The use of methylphenidate among students: the future of enhancement?

Abstract

During the past few years considerable debate has arisen within academic journals with respect to the use of smart drugs or cognitive enhancement pharmaceuticals. The following paper seeks to examine the foundations of this cognitive enhancement debate using the example of methylphenidate use among college students. The argument taken is that much of the enhancement debate rests upon inflated assumptions about the ability of such drugs to enhance and over-estimations of either the size of the current market for such drugs or the rise in popularity as drugs for enhancing cognitive abilities. This article provides an overview of the empirical evidence that methylphenidate has the ability to significantly improve cognitive abilities in healthy individuals, and examines whether the presumed uptake of the drug is either as socially significant as implied or growing to the extent that it requires urgent regulatory attention. In addition, it reviews the evidence of side-effects for the use of methylphenidate which may be an influential factor in whether an individual decides to use such drugs. The primary conclusions are that neither drug efficacy, nor the benefit-to-risk balance, nor indicators of current or growing demand provide sufficient evidence that methylphenidate is a suitable example of a cognitive enhancer with mass appeal. In light of these empirically based conclusions, the article discusses why methylphenidate might have become seen as a smart drug or cognitive enhancer.

Added Stakeholders, Added Value(s) to the Cognitive Enhancement Debate: Are Academic Discourse and Professional Policies Sidestepping Values of Stakeholders?

“…Scholars have voiced healthy scepticism about the novelty of the questions related to CE based on precedent lifestyle use of illicit and prescription drugs or exaggerations about the effects and prevalence of CE 1 (Outram 2010). As such, the nature of the debate and response to CE becomes a phenomenon to reflect on in its own right.…”

“…Exaggerations of the novelty and prevalence of CE, along with a dubious use of CE terminology within the academic literature, (Racine and Forlini 1 Estimates of the proportion of university students using stimulants to enhance academic performance range from 1.3% to 11% (Wilens et al 2008;Racine and Forlini 2010;Franke et al 2011). 4 2010) suggest that academia has not necessarily been an impartial and reasonably objective participant in the CE debate Lucke et al 2010;Outram 2010;. Moreover, assumptions about the effects and prevalence of CE could prevent openended discussion and stifle debate by suggesting that "cognitive enhancement" is by nature an "enhancement" or that prevalence creates pressures to hastily condone the moral acceptability of CE more generally .…”

Die Bedeutung des Neuroenhancements in der ärztlichen Praxis

“…Neuroenhancement (NE) -im Sinne einer Verbesse rung kognitiver und emotionaler Fähigkeiten beim gesunden Menschen mittels medikamentöser Sub stanzen -ist ein intensiv erörtertes Thema in der Me dizinethik [2][3][4][5][6]*. Dabei stehen sich einerseits der Re spekt vor der Autonomie derjenigen, die NEPro dukte verwenden möchten, und andererseits die Bedenken bezüglich gesundheitlicher Risiken und problematischer gesellschaftlicher Entwicklungen (etwa in Form eines übersteigerten Leistungsdrucks mit zunehmender Entsolidarisierung) gegenüber.…”

The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics

“…However, it does seem possible that some currently available putative cognitive enhancers, such as modafinil and methylphenidate (see, e.g., Greely et al, 2008;Turner et al, 2003; but see Lucke et al, 2011;Outram, 2010), could, if used as an adjunct to moral education, potentially meet them in the future. So too might certain drugs or other neurointerventions that worked by attenuating emotional biases that would otherwise impede moral learning (although research in this area is currently nascent and scarce).…”