Greetings fellow FHS students and people that are not.

Do you remember a painful time from your childhood? Do you wish that you could erase that painful memory?

Scientists at John Hopkins University are working on a drug that can erase memories from the mind. Apparently it is being developed for soldiers that are haunted by the violent and morbid scenes of war. In other words, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These soldiers affected will be able to erase those memories that affect them.

Is it such a good idea though? Richard L. Huganir, professor and chair of neuroscience in the Hopkins School of Medicine says, “When a traumatic event occurs, it creates a fearful memory that can last a lifetime and have a debilitating effect on a person’s life”. Now I guess it’s a good idea if it can stop “a debilitating effect on a person’s life”.

But how many memories are we erasing? Are we erasing four years of memories? What is it like to have a chunk of your life just erased? Does that have “a debilitating effect on a person’s life”?

Now what are the potential negative things? Besides the possibility of forgetting the wrong memories, what else? They said it could be used to treat rape victims from their bad memories, but what if the rapist uses it on the victim so the victim has no idea what happened and when? People could screw other people over and cause that person to have no clue of what happened.

There’s a tremendous amount of negative things that seem to be possible if it got in the wrong hands. And to say that it could not get in the wrong hands is tough argument. After all, just look at all the bad things that get into the wrong hands all the time, like say… guns.

We know that we learn from each experience and our experiences make us who we are today. Now if scientists can correctly isolate specific proteins in the brain and effectively remove them, should this be used?

Just a thought,

Sean McKeown

“Experience is the best teacher”

PS. I would like to hear people’s thoughts on this because I tend to think that this will be a top story if the drug is successfully created. Should we be meddling with people’s minds? Yes? No?