Category: Designer Moods

For more than fifteen years now— essentially since Peter D. Kramer’s Listening to Prozac helped a generation overcome much of the stigma associated with one of the most common health problems in the United States— antidepressant use has grown steadily. Even while the drug war placed many so-called recreational drugs off-limits to those inclined to …

What’s wrong with society wanting us to be happy and friendly? The concern that America was becoming a “Prozac nation” popping happy pills was premature, given the emerging evidence that suppression of clinical trial data had inflated the reported efficacy of SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) like Prozac. Nonetheless, our growing understanding of the neurobiology …

Most of us think that if pharmacological agents can boost the mood of the clinically depressed, this is a very good result. But what should we think about the prospect of using pharmacological agents to boost the moods of those who exhibit no signs of depression? In other words, should society permit “designer” or “cosmetic” …

Few moral issues attract as much attention from moral philosophers these days as the ethics of human enhancement—of using pharmacological agents, genetic engineering, or biomedical implants to improve our memory, intelligence, strength, endurance, agility, or personality. To analyze the morality of enhancements, we must consider new technologies, review scientific developments, make predictions about the future, …