The Week

As for the neurosciences, their hubris knows no bounds; but what their nemesis will be, I am uncertain (perhaps the loss of funding when the vast benefits fail to materialize). Let us take one example: neuropharmacology. In a best-selling book of stunning, silliness, a professor of psychiatry from Brown University, Peter D. Kramer, suggested that we were entering the age of designer neuropharmacology. Kramer’s stalking horse was the drug fluoxetine, otherwise known as Prozac. This drug was proclaimed a tremendous breakthrough for human self-understanding and for future possibilities of adjusting our personalities according to taste, desire, and will. Need a little more self-confidence? Take a bit of Drug A. Need a slightly less explosive temper? Take a bit of Drug B. And so on, ad infinitum. We would soon be able to tune our personalities like a piano or a car engine. Then it would be away dull care, with a vengeance.

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As for the neurosciences, their hubris knows no bounds; but what their nemesis will be, I am uncertain (perhaps the loss of funding when the vast benefits fail to materialize). Let us take one example: neuropharmacology. In a best-selling book of stunning, silliness, a professor of psychiatry from Brown University, Peter D. Kramer, suggested that we were entering the age of designer neuropharmacology. Kramer’s stalking horse was the drug fluoxetine, otherwise known as Prozac. This drug was proclaimed a tremendous breakthrough for human self-understanding and for future possibilities of adjusting our personalities according to taste, desire, and will. Need a little more self-confidence? Take a bit of Drug A. Need a slightly less explosive temper? Take a bit of Drug B. And so on, ad infinitum. We would soon be able to tune our personalities like a piano or a car engine. Then it would be away dull care, with a vengeance.

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