Pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) refers to the use of pharmaceuticals to improve cognitive function when that use is not intended to prevent or treat disease. Those who favour a liberal approach to PCE trust users to make informed decisions about whether enhancing is in their best interest. The author argues that making informed decisions about PCE requires a nuanced risk-benefit analysis that is not accessible to many users. Presently, the PCE use of prescription medications such as methylphenidate and modafinil is widespread but most commonly happens without medical supervision. Direct and indirect barriers generate a situation where the risks and benefits of PCE are inequitably distributed; as a result, PCE is sometimes not in the user’s best interest. This is likely to also be the case for future pharmaceuticals. As a result, even if PCE pharmaceuticals were equitably distributed, its associated risks and benefits would not be. The article concludes with a discussion of the prospects of the clinical consultation on one hand, and e-health solutions on the other, in ameliorating the situation, arguing for cautious optimism.

This essay advocates for the wholesale reevaluation of the process used by American medical schools for selecting physicians, examining fundamental questions such as the purpose of physicians and the nature of meritocracy. It raises questions about the size of medical school classes, the specific academic requirements, and the inadequacy of current efforts to increase diversity. Ultimately, the essay argues for consideration of a range of reforms that will focus on the community-empowering aspects of medical admissions decisions.

The United States Department of Defense has, for at least 20 years, held the stated intention to enhance active military personnel (“warfighters”). This intention has become more acute in the face of dropping recruitment, an aging fighting force, and emerging strategic challenges. However, developing and testing enhancements is clouded by the ethically contested status of enhancements, the long history of abuse by military medical researchers, and new legislation in the guise of “health security” that has enabled the Department of Defense to apply medical interventions without appropriate oversight. This paper aims to reconcile existing legal and regulatory frameworks on military biomedical research with ethical concerns about military enhancements. In what follows, we first outline one justification for military enhancements. The authors then briefly address existing definitional issues over what constitutes enhancement before addressing existing research ethics regulations governing military biomedical research. Next, they argue that two common justifications for rapid military innovation in science and technology, including enhancement, fail. These justifications are (a) to satisfy a compelling military need and (b) strategic dominance. The authors then turn to an objection that turns on the idea that we need not have these justifications if warfighters are willing to adopt enhancement, and argue that laissez-faire approaches to enhancement fail in the context of the military due to pressing and historically significant concerns about coercion and exploitation. The paper concludes with what is referred to as the “least-worst” justification: Given the rise of untested enhancements in civilian and military life, we have good reason to validate potential enhancements even if they do not satisfy reasons (a) or (b) above.

In this series of short essays, stories, poems, and personal observations, Robert A. Burton, neurologist and writer, uses both fiction and nonfiction to explore many paradoxes and contradictions inherent in scientific inquiry. A novelist as well as author of On Being Certain and A Skeptic’s Guide to the Mind, Burton brings story to science and science to story.

While window-shopping for his wife’s birthday, a businessman was struck by a speeding taxi that jumped the curb at 55th and Madison. In the few minutes it took the ambulance to reach the University emergency room, he had lapsed into a coma. Brain imaging revealed a large blood clot compressing the brain. The only hope for his survival was immediate drainage of the clot.