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“If we can make it so that an ‘a-ha’ moment occurs, it’s going to save a lot of heartbreak, a lot of hostility between couples.”

It’s a seductive idea — that somewhere in the near future failing marriages and partnerships can be rescued by manipulating our brains to keep us from falling out of love.

In Canada, 40% of marriages are expected to end in divorce before couples reach their 30th anniversary. Across the Western world, the divorce rate hovers around 50%.

Along with oxytocin and the related bonding hormone vasopressin, researchers are also taking a second look at the possible therapeutic uses for MDMA, better known as the illegal party drug ecstasy.

But could a drug really rescue us from a life of heartache? And even if it could, should we take it?

It’s a new and polarizing set of questions for ethicists who are increasingly wrestling with the collision of technological advances and modern values and mores — questions that were wrestled with during a debate at the University of Manitoba this week.

The debate, titled “Love Drugs: An Ethical Way to Achieve Intimacy,’ squared on whether these drugs are a good or bad idea. Would it would rob a relationship of its authenticity or could it help people achieve their relationship goals if used in a safe, controlled setting?

While proponents say some couples may even have a moral obligation to take the drug to keep a family together, skeptics worry society has become overly quick to medicalize personality traits or social behaviours that have long been considered natural — for example, the recent firestorm over the inclusion of social anxiety disorder (shyness) and major depressive disorder (a lengthy grieving period) in the new DSM-5, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which comes out in May.