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Guest Post: Performance enhancers and smart drugs in e-sports

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Written by Toni Gibea

Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest

My aim is to show that the decision made by ESL (Electronic Sports League) to ban Adderall in e-sport competitions is not the outcome of a well-reasoned ethical debate. There are some important ethical arguments that could be raised against the ESL decision to ban Adderall, arguments that should be of great interest if we are concerned about the moral features of this sport and its future development.

In the first part of this post I will explain why and when doping became a primary concern for e-sports and I will also sum up some of the officials’ reactions. After that I’ll present the main arguments that could be raised against the idea that the use of Adderall is an obviously impermissible moral practice. My conclusion is that we should treat this subject matter with more care so that in the future decisions in this area will have a stronger moral grounding.Read More »Guest Post: Performance enhancers and smart drugs in e-sports

Guest Post: Pervitin instead of coffee? Change in attitudes to cognitive enhancement in the 50’s and 60’s in Brazil  

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Written by Marcelo de Araujo

State University of Rio de Janeiro

CNPq – The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

How does our attitude to drugs in general shape our reaction to “smart drugs” in particular? Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katharine Brem have recently published a systematic review of 24 studies on the effect of modafinil on healthy individuals. They concluded that “modafinil may well deserve the title of the first well-validated pharmaceutical ‘nootropic’ agent.”[1] This publication has rekindled the debate on the ethics of “smart drugs”. Of course further studies are necessary for a better assessment of the safety and efficacy of modafinil. But if modafinil, or some other drug, proves safe and effective in the future, are there reasons to oppose its widespread use in society?

Read More »Guest Post: Pervitin instead of coffee? Change in attitudes to cognitive enhancement in the 50’s and 60’s in Brazil  

Guest Post: Smart drugs, Smart choice

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Written by Benjamin Pojer and Daniel D’Hotman

Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Science, Monash University

 Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford

 

A recent review published in the European Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology (1) on the efficacy and safety of modafinil in a population of healthy people has found that the drug “appears to consistently engender enhancement of attention, executive functions, and learning” without “preponderances for side effects or mood changes”. Modafinil, a medication prescribed in the treatment of narcolepsy and other sleep disorders, has gained popularity in recent years as a means of increasing alertness and focus. Informal surveys suggest that up to one in five undergraduate university students in the UK admit to using the drug as a study aid (2). Previously, the unknown safety profile of modafinil has been an obstacle to its more widespread use as a cognitive enhancer. Admittedly, the long-term consequences of modafinil use remain unclear, however, given its growing popularity, this gap in the literature should not preclude a discussion of the ethics of the drug’s use for cognitive enhancement.Read More »Guest Post: Smart drugs, Smart choice

Horizon 2020 and The Role of Lay People’s Perspectives in Bioethical Reasoning

By Kimberly Schelle & Nadira Faulmüller

Horizon 2020, the European Union’s 2014-2020 largest research programme ever, includes the call to pursue ‘Responsible Research and Innovation’ (RRI). RRI stands for a research and innovation process in which all societal actors (e.g. citizens, policy makers, business and researchers) are working together in the process to align the outcomes with the values, needs, and expectations of the European Society. In a recently published paper on the importance of including the public and patients’ voices in bioethical reasoning, the authors describe, although in other words, the value of the RRI approach in bioethical issues:

“A bioethical position that fails to do this [exchange with the public opinion], and which thus avoids the confrontation with different public arguments, including ones perhaps based in different cultural histories, relations and ontological grounds […], not only runs the risk of missing important aspects, ideas and arguments. It also arouses strong suspicion of being indeed one-sided, biased or ideological—thus illegitimate.”

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