IQ In a Pill

. . .That’s when I stumbled across a small story in an American scientific magazine. It said there was a spiky debate across America’s universities about the increasing use by students of a drug called Provigil. It was, they said, Viagra for the brain. It was originally designed for narcoleptics in the seventies, but clinical trials had stumbled across something odd: if you give it to non-narcoleptics, they just become smarter. Their memory and concentration improves considerably, and so does their IQ. . .

When the American journalist David Plotz took Provigil, he said it should be given a slogan. Just as valium was marketed as “the housewife’s little helper,” he said this should be sold as “the boss’ little helper.” It makes you work better and harder than before. . .

Is all this just the placebo effect: I expect it to do this to me, so it does? Perhaps. But in the clinical trials, it worked much better than the placebo. (Full Story at johannhari)



Make sure to read the whole article. Its some pretty interesting stuff. It also raises a lot of ethical questions. I would have to think about it some more before giving an opinion on whether or not someone should take the stuff, but I'm interested in your opinion. What do you think?