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Childhood is not what it used to be

  • 24 August 2002
  • Magazine issue 2357

UNRULY children behave properly within minutes of swallowing it. Books, lawsuits and websites have been mobilised in honour or horror of its name. But Ritalin is more than just a noisily debated treatment for young hyperactive brains. Increasingly, it is being held aloft as a grim warning of where the new biomedical sciences are leading us.

Take the latest call for a tighter rein on such research. In Our Posthuman Future, Francis Fukuyama rates the galloping pace of neuropharmacology and the brain sciences as even more threatening to human dignity and freedom than the prospect of designer babies. "Virtually everything that the popular imagination envisions genetic engineering accomplishing is much more likely to be accomplished sooner through neuropharmacology," he writes. And for a taste of the kind of "mind engineering" that might flow from this, he suggests we look at the impact of Ritalin.

Clearly there are worries with this ...

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