adequate regulation. Consequently, the authors plead for a liberal but by no means uncritical attitude towards the evolving possibilities of pharmaceutical neuroenhancement.

The authors are:

Dr. phil. Thorsten Galert, M.A.,  Europäische Akademie zur Erforschung von Folgen wissenschaftlich-technischer Entwicklungen Bad Nenahr-Ahrweiler GmbH

Christoph Bublitz, LL.B., Fakultät für Rechtswissenschaftwissenschaft, Universität Hamburg

Professor Dr. med. Isabella Heuser Klinik und Hochschulambulanz für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie Charité, Berlin

Professor Dr. iur. Reinhard Merkel, Fakultät für Rechtswissenschaft, Universität Hamburg

Dimitris Repantis, M.D., Klinik und Hochschulambulanz für Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie Charité, Berlin

Professor Dr. Bettina Schöne-Seifert, Institut für Ethik, Geschichte und Theorie der Medizin Universität Münster

Davinia Talbot, M.A.Institut für Ethik, Geschichte und Theorie der Medizin Universität Münster

 

Publication:

Th. Galert, C. Bublitz, I. Heuser, R. Merkel, D. Repantis, B. Schöne-Seifert, D. Talbot, Das optimierte Gehirn. Ein Memorandum zu Chancen und Risiken des Neuroenhancements. Gehirn&Geist 11/2009, pp. 40–48