Give Ritalin to healthy people to boost their brain power, says medical expert



Healthy people should be allowed to take Ritalin to boost their brain power, a medical expert has argued.

Professor John Harris said it was unethical to stop the controversial drug being used for this purpose - as students have been known to at exam time.

He said that Ritalin, which is prescribed for hyperactivity in the young, is safe and offers 'significant advantages' to the healthy.



Mainstream? Professor John Harris believes healthy people should be allowed to take Ritalin to enhance mental performance

It is known to boost academic performance, focus and concentration.

Professor Harris, bioethics professor at the University of Manchester, writes in an article today on bmj.com that 'it is not rational to be against human enhancement'.

He said: 'Humans are creatures that result from an enhancement process called evolution and moreover are inveterate self-improvers in every conceivable way.

'Many healthy students are thought to use Ritalin and other chemical cognitive enhancers to improve academic performance. The arguments against their being permitted to do so have not been persuasive.'

The drug is routinely used on the Health Service to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.



Around 400,000 British children aged five to 19 years with ADHD are believed to be on drugs including Ritalin.



Professor Harris said it had been deemed 'safe enough' to give to young people.

His comments were part of a debate in the journal. He was opposed by Professor Anjan Chatterjee from the University of Pennsylvania, who argued there are too many risks in taking Ritalin unless people are actually ill.



He said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labelled it with the most alarming of warnings because of its high potential for abuse, dependence, risk of sudden death and serious adverse effects on the heart.

If it became widely available, he questioned whether pupils would take Ritalin in 'epidemic proportions'.

There was the danger that pilots, police officers and on-call doctors would be pressured into taking the drug to perform better in their jobs.

He also mentioned possible cognitive trade-offs involved in taking Ritalin, such as a loss in creativity.

He said: 'Being smarter does not mean wiser. The fact that very smart people generating complicated models to distribute financial risk contributed to the current global economic crisis should at least give us pause.'