Seeing Red In Maryland

Shades of Aldous Huxley

I watched a "60 Minutes" piece on the usage of propanolol to blunt the trauma of severe events, such as rapes, car accidents, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In a Canadian study, subjects were asked to write down a detailed account of a traumatic incident. When they were done, they were given a dose of propanolol. A week later, they were hooked up to an EEG and the account of their trauma was read to them. According to the report, the subjects no longer had the severe emotional response to the memory, some to the point of feeling it wasn't something that had happened to them.

Properly, they also had a control group which watched a pleasant movie or did something else unrelated to the trauma before being given the drug. Like the test group, they were then read an account of their trauma a week later. Surprisingly at least one woman in the control group was all but freed from a 20 or 30 year debilitating trauma!

While I am very happy for the woman, I think this could be the beginning of something not so good. In short, they think they have found a way to cure people of trauma. If this becomes generally available, it's not to hard to see people clamoring for propanolol to soften or erase the blow of any bad experience - leaving only the feelings of the good experiences. It would be a brave new world, indeed.

posted by Mike Milligan @ 5:55 PM