This clip shows how a new experimental drug can be injected into the brain and erase certain long-term memories. Currently the studies have focused on rats, but scientists would like to replicate these studies on humans.
Here's another clip from CBS news.
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This video clip was really interesting to me because it seems to show some promise to help out people erase long-term memories. The problem is that when doing experimental research, key word "experimental" doing them on animals are much different then humans. Any complications with a human being could result in long term damage, especially with ones that deal with the human brain, or even worse death. Personally, I'm for research because without it, we wouldn't be as far in helping AID's patients and other incurable diseases, as we are now. In doing sensitive experiments, they have to take extreme caution but also know when the risks are acceptable.
ReplyDeleteThis brings up a lot of ethical questions about erasing memories. A drug like this might cause abuse and will require strict regulation.
ReplyDeleteI believe if u regulate the way that humans use the ability to erase and restore long term memory it could potentially help certain people with certain addiction or fears. I do not really know how it would help out towards the more important finding such as AIDS cures and things of that nature. As long as it does not harm other or you do not put it in the hands of people who may want to harm others it acceptable in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI think that this topic was extremely interesting. Although this pill can cause much help I believe it can cause more damage. I feel like it is messing with the natural mind too much and that it can cause more harm than help. I also would like to know the future side effects of this as I believe there will be many.
ReplyDeleteWhile I believe there are potential benefits to a memory erasing drug, I also fear that this drug might be difficult to administer and pinpoint certain memories over others. It may be problematic to use these drugs with the intentions of erasing one memory only to accidentally diminish a person's entire set of memories. This was an extremely interesting and worthwhile topic, however, I believe much more research is needed before there can be further talk about using these drugs on humans.
ReplyDeleteI think that the researchers have good intentions with this drug but I feel it will stir up so many problems as far as erasing memories are concerned. I believe that if this drug were to get into the wrong hands there could be extreme consequences. I also believe that the people who have their memory erased will be reminded of their past through people or news and then spend much of there time trying to figure out what happened. However, this could be extremely beneficial for people who are trying to retreive their memory such as dementia patients.
ReplyDeleteI think the idea itself is good, however, there are too many problems and concerns that will come up with this drug. Even though it was intended for good use, it is very likely that these drugs might fall into the wrong hands and be put into immoral usage. Furthermore, I think that we should help people to deal with their problems instead of ignoring/forgetting it.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a very interesting story but I do not see how it would be possible to regulate the drug and if it got on the black market it could be very detrimental to our society. I also think it would be hard to do testing for a drug like this because if complications arose people could face loosing their entire memory which would be very harmful.
ReplyDeleteThis is crazy! I understand things might happen to people, however, I don't think we need to start taking medication that can clear someone's memory. I think the technology we have today is getting out of hand sometimes. I think if they really did some test on this and showed signs by 90%, then maybe, if the event so was extreme it's causing issues, then possibly. I know I would be scared if someone were to erase my memory of something that happened to me (even if it was bad) I just do not know. This would be a hard process to endure.
ReplyDeleteI found this story to be very interesting. I didn't even know about this until your presentation. As I said in class, I think the benefits of 'erasing memories' would be for post traumatic stress disorder victims, but then again you can't pin point certain memories because the brain is such a complex thing. All in all, while it sounds good on paper I doubt it is ever going to be put into widespread production.
ReplyDeleteIf they know what parts of the brain control memories, shouldn't the research money be spent curing diseases like alzheimers? This seems dangerous, particularly if the technology becomes so widespread the wrong people get their hands on it.
ReplyDeleteWow, I can't believe what this world can come up with haha... I was so interested in this current event, because I had no idea this was possible. I don't really like it. I feel like there are so many ways that something like this can go wrong; addiction, side-effects, mental illness, etc. etc. I think there is enough help out there and people that care to take care of hard hitting issues that people face
ReplyDeleteI think that in theory this is a pretty good idea to experiment with this drug. However, I don't think that it should be made mainstream any time soon or ever. There should be a great deal of regulation for this drug, otherwise it would be bad news if people started randomly taking this drug and then erasing innocent people's memories. Plus they can't yet choose what memory it erases, so it could leave a patient completely at a loss of all memory.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of potentially releasing this drug to people terrifies me. Erasing memories that may have caused a person to suffer PTSD or enhancing memories in Alzheimer patients are appealing ideas, but as of now, it seems we do not understand the brain and all its functions well enough to omit certain memories. To my knowledge, there is no tracking device for certain memories; while we may see patterns in where people store certain types of memories, we cannot pinpoint what exactly the memories are. Potentially enhancing memories could be a great thing, unless the painful memories that people naturally repress were to come back. I feel that we don't know enough to consider using this "zap" injection on humans in the near future.
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